Abdallah bin Bayyah


Abdallah bin Mahfudh ibn Bayyah is a Mauritanian politician and professor of Islamic studies at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
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 , a Saudi-based Institute, he was also the Vice-President of 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 at explaining 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.

Early career

Bin Bayyah was born 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

Democracy

Bin Bayyah views democracy and limiting the power of the executive with hostility. He argues that calling for democracy in the Middle East would result in terrorism, and would constitute "a declaration of war."

Islamic Law

Bin Bayyah is a scholar of uṣūl al-fiqh and has competency in all four Sunni juridical schools; he is widely seen as an eminently learned voice of moderation and peace.

Sufism

Bin Bayyah is a promoter of Tasawwuf. He believes that Tasawwuf 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, Tabarruk, 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 and Iman.
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 “Sufism”, just as the discipline of Shar`i rulings was 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.

Other

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

Publications