Nooruddeen Durkee

Abdullah Nooruddeen Durkee
Born	1938 (age 78–79)
Era	Modern era
Region	North America
School	Sufi

Abdullah Nooruddeen Durkee is a Muslim scholar, thinker, author, translator and the khalifah (successor) for North America of the Shadhdhuli School for Tranquility of Being and the Illumination of Hearts, Green Mountain Branch. Nooruddeen Durkee became a Muslim in his early thirties in al-Quds, Jerusalem. He is the founder of Lama Foundation and Dar al-Islam Foundation. His major contribution is in the area of education, and for many years specifically in the realm of teaching reading, writing, and reciting of Qur'anic Arabic, which grew out of his work in the translation and transliteration of the sacred texts of the Shadhdhuliyyah and finally the Qur'an. One of his main contributions is the development of a transliteration of the Qur'an which has enabled non-Arabic people to understand and recite Quranic Arabic. Additionally he serves as a khateeb and an imam for various nearby Muslim communities on the Eastern coast of United States.

Noorudeen has been granted an 'ijaza in Islamic Calling (da'wah) by Umar Abdullah of the Comoro Islands, an 'ijaza in Islamic Introspection and Observation (muraqabah) by Seyed Ali Ashraf of Dhaka, Jeddahand Cambridge, and an 'ijaza in the Teaching, Propagation of Islam and the Nourishment of the Murids by Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rif'aiof al-Quds ash-Shareef. In the professional world he was granted a master's degree [M.Arch] in Islamic Building in 1983 by Dr. Hasan Fathy of the Institute of Appropriate Technology in Kuwait.

Currently he has his Zawiya at Islamic Study Center, Charlottesville, Virginia which is also the location of The Green Mountain School, the third school Nooruddeen has founded. He lives with his wife Noura Durkee in Green Mountain Farm outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Abdullah Nooruddeen Durkee was born 1938 in Warwick, New York, as Stephen Durkee. He grew up with his grandmother, a devout Catholic and herbalist, at Greenwood Lake, New York. During this time he made periodic trips to war-time NYC where his mother taught school, his father was in hotel business and his grandfather worked as ship chandler and cargo consolidator for the North Atlantic convoys.

In 1944-1952 he was a student at Corpus Christi, a Roman Catholic Grade School in NYC with a broad interfaith exposure, after which he studied at religious and secular high schools in New York.

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