Thinkers, scientists and statesmen converted to Islam
This is a partial list of notable individuals who have embraced Islam. It includes figures from the realms of thought, philosophy, and science, as well as those from the political sphere or those who bridge thought and politics.
When you read their stories, you can’t help but wonder what these individuals have in common and what inspired them to embrace Islam. Is it their intelligence? Their academic achievements? Their vast cultural knowledge? None of these is the primary reason for their guidance. The truth of Islam is simple and straightforward; it doesn’t require a degree from Harvard or Polytechnique to recognize it. So, what is the common thread that brought these brilliant minds together and led them to Islam?
These two qualities are sincerity and humility. When we seek the truth with genuine sincerity, Allah, in His mercy, guides us to it. At that point, we must possess the humility to accept this truth, as Allah does not guide the arrogant. Lawrence Brown, whose story will be shared next, provides a profound conclusion after recounting how he embraced Islam:
Smart enough, hunh? No, I’d be sadly mistaken if I thought I’d figured it out on my own. One lesson I’ve learned is that there are many people smarter than me who haven’t understood the truth about Islam. It’s not a question of intelligence but of enlightenment, for there are people smarter than me who haven’t understood the truth about Islam.
Quran Soura 64 Aya 11 :مَا أَصَابَ مِن مُّصِيبَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ ۗ وَمَن يُؤْمِن بِاللَّهِ يَهْدِ قَلْبَهُ ۚ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌNo disaster strikes except by permission of Allah. And whoever believes in Allah - He will guide his heart. And Allah is Knowing of all things.Quran Soura 42 Aya 13 :۞ شَرَعَ لَكُم مِّنَ الدِّينِ مَا وَصَّىٰ بِهِ نُوحًا وَالَّذِي أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ وَمَا وَصَّيْنَا بِهِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَمُوسَىٰ وَعِيسَىٰ ۖ أَنْ أَقِيمُوا الدِّينَ وَلَا تَتَفَرَّقُوا فِيهِ ۚ كَبُرَ عَلَى الْمُشْرِكِينَ مَا تَدْعُوهُمْ إِلَيْهِ ۚ اللَّهُ يَجْتَبِي إِلَيْهِ مَن يَشَاءُ وَيَهْدِي إِلَيْهِ مَن يُنِيبُHe has ordained for you of religion what He enjoined upon Noah and that which We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus - to establish the religion and not be divided therein. Difficult for those who associate others with Allah is that to which you invite them. Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and guides to Himself whoever turns back [to Him].Quran Soura 24 Aya 46 :لَّقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا آيَاتٍ مُّبَيِّنَاتٍ ۚ وَاللَّهُ يَهْدِي مَن يَشَاءُ إِلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍWe have certainly sent down distinct verses. And Allah guides whom He wills to a straight path.So I thank Allah for choosing to guide me, and I attribute this guidance to a simple formula: acknowledge our Creator, pray to Him and Him alone, and sincerely seek His guidance. And whom He guides, none can lead astray.
Lawrence Brown
René Guénon (1886-1951 ) French philosopher, author, and intellectual
René-Jean-Marie-Joseph Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951), also known as Abd al-Wahid Yahya, was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in metaphysics. His writings on subjects ranging from “sacred science” to symbolism and initiation make him considered an “unclassifiable figure in the intellectual history of the twentieth century.”
Guénon’s meeting with the Swedish thinker and painter John Gustaf Agelii, who embraced Islam in 1897 – he then took the name al-Hâdî – and who was involved in editing an Italo-Arabic magazine called “L’appell,” had a significant influence on his decision to become a Muslim; it should also be noted that, before converting, Guénon had already published numerous articles on the famous Sufi master Muhî al-Dînibn’ ‘Arabî.
Here’s whatImam’ ‘Abd al-Halîm Mahmûd has to say about René Guénon’s conversion to Islam: “The cause of his conversion to Islam was both very simple and very logical; indeed, he wanted to cling to a sacred text purified of all error and falsehood, and after his extensive studies on the subject he found no text corresponding to this criterion except the Noble Quran, which was the only Book that had not undergone alterations and changes, for Allah Himself is the guarantor of its intact preservation. As a result, Guénon clung to the Quran as his guide and began to feel great spiritual peace of mind thanks to the Quran”.
