Muhammad was the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet, sent to present and confirm the monotheistic teachings preached previously by Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is viewed as the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief.
Deobandi is a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam. It is centered in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, has spread to the United Kingdom, and has a presence in South Africa. The name derives from Deoband, India, where the school Darul Uloom Deoband is situated. The movement was inspired by scholar Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762), and it was founded in 1867 in the wake of the First War of Indian Independence in northern India a decade earlier.
Hossein Nasr is an Iranian professor emeritus of Islamic studies at George Washington University, and an Islamic philosopher. He is the author of scholarly books and articles.
John Westerdale Bowker is an English Anglican priest and pioneering scholar of religious studies. A former Director of Studies and Dean of Chapel at Corpus Christi and Trinity College, Cambridge he is credited with introducing religious studies as a discipline to Cambridge University. He has been a Professor of religious studies at the universities of Cambridge, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and North Carolina State University. He is an Honorary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, a consultant for UNESCO, a BBC broadcaster and author and editor of numerous books.
Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written disapproval came from Christians and Jews as well as from some former Muslims such as Ibn al-Rawandi. Later the Muslim world itself suffered criticism. Western criticism has grown in the 21st century especially after the September 11 attacks and other terrorist incidents. As of 2014, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy and anti-apostasy laws or policies, of which 13 nations, all of which were Muslim majority nations, had the death penalty for apostasy.
Patricia Crone was a Danish-American author, Orientalist, and historian specializing in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam
William Montgomery Watt was a Scottish historian, Orientalist, Anglican priest, and academic. From 1964 to 1979, he was Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Muhammad Abu Zahra (1898–1974) was an Egyptian public intellectual and an influential Hanafi jurist. He occupied a number of positions; he was a lecturer of Islamic law at Al-Azhar University and a professor at Cairo University. He was also a member of the Islamic Research Academy. His works include Abu Hanifa, Malik and al-Shafi'i.
Michael Allan Cook FBA is a British historian and scholar of Islamic history.
Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, or R. A. Nicholson, was an eminent English orientalist, scholar of both Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism and widely regarded as one of the greatest Rumi scholars and translators in the English language.
Roy Parviz Mottahedeh is Gurney Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches courses on the pre-modern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East and is an expert on Iranian culture. Roy Mottahedeh served as the director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies from 1987 to 1990, and as the inaugural director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University from 2005 to 2011.
While the existence of Muhammad is established by contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous historical records, attempts to distinguish between the historical elements and the unhistorical elements of many of the reports of Muhammad have not been very successful. Hence the historicity of Muhammad, aside from his existence, is debated. The earliest Muslim source of information for the life of Muhammad, the Quran, gives very little personal information and its historicity has been questioned. Next in importance is the sīra literature and hadith, which survive in the historical works of writers from the third, and fourth centuries of the Muslim era. There are also a relatively small number of contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous non-Muslim sources, which confirm the existence of Muhammad and are valuable both in themselves and for comparison with Muslim sources.
Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, also known as Akbar Ahmed, is an American-Pakistani academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and is Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow at the University of Cambridge as well as holding teaching positions at Harvard, Princeton, and the U.S. Naval Academy. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam, he received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.
Clinton Bennett is a British-American scholar of religions and participant in interfaith dialogue specialising in the study of Islam and Muslim-non-Muslim encounter. An ordained Baptist minister, he was a missionary in Bangladesh before serving as the second director of interfaith relations at the British Council of Churches in succession to Kenneth Cracknell. Bennett has also taken part in the dialogue activities of the World Council of Churches. A graduate of Manchester, Birmingham and Oxford Universities he has held several academic appointments in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where he now lives. He currently writes for various publications and teaches part-time at the State University of New York at New Paltz and at Marist College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, of the Royal Anthropological Institute and of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion. He has authored books, chapters in books, journal articles and Encyclopedia entries. He can be considered to have made a significant contribution toward developing a Christian appreciation of Islam and of Muhammad. Ahmad Shafaat writes, 'Bennett's approach allows him to treat Islamic traditions and their Muslim interpretations with sensitivity and respect, not often found among Christian writings on Islam.' Bennett became a US citizen during 2012.
Jonathan Andrew Cleveland Brown is an American scholar of Islamic studies. Since 2012, he has been associate professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University.
Jamal Khwaja is a retired Indian philosopher.
Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn Sa’id ibn Muhammad ibn Ali al-Ninowy is a Syrian-born American Islamic scholar, theologian, and medical doctor.
Syed Salman Al Husaini Al Nadwi is a scholar and professor in the Islamic sciences. He is an author of numerous scholarly works in Arabic and Urdu. Salman Hussaini Nadwi is serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Dawah at the Darul-uloom Nadwatul Ulama madrasa in Lucknow. Besides these he is also serving as the chairman of the Dr. Abdul Ali Unani Medical College and Hospital, Chancellor of Darul Uloom Syed Ahmad Shaheed – Katoli, President of Jamiat Shabaab ul Islam. He is also a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, member of the court of Aligarh Muslim University, a member of Rabita Adab Islami Alalami, a member of Islamic Fiqh Academy (India) and a member of many other Islamic organisations. In addition, he is a founding member of numerous medical, IT and engineering colleges in India. Shaykh Salman is also the editor and co-editor of thirteen different periodicals in English, Urdu, Persian and Arabic languages published in India and abroad.
Mohammed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti was a notable Sunni Muslim scholar who was also known as "Shaykh of the Levant". He was killed on 21 March 2013, during the Syrian civil war, reportedly in a bomb explosion, though "many questions about the death" have been raised by videos of the scene.
Sebastian Chang Hwan Kim is Professor of Theology and Public Life and assistant provost for the Korean Studies Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. His research specialized on public theology and Korean Christianity.
