Prominent and erudite scholar, Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa al ‘Azami (damat barakatahum) has spoken recently on the misappropriation of Islamic knowledge and beliefs by Oriental and Christian “scholarship”. Case in point, see my last post on Samuel Green using an Oriental-Colonial era ethnic slur to describe Muslims or James White’s Dividing Line program where he referred to Tafsir ibn Katheer as “one of the earliest commentaries on the Qur’aan“, this coming from two individuals who have written and “studied” extensively about Islam. Shaykh al ‘Azami says:

A leading Islamic scholar, and a winner of the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies, has slammed orientalists in the West for spreading false information about the religion. Muhammad Mustafa Azmi, who specializes in Hadith studies, said: “Their false and misleading works are now called research but have no valid arguments.”

“Nowadays their voices are louder than others; they are read and heard all over the world. All their misleading work is called research and even some groups of educated Muslims are influenced by them,” he said. He urged Islamic teachers to preach righteousness and truth. Azmi is best known for his critical investigation of the theories of orientalists Ignác Goldziher, David Margoliouth and Joseph Schacht and is currently a professor emeritus at King Saud University. “If we had followed the Qur’an and Hadith in our education, the misleading gossip of the enemies of Islam would not have influenced many of us.”

Azmi is the first person to computerize the Hadith in the Arabic language, was an associate professor at Umm Al-Qura university, visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, and visiting fellow at St. Cross College, Oxford. Much of his work has focused on correcting the inadequacies of Western scholarship on Hadith literature, especially highlighting the fact that there was already intense literary activity involving Hadiths during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

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