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Religious historian and Muslim womanist Debra Majeed died on March 20 from complications following surgery. She was 68.

Before becoming a full-time scholar, Majeed served as a United Methodist minister. She converted to Islam in 1998 while researching the appeal of Islam to Black Americans in Chicago as part of a joint doctorate program at Northwestern Uni­versity and Garrett-Evangelical Seminary.

She would later say that she came to embrace Islam because of the “pious, charitable, loving Muslim women and men” whom she met during her research.