Prominant Islamic Scholars in the west

The scholars that are affiliated with IHYA Foundation represent a variety of scholars from around the world who have dedicated their lives to the preservation and dissemination of the traditional Islamic sciences. They have spent much of their lives in intense study from the best of the ulema in the Muslim world. Our teachers impart to us the richness of the tradition as it was transmitted to them from their respected teachers. They are devoted to the service of education and teaching and are a source of great blessings for those that are fortunate enough to learn from them.

• Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson
• Imam Zaid Shakir
• Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ya'Qoubi
• Shaykh Habib 'Ali Al-Jifri
• Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
• Shaykh Jamal Al-Zahabi
• Shaykh Muhammad Samir Al-Nass
• Shaykh Naeem Abdul Wali
• Shaykh Zahir Arshad Bacchus
• Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson was born in Walla Walla, Washington, and grew up in Northern California.

Shaykh Hamza embraced Islam in 1977 in Santa Barbara, California, when he was still a teenager and set off almost immediately to study Arabic, Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, and spiritual psychology with masters in the Muslim world. He first studied for four years in the United Arab Emirates and then moved to Madina, followed by Algeria, Morocco, and then finally to a unique madrassa in the Saharan desert of West Africa to study with the remarkable scholar Shaykh Murabit Al-Hajj.

After ten-years of studies abroad, he returned to the United States and completed degrees in nursing at Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San Jose State University.

In the early 1990's he began to teach classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and in 1996 he established Zaytuna Institute. Two years later the institute acquired a property in Hayward, California, where it is now based. Zaytuna Institute is committed to inspiring a traditional understanding and study of the core Islamic sciences. In addition to weekly classes, week-long and month-long educational programs, and annual conferences that addresses contemporary issues affecting the American people, Zaytuna Institute has published four small books and several major audio-tape sets of Shaykh Hamza's classes.

His classes on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, produced as a 24-audio tape set, has sold well over thousands of copies world-wide.

As the executive director of the Zaytuna Institute, Shaykh Hamza travels frequently to major North American and European cities to teach and lecture to both Muslims and non-Muslim audiences.

After years of passionate work Shaykh Hamza completed the first comprehensive English translation of the Burda of Imam Al-Busiri. In June 2002 Sandala Productions in the UK has released �The Poem of the Cloak: The Burda of Al-Busiri.� The poem, on two cds, is sung by the Fez Singers and and the book is calligraphed by Mohamed Zakariya, a world renowed calligrapher and the teacher of Ustadha Aishah Elinor Holland.

Imam Zaid Shakir

Imam Zaid Shakir was born in Berkeley, California in 1956, the second of seven children. Most of his formative years were spent in public housing projects where he was able to experience a rich childhood. Upon completion of high school, he completed one year of college. However, his higher education was temporally halted due to a tragic death in his immediate family. He subsequently entered the US Air Force in 1976, where he resumed his university education, and accepted Islam in 1977.

Upon completing his military service, he enrolled at American University, Washington, DC, where he obtained a BA in International Relations with honors in 1983. In 1986 he obtained an MA in Political Science from Rutgers University. After spending a year in Cairo, he became a lecturer in Political Science at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut, a position he held until 1994 when he bade farewell to academia and left for Syria to study Arabic and Islamic Sciences. Imam Zaid also studied the traditional sciences of Islam in Morocco. He served as the Imam of Masjid al-Islam in New Haven, Connecticut from 1988 until 1994. He has lectured extensively on Islam, Middle East Politics, and issues related to African Americas. He has written for numerous Islamic publications, and has appeared on national television for Lou Gosset, Jr.'s "The Story of a People."

Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ya'qoubi

Born in Damascus, Shaykh Muhammad descends from a family whose lineage goes back to the Prophet, salla Allahu 'alayhi wa sallam, through his grandson Sayyiduna al-Hasan, radiya Allahu 'anhu. His ancestors also include some of the greatest scholars of Syria. His father, Shaykh Ibrahim al-Ya'qoubi (d. 1985/1406 H.), was one of the greatest scholars Syria saw in the past 50 years.

As a little boy, Shaykh Muhammad crawled in the Grand Umayyad Mosque and the Darwishiyya Mosque, where his father was an instructor for 40 years, and sat in the laps of some of the greatest scholars. Under his father's tutelage, Shaykh Muhammad followed a solid traditional curriculum since the age of four, studying the major classical works on the various disciplines of the Shari'ah as well as the instrumental disciplines. He received ijazas in Hadith from several of the most prominent scholars in Syria.

