Understanding the Four Madhhabs: The Facts about Ijtihad and Taqlid [Abdal Hakim Murad]

Understanding the Four Madhabs

by Abdal Hakim Murad (AKA Tim Winter)

Paperback Booklet of 30 Pages
Muslim Academic Trust, Cambridge (MAT) UK

Why four schools of thought? Is it necessary to follow one? Discussion on these and other questions. A great book for those confused about this subject.

Because of the traditional pious fear of distorting the Law of Islam, the overwhelming majority of the great scholars of the past - certainly well over ninety-nine percent of them - have adhered loyally to a madhhab. It is true that in the troubled fourteenth century a handful of dissenters appeared, but even these individuals never recommended that semi-educated Muslims should attempt ijtihad without expert help.

About the Author:
Timothy J  Winter AKA Abdal Hakim Murad graduated from Cambridge University with a double-first in Arabic in 1983. He then studied  Islam under traditional teachers at Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world. He went on to reside in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and other ulama from Hadramaut, Yemen.

In 1989, Tim Winter (Abdal Hakim being his Muslim Name ) returned to England and spent two years at the University of London learning Turkish and Farsi . Also a  University Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, England, and Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College. 
His research work focuses on Muslim-Christian relations, Islamic ethics and the study of the Orthodox Muslim response to extremism.

Sheikh Abdal Hakim is the translator of a number of works, including two volumes from Imam al-Ghazali Ihya Ulum al-Din. He gives durus and halaqas from time to time and taught the works of Imam al-Ghazali at the Winter 1995 Deen Intensive Program in New Haven, CT. He appears frequently on BBC Radio and writes occasionally for a number of publications including The Independent and Q-News International, Britain's premier Muslim Magazine.

To many others, he is an English Middle Class Academic and to many he is Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad a religious scholar of eminence. Eminence in the Islamic community. Both of these people reside in the one body, Tim Winter, welcome to the program.