Jamal J. Elias is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He has written and lectured widely on the Qur'an, Sufism, and religion and material culture acrossthe Islamic world. He is the author of numerous books on Islam and Islamic society, including Key Themes for the Study of Islam (Oneworld, 2010), On Wings of Diesel: Trucks, Identity and Culture in Pakistan (Oneworld, 2010), Islam (Prentice Hall and Routledge, 1999), Death Before Dying: Sufi Poems of Sultan Bahu (University of California Press, 1998), and The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of 'Ala' ad-dawla as-Simnani (SUNY Press, 1995).