Shaykh Muhammad pursued his academic studies at the University of Damascus, Faculty of Shari'ah. He also received a degree in Arabic literature in 1987 and completed a two-year study of philosophy at the Arab University of Beirut. In 1991, Shaykh Muhammad joined the PhD program of linguistics at Gothenburg University in Sweden, Department of Oriental Studies, where he also worked as a researcher and a teacher of classical Arabic literature. He worked in Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah in Kuwait in 1990 as Research Editor and later as Assistant Director for Research and Studies.

In Sweden, Shaykh Muhammad served the Muslim community of Gothenburg as Imam, where he struggled for the establishment of Islam in the country. In 1999, the Swedish Islamic society in Stockholm chose him as the Mufti of Sweden. Besides working in Syria and Sweden, Shaykh Muhammad participated in conferences, delivered lectures, and gave Friday speeches in the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and the United States. Shaykh Muhammad taught his first class at the age of eleven in Qura'an and Tajweed, delivered his first public speeches at the age of twelve, and gave his first Friday khutba at the age of fourteen and a half. Shaykh Muhammad is married and has three children and currently resides in Damascus, Syria.

Shaykh Habib 'Ali Al-Jifri

Habib 'Ali Zain al-'Abideen al-Jifri was born of a noble prophetic lineage. His great grandfathers include, 'Ali Zain Al-'Abideen, the son of Imam al-Hussein, the son of Imam 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Sayyidah Fatimah, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah (pbuh). Habib 'Ali has studied for over 20 years at the hands of many great and prestigious scholars, connecting him with authentic chains of transmission and learning all the way to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself. He is an explosive and motivating speaker, a caller to the way of Allah and His Messenger (pbuh), and a spiritual educator of the highest caliber. His words, based on the illuminating knowledge of the Qur'an and Sunnah, penetrate deep into the soul, driving every sincere heart to repentance and back to its Lord and Creator. Habib 'Ali has sacrificed his soul in the service of the Deen, spreading the lights of guidance far and wide, in Muslim and non-Muslim lands. His travels have taken him to places such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, England, Holland, and America.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Born Timothy J. Winter in 1960, Abdal Hakim studied at the prestigious Westminster School in London, UK and later at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with first class honours in Arabic in 1983. He then lived in Cairo for three years, studying Islam under traditional teachers at Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world. He went on to reside for three years in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and other ulama from Hadramaut, Yemen.

In 1989, Sheikh Abdal Hakim returned to England and spent two years at the University of London learning Turkish and Farsi. Since 1992 he has been a doctoral student at Oxford University, specializing in the religious life of the early Ottoman Empire. In 1996, he was appointed University Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Sheikh Abdal Hakim is the translator of a number of works, including two volumes from Imam al-Ghazali Ihya Ulum al-Din. He gives durus and halaqas from time to time and taught the works of Imam al-Ghazali at the Winter 1995 Deen Intensive Program in New Haven, CT. He appears frequently on BBC Radio and writes occasionally for a number of publications including The Independent and Q-News International, Britain's premier Muslim Magazine.

He lives with his wife and children in Cambridge, UK.

Shaykh Jamal Al-Zahabi

Shaykh Jamal Zahabi was born in 1957 in Lebanon. He began his traditional Islamic educational training at the age of 12 when he entered Mahad al-Fath, a rigorous madrassah in Damascus, Syria. After spending 6 years there he went on to complete a degree at the prestigious Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, Egypt. He later did his Masters degree at the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where he studied with Sheikh Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah (rahimahullah). His Masters thesis was in the sciences of hadith with a particular emphasis on the work of Imam Al-Firyabi. Sheikh Jamal moved to Canada in 1989 and was the Imam of the Cambridge Mosque from 1990 to 1994. He also served as Imam of the Dorval Mosque in Montreal.

