Ovamir Anjum

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Ovamir Anjum is a Pakistani-American academic. He is the Imam Khattab Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy, University of Toledo. [1] He is the editor-in-chief at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and the founder of the Ummatics Institute. He studies the connections between theology, ethics, politics, and law in classical and medieval Islam, with an emphasis on its comparisons with western thought. [2] His related fields of study include Islamic philosophy and Sufism. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

One of the formative influences on me growing up was to be shaken by the burning of Karachi in the ’80s, which began in the name of ethnic discrimination, and I saw the city go to flames. I have hated ethnic riots and demagoguery with a passion since. [3]

Anjum was born in Karachi, Pakistan, into a family of Muhajir background and grew up in the Persian Gulf region before moving to the United States at age 18. [4] He completed a masters in social sciences from the University of Chicago and a masters in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [2] He obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic intellectual history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation, published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press, is entitled Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment. [5]

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

He believes that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is heretical and run by poorly educated imams stating that "their claim of being a caliphate is a joke" and that "If you’re actually learned in the Islamic tradition you would know that these people are heretics. It’s like saying the KKK is Christian." [6]

Work

Books

Translations

Papers

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunni view of Ali</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ali and Islamic sciences</span>

Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, played a pivotal role in the formative early years of Islam. Later, after the death of Muhammad in 632 CE, through his numerous sayings and writings, Ali helped establish a range of Islamic sciences, including Quranic exegesis, theology, jurisprudence, rhetoric, and Arabic grammar. He also trained disciples who later excelled in gnostics, exegesis, theology, and jurisprudence. Numerous traditions, attributed to Ali, elucidate the esoteric teachings of the Quran, the central religious text in Islam. As the first Shia imam, he is also regarded in Shia Islam as the interpreter, par excellence, of the Quran after the death of Muhammad. Ali is considered a reliable and prolific narrator of prophetic traditions, while his own statements and practices are further studied in Shia Islam as the continuation of prophetic teachings. Ali is also viewed as the founder of Islamic theology. Some contributions of Ali to Islamic sciences are highlighted below.

References

  1. "Religious Studies Faculty, Department of Philosophy". University of Toledo. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 "Ovamir Anjum Biography". University of Toledo. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
  3. https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/download/812/140/1011
  4. Ovamir Anjum (21 February 2018). American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 35:1. International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). pp. 66–68. GGKEY:K67P7GX8KKT. ...I was born in Pakistan and grew up in the Gulf before coming to the US at eighteen. My ancestors came from Northern India where they had come, if one is to trust the tradition of family names, from Arab heritage.
  5. Anjum, Ovamir (2012). Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1107014060.
  6. Toledo Blade: "Clerics challenge ISIS’ view of Islam - Local imams denounce terrorism" by Tom Troy November 22, 2015
  7. Anjum, Ovamir. "Is Contagion Real? Giving Context to Prophetic Wisdom". Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  8. Anjum, Ovamir. "Who Wants the Caliphate?". Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. Retrieved 23 December 2020.