In Islam, sunnah, also spelled sunna, are the traditions and practices of the Islamic prophet Muhammad that constitute a model for Muslims to follow. The sunnah is what all the Muslims of Muhammad's time supposedly saw and followed and passed on to the next generations. According to classical Islamic theories, the sunnah are documented by hadith, and alongside the Quran are the divine revelation (wahy) delivered through Muhammad that make up the primary sources of Islamic law and belief/theology. Differing from Sunni classical Islamic theories are those of Shia Muslims, who hold that Imams interpret the sunnah, and Sufi who hold that Muhammad transmitted the values of sunnah "through a series of Sufi teachers".
The Islamization of Knowledge is a conceptual framework that originates from Islamic philosophy, advocating for the integration of Islamic teachings with modern academic disciplines, such as the social sciences, management sciences, humanities, sciences, engineering, and technology. This model posits that all knowledge and science should be consistent with the principles of Islam, aiming to foster a holistic understanding of the world through an Islamic worldview.
Lois Lamya al-Faruqi was an American scholar and expert on Islamic art and music. She made contributions to the field of ethnomusicology, particularly in the study of Islamic musical culture, and co-authored the work The Cultural Atlas of Islam with her husband, Ismail al-Faruqi.
Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. He wrote or edited more than 50 books Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper called him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
Amina Wadud is an American Muslim theologian. Wadud serves as visiting professor at 4 Consortium for Religious Studies and was also a visiting scholar at Starr King School for the Ministry. Wadud has written extensively on the role of women in Islam.
Contemporary Islamic philosophy revives some of the trends of medieval Islamic philosophy, notably the tension between Mutazilite and Asharite views of ethics in science and law, and the duty of Muslims and role of Islam in the sociology of knowledge and in forming ethical codes and legal codes, especially the fiqh and rules of jihad.
Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, Ph.D. was an Iraqi Islamic scholar. He was a founder and chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America and served as president of Cordoba University in Ashburn, Virginia, United States. He also held the Imam Al-Shafi'i Chair in the Islamic Legal Theory at The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences at Corboda University.
‘Izz al-Dīn ‘Abu Hamīd ‘Abd al-Hamīd bin Hībat-Allah ibn Abi al-Hadīd al Mutazilī al-Mada'ini, also known as Ibn abi'l-Hadid, was a Shafe'i Mutazili scholar and writer during the Middle Ages. He studied under Abu'l-Khayr Musaddiq ibn Shabib al-Wasiti and is best known for his commentary on the Nahj al-Balagha, which he titled Sharh Nahj al-Balagha.
Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia. Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment. Influenced by the work of Talal Asad, she wrote on issues of gender, religious politics, secularism, and Muslim and non-Muslim relations in the Middle East.
Ismaʻīl Rājī al-Fārūqī was a Palestinian-American philosopher known for his contributions to Islamic studies and interfaith dialogue. He spent several years at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and taught at universities in North America, including McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Al-Faruqi was a Professor of Religion at Temple University, where he founded and chaired the Islamic Studies program. He also founded the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Al-Faruqi authored over 100 articles and 25 books, including Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (1967) and Al-Tawhid: Its Implications For Thought And Life (1982).
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.
Abul Wafa Syed Mahmūd Shah al-Qadri al-Hanafi al-Afghani (1893–1975), also known as Abu Wafa Al Afghani, was a Hyderabad-based Afghani Islamic scholar, Hanafi faqih, and researcher.
Emad Shahin is an Egyptian professor of political science. He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, and professor of public policy at The American University in Cairo. His work focuses on Comparative Politics, Democracy and Political Reform in Muslim societies, Islam and Politics, and Political Economy of the Middle East.
Professor Emeritus Dato' Dr. Abdul Hamid Ahmad AbuSulayman was an internationally renowned Islamic scholar, thinker, educationist and author of many books and articles on the subject of Islam and Islamic reform, especially in the fields of thought and education. He was Chairman of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and was the Founding President of the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) between 1989 and 1999.
Jasser Auda is a scholar and distinguished professor of Islamic law, in particular, the study of the higher purposes or maqasid of the Sharia. He is the President of Maqasid Institute Global, which is a think tank registered in the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia and Indonesia, and has educational and research programs in a number of countries.
Abul Fadl Mohsin Ebrahim is a Seychellois scholar of Islamic bioethics and emeritus professor of Islamic Studies in the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He is a Senior Professor and researcher at the Regent Business School in Durban, South Africa and the Academic Research Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
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 political theory at the Alliance of Civilizations Institute, Ibn Haldun University.
Zahira Hafez Abdin, was an Egyptian paediatrician and specialist in rheumatic heart disease, known as the "Mother of Egyptian Medicine." She is also known for her extensive charitable work.
Sa'diyya Shaikh is a South African scholar of Islam and feminist theory. She is a professor of religion at the University of Cape Town. Shaikh studies Sufism in relation to feminism and feminist theory. Shaikh is known for work on gender in Islam and 'Ibn Arabi.
Zainab Alwani is an American activist and Islamic scholar. She is Founding Director and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Howard University School of Divinity.