René Guénon thus embraced Islam and became Abdel-Wâhid Yahyâ, initiating the project to build the Great Mosque of Paris shortly before the First World War, as well as the foundation of an Islamic university in France.
Leopold Weiss (1900-1992), Austro-Hungarian journalist, diplomat, and theorist
Born into a line of Galician rabbis, Leopold Weiss began his career as a journalist in Berlin before setting sail for Palestine in 1922. A few years later, he converted to Islam and continued his life in Arabia, then India, where he contributed to the birth of Pakistan under his new name, Muhammad Asad.
Leopold Weiss was born in 1900. By age 13, he had acquired a passing command of Hebrew and Aramaic, in addition to his native German and Polish. By his twenties, he could read and write in English, French, Persian, and Arabic.
On his conversion to Islam, he says: “Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure.”
Assad was one of the most influential European Muslims of the 20th century. His translation of the Quran into English, “The Message of the Quran,” is one of his most remarkable works. In Assad’s words in “The Message of the Quran, “: “The work I now present to the public is based on a lifetime of study and many years spent in Arabia. It is an attempt – perhaps the first – at a truly idiomatic and explanatory Interpretation of the quranic message in a European language.”
Assad couldn’t understand the decadence of Muslims when they held the key to becoming what they once were:
I realized that the only reason for the social and cultural decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that they had gradually ceased to follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam was still there, but it was a body without a soul…
He continues :
I discussed this problem with many thinking Muslims in almost all the countries between the Libyan Desert and the Pamirs, between the Bosphorus and the Arabian Sea. It almost became an obsession which ultimately overshadowed all my other intellectual interests in the world of Islam. The questioning steadily grew in emphasis — until I, a non-Muslim, talked to Muslims as if I were to defend Islam from their negligence and indolence.
The progress was imperceptible to me, until one day — it was in autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan — a young provincial Governor said to me:
“But you are a Muslim, only you don’t know it yourself” .
I was struck by these words and remained silent. But when I came back to Europe once again, in 1926, I saw that the only logical consequence of my attitude was to embrace Islam.
Muhammed Asad : Islam, Our Choice
The Road to Mecca, the Journey of Muhammed Asad in a video :
Robert Dickson Crane (1920-2021) Advisor to President Nixon and Deputy Director of the US Security Council.
Dr. Robert Dickson Crane (b. March 26, 1929) was an advisor to US President Richard Nixon and the US National Security Council’s Deputy Director (for Planning). He is the author or co-author of over a dozen books and over 50 professional articles on comparative legal systems, global strategy, and information management.
In 1962, Crane became one of the four co-founders of the first Washington-based foreign policy think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 1966, he left to become Director of Third World Studies at the first professional futures forecasting center, The Hudson Institute, headed by Herman Kahn.
From the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the start of Richard Nixon’s victorious presidential campaign in 1967, Crane was his principal foreign policy advisor. He was charged with preparing a “reading compendium” of professional articles on key foreign policy issues for Nixon.
He was politically active until 1974 he left the White House and founded his consulting firm. In 1975, he was invited back into the diplomatic corridors. After the US government requested that he advise Bahrain’s Minister of Finance, Crane traveled to the Arabian Peninsula and helped prepare Bahrain’s five-year development plan. It was in Bahrain that he discovered Islam and Muslims.
Thus, Crane, who became a Muslim in 1980, says: “In fact, God has directed me to Islam at age five and then at 21 years old. But I did not know until I met the Bahraini man who told me that others saw things shown to me too and that I was worshipping ‘Allah.’ I have comprehended at age 50″”
IN 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed the first Muslim ambassador, Robert Dickson Crane, to the United Arab Emirates.
