Abdallah bin Mahfudh ibn Bayyah (, born 1935) is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar, politician and professor of Islamic studies at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who serves as the chairman of the UAE Council for Fatwa. He is a specialist in all four traditional Sunni schools, with an emphasis on the Maliki Madh'hab. Currently he is the president of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. Bin Bayyah is involved in a number of scholarly councils including the Islamic Fiqh Council, a Saudi-based Institute. He was also the vice-president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. from which he resigned in 2014. He was also a member of the Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research, a council of Muslim clerics that aims to explain Islamic law in a way that is sensitive to the realities of European Muslims. For over two decades, in relation to the latter two institutions, he worked closely with the Egyptian scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi. However, after the Arab Springs, Bin Bayyah distanced himself from Qaradawi and the International Union of Muslim scholars, instead founding the UAE-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The Forum has attracted huge controversy for its close ties to the UAE government as well as Bin Bayyahs personal support for authoritarian leaders.

Early career

Bin Bayyah was born in 1935 in Timbédra in a household with an Islamic environment in which he studied all of the Islamic sciences. He began his formal studies with his father, Mahfoudh; meanwhile, he studied Arabic with Mohammed Salem bin al-Sheen, Quran with Bayyah bin al-Salik al-Misumi. In his youth, he was appointed to study legal judgments in Tunis. On returning to Mauritania, he became minister of education and later minister of justice. He was also appointed a vice president of the first president of Mauritania. He resides in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and teaches Islamic Legal Methodology, Qur'an and Arabic at the King Abdulaziz University. He is fluent in Arabic and French. Hamza Yusuf serves as his translator.

Views

Sufism

Bin Bayyah is a promoter of Sufism. He believes that Tasawwuf (which he defines as the seeking of perfection through the love for and longing towards meeting Allah) needs to be revived in the Islamic Ummah and restored as an Islamic science. He also asserts that various Sufi practices - including the use of dhikr beads, Tawassul (using the righteous as a means to gain Allah’s blessings), Tabarruk (deriving blessings from the relics of the deceased), and visiting the graves of the Awliya - all have a "solid basis in Islam." Bin Bayyah asserts that although Sufis strive to attain Ihsan, the highest level of faith in Islam, it is only attainable once one has mastered the first two levels of faith, Islam (the focus of jurists) and Iman (the focus of theologians). Bin Bayyah states: "That space of overflowing love, light, passion, insight, transparency, transcendence, and spirituality must have some container and some action to exist within and by. Actually, it is the inseparability and interdependence of the body and the soul. There must be a discipline with its own rules and terminology to represent such perfection aspired to by the highly-determined. That discipline took various names such as “sermons”, as used by Al-Bukhari, and “asceticism”, as in early Sunnah. Eventually, it was agreed to be named “Tasawuff”, just as the discipline of the Sharia was to be called Fiqh."

On extremism

Bin Bayyah is one of the signatories of the Amman Message, which gives a broad foundation for defining Muslim orthodoxy. He is also a signatory to the Letter to Baghdadi, an open letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Letter to Baghdadi is a theological refutation of the practices of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In 2014, he issued a fatwa against the extremist terrorist group ISIS and was famously quoted in a later interview on CNN for saying, "I call to life, not to death." In subsequent years, Bin Bayyah has addressed think tanks and similar audiences such as The Council on Foreign Relations.

Prominence

Bin Bayyah was quoted by President Barack Obama during his speech before U.N security council 2014. Since 2009, he has been ranked as The 500 Most Influential Muslims by Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre and currently holds the number 15 spot for 2020.

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Responsibilities and positions

Medals and awards

Prominent students