Ijtihad is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law, or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a legal question. It is contrasted with taqlid. According to classical Sunni theory, ijtihad requires expertise in the Arabic language, theology, revealed texts, and principles of jurisprudence, and is not employed where authentic and authoritative texts are considered unambiguous with regard to the question, or where there is an existing scholarly consensus (ijma). Ijtihad is considered to be a religious duty for those qualified to perform it. An Islamic scholar who is qualified to perform ijtihad is called as a "mujtahid".
Hamza Yusuf is an American Islamic neo-traditionalist, Islamic scholar, and co-founder of Zaytuna College. He is a proponent of classical learning in Islam and has promoted Islamic sciences and classical teaching methodologies throughout the world.
Liberalism and progressivism within Islam involve professed Muslims who have created a considerable body of progressive thought about Islamic understanding and practice. Their work is sometimes characterized as "progressive Islam". Some scholars, such as Omid Safi, differentiate between "Progressive Muslims" versus "Liberal advocates of Islam".
Khaled Abou el Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he has taught courses on International Human Rights, Islamic jurisprudence, National Security Law, Law and Terrorism, Islam and Human Rights, Political Asylum, and Political Crimes and Legal Systems. He is also the founder of the Usuli Institute, a non-profit public charity dedicated to research and education to promote humanistic interpretations of Islam, as well as the Chair of the Islamic Studies Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has lectured on and taught Islamic law in the United States and Europe in academic and non-academic environments since approximately 1990.
Muhammad Khalid Masud is the Director General of Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. The President of Pakistan appointed Mr. Masud as an Ad Hoc Member of Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court on 18 October 2012. On 1 November 2012, he took the oath administered by Chief Justice of Pakistan as an Ad Hoc Member of Shariat Appellate Bench of Supreme Court of Pakistan. Formerly he was Chairman (2004–2010) of the Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan.
AlMaghrib Institute is a 501(c)(3) Islamic studies organization founded in Houston, Texas, by Muhammad AlShareef in 2002. AlMaghrib provides courses on Islam in a six-day, two-weekend intensive seminar and other courses in a shorter, three-day, single-weekend format.
Louay M. Safi is a Syrian-American, a scholar of Islam and the Middle East, and an advocate of Arab and Muslim American rights. He published on such issues as social and political development, modernization, democracy, human rights, and Islam and Modernity. He is the author of 11 books and numerous papers, and speaker on questions of leadership, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East. He is also a spokesperson for the Syrian National Coalition, a league of Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian President Assad, which was formed in November 2012 in Doha, Qatar.
Omid Safi is an Iranian-American professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. He was the Director of Duke Islamic Studies Center from July 2014 to June 2019 and was a columnist for On Being. Safi specializes in Islamic mysticism (Sufism), contemporary Islamic thought and medieval Islamic history. Before joining Duke University, Safi was a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was on faculty at Colgate University as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion from 1999 - 2004.
Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he has been teaching ethics, law, and political thought since 2009. He is considered a leading scholar in the field of Islamic legal studies, and has been described as one of the world's leading authorities on Islamic law.
Richard Foltz is a Canadian historian who specializes in the history of Iranian civilization — sometimes referred to as "Greater Iran". He has also been active in the areas of environmental ethics and animal rights.
Dawat-e-Islami is a Sunni Islamic organization based in Pakistan. It has several Islamic educational institutions around the world.
Ebrahim Moosa is the Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought & Muslim Societies at the University of Notre Dame with appointments in the Department of History and in the Kroc Institute for International Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs. He is co-director of the Contending Modernities program at Notre Dame. He was previously Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies at Duke University. He is considered a leading scholar of contemporary Muslim thought. Moosa has been named as one of the top 500 Influential Muslims in the World.
Bayan Islamic Graduate School is a private, non-sectarian Islamic graduate school based in Orange, California with its campus located in Chicago, Illinois. It offers accredited Master of Arts degrees in four subject areas: Islamic Studies, Islamic Leadership, Islamic Education, and Advanced Islamic Theology as well as a Master of Divinity in Islamic Chaplaincy.
Farid Hafez is an Austrian political scientist and holds the endowed chair of Class of 1955 Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College and senior researcher at Georgetown University's The Bridge Initiative. Before his role at Williams College, he was at the department of political science and sociology at the University of Salzburg.
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, is Professor of Religion Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Angeles. He is one of the founding editors of a book series on Islam of the Global West published by Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. Both he and his books have been quoted and referred to a multitude of times. He has been named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and received a Guggenheim Fellowships Award in the Humanities for his work on the mosque in Islamic history.
Shia Islam in Senegal is practiced small number of Senegalese people, as well as by the Lebanese community in Senegal.
Muhammad Taqi Amīni was an Indian Sunni Islamic scholar, jurist, Urdu author and the dean of Theology faculty of Aligarh Muslim University. He is known for his works on Islamic jurisprudence, and his book Fiqh Islami ka Tareekhi Pas-e-Manzar is a required reading for master's degree in Islamic studies at the Islamic University of Science & Technology.
Heba Raouf Ezzat is an Egyptian academic, writer and activist. She was a visiting lecturer at the American University in Cairo, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science of Cairo University. She is among the prominent Egyptian intellectuals who left Egypt after the 2013 Egyptian coup. Currently Raouf teaches at the Alliance of Civilizations Institute, Ibn Haldun University.
Aly Kassam-Remtulla is a U.S.-based academic, writer and scholar who is Associate Provost for International Affairs and Operations at Princeton University. Previously, he was associated with the MacArthur Foundation.
Al Mahad Al Aali Al Islami, also written as Al Mahadul Aali Al Islami, Hyd, is an Islamic institute located in Hyderabad, Telangana. It was founded in 2000 by Khalid Saifullah Rahmani. The primary goal of its establishment is to train fresh graduates from Islamic universities in various Islamic subjects. It also provides training in modern topics such as Islamic finance, banking, and the stock market.
