Taha Jabir Alalwani, Ph.D., President of Cordoba University, occupies the Imam Al-Shafi'i Chair in Islamic Legal Theory at The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, as an internationally-known scholar in his field. Dr. Alalwani shares his mastery of the field of Islamic Legal Theory and considerations related to Muslims in the modern world with his students.

He was the Chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, and the President of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia. He taught Islamic legal theory for more than ten years at various universities in the Muslim world before emigrating to the United States. Particularly interested in the social implications of Islamic law, he is a major participant in the activities of Muslim social scientists, publishing works such as his Ethics of Disagreement and The Rights of the Accused in Islam and a participant in The Association of Muslim Social Scientist conferences and seminars.

Since coming to the United States in 1984, Dr. Alalwani has been a regular contributor to the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences and a keen observer of intellectual trends throughout the Muslim world. Following his early education in the classical Islamic disciplines, Professor Alalwani received the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. in Islamic Legal Theory and Jurisprudence from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Included among his works are the monumental edition of Razi's Al-Mahsul fi 'ilm Usul Al-Fiqh in six volumes, and others: Towards a Fiqh for Minorities: Some Basic Reflections; Reform of Muslim Intellectual Discourse; The Contemporary Islamic Cultural Undertaking; The Horizons of Change and its Approaches; The Islamization of Knowledge: Yesterday and Today; Missing Dimensions in Contemporary Islamic Movements; The Quran and the Sunnah: The Time-Space Factor; Human Rights in Islam; The Position of Islamic Law; Crisis in Fiqh and the Methodology of Ijtihad; and Source Methodology in Islamic Jurisprudence. Recent publications include: An Epistemological Perspective on the Political Dimensions to the Concept of Sovereignty; Taqlid and the Stagnation of the Muslim Mind; The Testimony of Women in the Law of Islam; and The Islamization of Knowledge: Yesterday and Today.

Dr. Alalwani has recently published three books in Arabic: al-Azmah al-Fikriyah wa Manhaj al-Taghyir; al-Tawhid wa al-Tazkiyah wa al-Imran; and al-Khususiyah wa al-Ilamiyah fi al-Fikr al-Islami.

For videotapes of Dr. Alalwani speaking in Arabic about the Quranic sciences, the Hadith sciences, usul al fiqh , fiqh of minorities, the ethics of disagreement in Islam, and Islamic movements, please visit the video section.

To learn more and order Dr. Alalwani’s books, please visit IslamicBookstore.com.

To read Dr. Alalwani’s welcome letter, please visit here.

To read Dr. Alalwani’s statements on the study of Islam, please visit here.