SHARIAsource

Mohammad Abderrazzaq

Mohammad Abderrazzaq is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, where he is working on a book project, tentatively titled The Higher Objectives of Islamic Law: The Development of Maqāṣid Thought from al-Shāṭibī to Ibn ʿĀshūr and the Contemporary Maqāṣid Movement. As an Editor with SHARIAsource, Mohammad’s focus will include maqāṣid thought, legal material pertaining to Muslim-non-Muslim relations/encounters, and early American and European thought on Islamic law. In addition to his work on Islamic law, Mohammad’s teaching and research areas include Islamic Intellectual History, Modern Middle East History, and Islam in America. He has contributed a number of articles to various Oxford University Press projects.

 Mohammad received his PhD (2017) in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation was a study of maqāṣid juridical theory that intersects premodern and modern Islamic intellectual history. It examines three areas of inquiry to better understand the development of maqāṣid thought from Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Shāṭibī (d. 790/1388), the distinguished ‘father’ of maqāṣid theory, to Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1973), its modern-day reviver. More concretely, his dissertation examines: (1) the purported marginalization of al-Shāṭibī’s maqāṣid theory for some five centuries; (2) the reemergence of al-Shāṭibī’s maqāṣid theory in the modern era; and lastly, (3) the vicissitudes of the theory today.