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...

01. July 2017

Salam sir, I need your advice Islamically. I am a breastfeeding mum and my baby is still small. I just discovered today that I am pregnant and it is 2 weeks or less than, my body is not ready. So please is abortion permissible this stage. Waiting for your response sir. *********************** Al-salamu alaykum, I pray that Allah gives you and your family strength, endurance, serenity and faith. I have addressed the issue of abortion extensively in a number of prior fatwa's. Please carefully...

19. June 2017

Free Download in 4 Parts. Dr. Abou El Fadl presents the lives of Muslim women jurists, as documented from the original Arabic texts, and discusses what the facts of their lives reveal about their position as women, jurists and teachers in Islamic history. Link to Listen/Download on Hightail.com

15. March 2017

As salam mo alaikum, I am 28 years old female. I am happily married since 2015 AL HAM DULILLAH. I had a baby boy in 2016. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with large vsd (hole in heart). He was discharged after 19 days. He was then again admitted in hospital for his surgery. After a week he was given to me for a night and then again taken away from me. He was on ventilator till he died. He was my first child and i did nothing but all the possible efforts to keep him safe and healthy. My...

01. November 2014

By Khaled Abou El Fadl Years ago, purely out of curiosity, I bought a group of cassettes that would change my life. Normally, whatever money I had, or even did not have, was spent on books. My whole childhood could be summed up by an endless quest for books, and the never-ending chase for money that could be spent on books. For reasons that never became clear to me, this one time I managed to save some money but did not feel like buying more books, and instead, on an impulse bought a set of...

01. June 2006

This Conference resonates with visions of the subtle and sublime; it permeates the world with echoes of The Divine. Centuries of discourse coalesce upon a moment to ponder a single emotion in time. The records of existence are re-opened and examined as the ideas migrate and rebound. It is not what we know, but what we could know that guides us; aren't the possibilities limitless when exploring the Divine? We search for God in the permutations of the rejuvenating text, in the enticements of...

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

The Conference of the Books consoles our reality with a dream. The dream is complex and rich but serene. It is the serenity of faith directed by the intellect and disciplined by morality. In this dream, the human soul and mind are uplifted by the Divine. The Divine affirms the innate worth of the human being. A dream might exist at the edge of reality, yet it remains only a dream. By its very nature, a dream urges, teases, and provokes reality, but a dream is not real. Early in the morning...

01. January 2006

By Khaled Abou El Fadl The knowledge that is God makes all else tentative. The certainty that is God reduces all else to conjecture. The more one learns the more one asks, and the more one asks the more one discovers the Divine. In this Conference the only absolute is God; all else searches for the absolute. If one claims knowledge, humility before The All-Knowing makes the heart shudder. In this Conference, arrogance is the only ignorance and temporal knowledge is but a question. It is...

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...