Khaleel Mohammed (1955 – January 2022 ) was a Guyanese-born professor of Religion at San Diego State University (SDSU), in San Diego, California, a member of Homeland Security Master's Program, and, as of January 2021, Director of SDSU's Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies.

Biography

Khaleel Mohammed was born in Guyana. He was a Muslim, and studied Islamic law at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After completing an MA in Judaism and Islam at Concordia University, Montreal, he obtained a PhD in Islamic law at McGill University in Montreal. He then moved to Brandeis University where he completed a two year Kraft-Hiatt postdoctoral fellowship on the subject of the imagery of the Jew in Hadith literature.

Academic career

Mohammed's specialties were Islam, Islamic Law, and Comparative Religion. His research interests included Islamic and Arabic studies, Islamic law (classical and modern), comparative religion, Jewish/Christian/Islamic encounter, Qur'anic exegesis (classical and modern), hadith, gender/sex issues and sexuality in Islam, terrorism, antisemitism in Islam, Arab-Israeli relations, and reform in Islam. He was a proponent of inter-faith marriage (between Muslim women and non-Muslim men) without the traditionally required conversion of the non-Muslim spouse, and was a registered marriage-officiant. Mohammed taught courses on World Religions, The Qur'an, Religious Violence and Non-Violence, Sex and Gender in Islam, and Abrahamic Religions.courses khaleel mohammed Mohammed has testified as an "expert witness" for the prosecution in cases involving allegations of terrorism-related activities.

Controversies

Khaleel Mohammed has stated that in some cases foreign-born Imams "are a threat to Canada" and that "They come from Bangladesh, South Africa, Guyana, Egypt and Syria etc. and they bring their cultural baggage with them." He has also suggested that the fact that immigrants native languages are used in Canadian mosques is a problem and that "They (Canadian imams) have to speak English...All mosques I've been to -- give or take five per cent -- have been using an overwhelming amount of Arabic". Mohammed has been both praised and lambasted by far right and Zionist publications such as Campus Watch. He has appeared in Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West a film widely criticized as Islamophobic and produced by the anti-Muslim Clarion Project. He stated that he was once accused of being racist, for having stated that "95% of contemporary Muslims are exposed to anti-Semitic teachings". He has received hate mail for his statements.

Teachings on Israel

Mohammed attracted attention for a 2004 interview in which he stated that Qur'an 5:21, and the medieval exegetes of the Qur'an, say that Israel belongs to the Jews. He translates it thus: Mohammed said of Israel, "It's in the Muslim consciousness that the land first belonged to the Jews. It doesn't matter if the Jews were exiled 500 years or 2000 years, the Holy Land, as mentioned in Quran belongs to Moses and his people, the Jews." He stated that the issues about the land of Israel ought not to be settled via references to scripture, but rather by the use of human rights legislation.

Death

Mohammed died at the age of sixty-six in January 2022. No cause of death was announced.

Published works

"Islam and Violence," Cambridge University Press, 2019. "David in the Muslim Tradition: A study of the Bathsheba Affair" Lexington Press, 2014. "Introduction to World Religions," Polymath Learning, 2014. "Coming to Terms with the Qur'an," IPI, 2008. Co-edited with Andrew Rippin

Translations

Book reviews and encyclopedia entries

Audio/Video