Moustafa Bayoumi was born in 1966 in Zürich, Switzerland. His family immigrated to Canada when he was a toddler and settled in Kingston, Ontario, where his parents taught at the local college. He moved to New York City in 1990 to attend graduate school at Columbia University. After earning his doctor of philosophy, he taught postcolonial literature at Brooklyn College. He was a prolific author on issues surrounding Islam and the Arab world, regularly appearing in The Guardian, The Progressive, and other similar publications. He also wrote the books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America in 2008 and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror in 2015.