Sheikh Jamal has studied with some of the leading scholars (ulama) of the Levant including: Sheikh Abd al-Razzak al-Halabi (a master of jurisprudence and the sciences of recitation), Sheikh Saleh Farfour, Sheikh Mahmud Ranqusi, Sheikh Adeeb Kallas, Sheikh Abu Sulaiman al-Zabibi, Sheikh Abu Hamid Qattabi and Sheikh Uthman Siraj ad-Din among others. He has conducted circles of knowledge, Rihlas and Deen Intensive Programs in many locations including Toronto, Trinidad, Guyana, Fez (Morocco), Birmingham (UK), New Mexico, New York and at the Zaytuna Institute in California. He is presently the Imam of the Al-Amaan Mosque in Middletown, New Jersey.

He has obtained ijazas (certification to teach) in the Islamic Sciences of the Qur'an (including tajweed), Hadith, Fiqh, Aqidah, Seerah, Islamic poetry and others.

Shaykh Muhammad Samir Al-Nass

Shaykh Muhammad Samir Al-Nass was born in Damascus and sits on the American Medical Board.

He has Ijazah in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of Shatibiyyah and Durra from Shaykh Muhammad Sukr.He has Ijazah in fiqh and 'aqida from Shaykh Abu Yusr ibn Abidin. He also has Ijazah in Hadith form Al-Hafidh Shaykh Abd Allah Siraj ud-din. He has taught the four Madhabs for over twenty years.

Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah

Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim, born in 1948 to a Protestant family of the Midwest. Early in 1970, he embraced Islam in Ithaca, New York while studying English literature at Cornell University as a Woodrow Wilson honorary fellow. He then changed his field of study and transferred to the University of Chicago in 1972, where he received his doctorate, with honors, in 1978 for a dissertation pertaining to the origins of Islamic Law. He taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, and Michigan from 1977 until 1982, when he left the United States to teach Arabic in Granada (Spain).

In 1984, he was appointed to the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and taught Islamic studies and comparative religions there until 2000. During his years abroad, Dr. Abd-Allah took advantage of the opportunity to study numerous classical Islamic disciplines under several traditional Islamic teachers. He is fluent in English and Arabic and acquainted with several modern and ancient tongues.

Dr. Abd-Allah returned to Chicago in August of 2000 to work with the then newly founded Nawawi Foundation as its Chairman and Scholar-in-Residence. Accordingly, he now teaches throughout Chicago land and conducts research in Islamic studies and cognate fields. Dr. Abd-Allah resides with his family in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Shaykh Naeem Abdul Wali

Shaykh Naeem �Abdul-Wali is an American convert to Islam who has studied the Islamic sciences in Istanbul for over eight years full-time at the feet of some of the finest scholars including Shaykh Mahmud Effendi and Shaykh Ihsan Khoja. He has focussed his efforts exclusively in the traditional methodology studying the classical texts in aqeedah, (Hanafi) fiqh, and other subjects to an advanced level..

Shaykh Zahir Arshad Bacchus

Shaykh Zahir was born in Guyana on the eastern shores of South America. The Muslim community in Guyana, much like their cousins in Trinidad and Tobago, are decendants of indentured laborers from India who started arriving in the Caribbean from 1837.

He immigrated to Canada with his family when he was five years old and attended Islamic classes in Toronto from a very early age. After high school he completed a degree in Zoology with a minor in history at the University of Toronto. During his years on campus he was actively involved with the Muslim Student Association assisting in organizing many important events such as hosting the Mayor of Sarajevo during the tumultous years of genocide against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.

The one-week Deen Intensive Program in Connecticut in 1995 exposed Zahir to the sweetness of taking sacred knowledge from qualified teachers. At the Deen Intensive he had the fortunate opportunity to sit with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh �Abdullah al-Kadi, and Dr. Abdal-Hakim Murad, teachers who earned their stars at the feet of some of the best contemporary scholars in the Muslim community.

Shaykh Zahir returned to Toronto consumed with the desire to go on a rihla in search of sacred knowledge. In 1996 he said goodbye to his family and friends in Toronto and left for Amman, Jordan to study Arabic.

The following year he enrolled in the Arabic program at the University of Damascus and it is in Damascus that he would spend the next six years of uninterrupted study.

In the years he spent in Damascus, Shaykh Zahir had the blessing of meeting and sitting in the company of some of the premier scholars of Damascus, learning Hanafi fiqh, �aqida (science of beliefs), mantiq (logic), and usul (critical intellectualism), hadiths, and tafsir.

In October 2003 he said goodbye to Damascus and returned to Toronto. Shortly after returning he was conducting several classes for Muslims in the greater Toronto area, fulfilling the purpose for the years of dedicated study.