Dr. Taha Jabir Alalwani is the President of The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences and occupies the Imam Al-Shafi’i Chair in Islamic Legal Theory as a professor in his specialty field. Particularly interested in the social implications of Islamic law, he is a major participant in the activities of Muslim social scientists, publishing works such as his Ethics of Disagreement, The Rights of the Accused in Islam, and Linking Ethics and Economics: The Role of Ijtihad, in the Regulation and Correction of Capitol Market (a co-authored occasional paper).
Since coming to the United States in 1984, Dr. Alalwani has been a regular contributor to the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences and a keen observer of intellectual trends throughout the Muslim world. Following his early education in the classical Islamic disciplines, Professor Alalwani left his native Iraq and received the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. at Al Azhar University in Cairo.
Included among his works are the monumental edition of Razi’s al-Mahsul fi ‘ilm Usul al-Fiqh, Contemporary Islamic Cultural Undertaking, the Horizons of Change and its Approaches, Crisis in Fiqh and the Methodology of Ijtihad, and Source Methodology in Islamic Jurisprudence. Recent publications include: An Epistemological Perspective on the Political Dimensions to the Concept of Sovereignty, Taqlid and the Stagnation of the Muslim Mind, the Testimony of Women in the Law of Islam, and The Islamization of Knowledge: Yesterday and Today.
