14. August 2017

The question of how the law becomes known has occupied the minds of Muslim scholars for a long time. In the early centuries, the heated debates, and at times even hostilities, centered around the place and role of ethical principles and reason in the development of the religious tradition. Numerous reports in the Islamic tradition described the very mission of the Prophet Muhammad as part and parcel of an ethical project—a project that builds upon and develops people’s natural ethical...

05. June 2017

Asalaamu Aleikum Dr. El Fadl: My name is [Name Withheld for Privacy] and I would like to begin this email by saying Jazaka Allahu Khairan; I recently became aware of you and some of the works you've published. I've read excerpts from "Conference of the Books," particularly the chapter regarding dogs in Islam. I want to say that the information you provided in that chapter was honestly a God-send. I felt conflicted for so long because on one hand I was being told by the community and people I...

15. March 2017

Salaam 'alaykum Professor Abou El Fadl, Hope all is well with you and familly. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to seek your help regarding Islamic law on leverage, and the use of it in trading financial instruments, particularly in commodity and currency markets at retail level. Frankly, I've been feeling helpless for a very long time, as someone who's striving to be a practicing Muslim consistently. I used to work in a Foreign Currency & Futures brokerage firm and have...

30. January 2017

Dear Dr. Abou El Fadl, First I'd like to thank you for your efforts and thoughts, which I very much appreciate. I wanted to reach out to you however for a personal Enquiry or rather a spiritual crisis as you once called it. I have seen your fatwa on Hijab, thinking it will relieve my struggle but I'm still unsure of which way to go. I have been wearing the headscarf for 24 years (since I was 16) out of strong urge by sheikhs and the belief that it is mandatory, and the strong fear that I'd be...

01. October 2016

Respected Sir, I am a christian by birth from India. Sir, I wanted to know about what can I call myself, I started learning about Islam in 2010 and found plenty of things correct to my heart and so I started following it from heart, while learning about it in one of the site it was said that if u read the kalma from heart you are a muslim from that time onwards and I did read it with accepting the meaning. As I was reading quran an english version I found plenty of it resembling bible which...

09. December 2008

Chapter 9: Islamic authority By Khaled Abou El Fadl In formulating Islamic law, it has become common in the modern age to use the authority of the Author (God) to justify the despotism of the reader. In effect, by claiming that the only relevant consideration is the Will of the Author, the reader is able to displace the Author and set himself as the sole voice of authority: the reader becomes God, as it were. The replacement of God’s authority with that of the reader is an act of despotism...

01. January 2006

This Conference was founded on the beauty of the Book, and our Civilization was the civilization of books. Our way to God is guided by the Book, and we found our worth only in books. Our God manifested through the Book, and our identity was defined by books. So how can we become the corrupters of the Book and the betrayers of books? What type of arrogance permits a people to name themselves God’s soldiers and then usurp His authority? What type of arrogance empowers a people to inject their...

01. January 2006

By Khaled Abou El Fadl Prophet of God, Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon you. Peace and blessings from the heart of this pitiful delinquent, and if you turn me away, I have no grounds to complain. I know that I am a man who is frivolous, malevolent, and trivial; I deem myself entirely contemptible. So if you ignore me, I understand; in fact, perhaps that is exactly what you should do. Yet, you never turned a single soul away especially when this soul, with your love, is entirely at...

01. January 2006

Can we trace the footsteps of the beloved when the beloved has walked away? Can we find the scent, the fragrance, the redolence of his trace? Can we seek the fragments of memory, the smiles, the laughs, and the kind gestures? Can we locate the beauty over fourteen hundred years too late? I agonize over these questions, struggle with the promises, and I refuse to despair. I agonize over the questions, and so I run to the Conference—I run to the books. I run to the papers and the ink. I run to...

01. July 2005

By Khaled Abou El Fadl In answer to the question: “Is there a distinctly Islamic view of human rights, and if so, is it compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?” one must begin by making some important distinctions in this discourse, which relate to identifying something one can refer to as belonging to “Islam” or the Islamic tradition. When one talks about the human rights tradition in the West, one can identify the Catholic and Protestant progression in discourses on...