Nominations for The Muslim 500, 2024 edition are Now CLOSED

Sheikh Usama Al-Sayed Al-Azhari is an Azhari scholar, preacher, an academic and a Senior Fellow of Kalam Research & Media. He teaches Hadith, Logic, and Islamic Creed at the renowned Al-Azhar Mosque’s Riwaq Al-Atrak in Cairo, Egypt. He also holds a teaching post in the Faculty of Usul Al-Din and Da`wah at Al-Azhar University, Egypt.

Scholar: Sheikh Usama was chosen by the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, to deliver the Friday sermons on his behalf in the Sultan Hassan Mosque. He has studied with many esteemed schol­ars from all over the Islamic world, acquiring nu­merous authorisations (ijazaat), all testifying to his accepted position in the unbroken chains of trans­mission known as isnad, essential in the field of Islam­ic sciences and scholarship.

Peace Activist: He is considered to be one of the most influential voices calling for and working to­wards reaching new understandings founded on the Islamic tradition and in ways that accommodate the contemporary condition. In this regard, he has pre­sented a number of original and fresh ideas attempt­ing to renew authentic Islamic outlooks, through his publishing and scholarly contributions. Some of the ideas include creating a relational map of shari’ah sciences and their relationship with other circles of sciences, creating “Islamic hermeneutics”, reviving the tradition of auditing religious sciences and transmit­ting them through a chain of transmission as a criteri­on of authenticity, and the Qur’anic accommodation of different civilisations, amongst others.