A great Lecture by dr Robert Crane :
Samuel Abu Naṣr ibn Abbas (1130-1180), mathematician, astronomer and physician of Jewish origin
Born in Fez to a Rabbi father, Al-Samawʾal ibn Yaḥyā al-Maghribī (Arabic: السموأل بن يحيى المغربي, Hebrew: שמואל בן יחיא המערבי; c. 1130 – circa 1180), commonly known asSamau’all al-Maghribi, is known for his work in polynomial algebra and for his treatise al-Bahirfi’l-jabrr (flamboyant Book of algebra) in which he develops operative techniques on polynomials, extracts square roots, and presents one of the first forms of reasoning by recurrence. He also established the formula for the sum of squares of the first integers:
Al-Samawal was convinced of the truth of Islam and influenced by the biography of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and the conquests of Islam, which he saw as divine victory and support. He discovered that the Torah also referred to the Prophet’s prophecy. He also wrote a famous polemical book in Arabic debating Judaism called Ifḥām al-Yahūd (Confutation of the Jews).
His Book is an essential reference for the 6th century AH – 12th century AD, as he was a contemporary of the greatest Jewish rabbi (Ibn Maimon), who alluded to the Book of Samuel in his letter to the Jews of Yemen. But the Jews ignored his Book and did not respond to it.
In his Book, Al-Samawal proves that the abrogation occurred in the Torah and that it was not composed by the Prophet Musa. Therefore, it must be mentioned in the history of Torah criticism. He also mentions the good news of the seal of the prophets. Some European Christians in the Middle Ages used his Book to respond to the Jews.
Murad Wilfried Hoffmann 1931-2020 , diplomate et intellectuel allemand
Murad Wilfried Hofmann (1931-January 13, 2020) was a German diplomat and author. He studied at Harvard University. Hofmann served in German foreign affairs from 1961 to 1994. He first served in Algeria as a specialist in nuclear defense issues. He was NATO’s Director of Information in Brussels from 1983 to 1987, Ambassador to Algeria from 1987 to 1990, and Ambassador to Morocco from 1990 to 1994.
Hofmann was born a Catholic in Aschaffenburg but converted to Islam in 1980. His conversion was controversial because of his high profile in the German government. He converted to Islam as a result of what he witnessed during the Algerian War of Independence, his penchant for Islamic art, and what he saw as contradictions in Paulist Christian doctrine.
He has written several books on Islam, including :
- Islam as an alternative
- German Muslim newspaper
- Islam in the third millennium: religion in the ascendant
- A trip to Mecca
- Islam is the year two thousand
- The road to Mecca
Many of his books and essays dealt with Islam’s place in the West, particularly in the United States after September 11. He was one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders calling for peace and understanding.
An interview with Dr Hoffman on the rational faith of Islam
Malcolm X – 1925-1965, American human rights activist
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African-American Muslim preacher and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his time as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
Son of Earl Little, a Baptist carpenter-preacher who died in 1931. Malcolm Little was convinced that his father had been killed by militants close to the Ku Klux Klan. He was imprisoned in 1946 for delinquency. While in prison, he discovered the Nation of Islam, a religiopolitical organization advocating Afro-American nationalism, corresponded with its leader, Elijah Muhammad, and converted to Islam
On his release from prison in 1952, Malcolm Little took the nickname Malcolm X because he didn’t know his real name – Little was the name of the master of one of his slave ancestors. He became an activist with the Nation of Islam (called Black Muslims in the press), a sectarian Muslim movement marked by black nationalism and rejection of the white man as exploiter, slaver, and capitalist. Appreciated for his oratorical skills, he soon became the organization’s spokesman. He preached black separatism and advocated the creation of an independent black republic within the United States.
In the 1960s, Malcolm X became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad. The experience of pilgrimage to Mecca changed him completely:
Each of the thousands of pilgrims waiting to leave for Jeddah at the airport was dressed in the same way. King or peasant, no one could tell who you were. Some well-known personalities, who were discreetly pointed out to me, wore the same clothes as me. So dressed, we began to repeat “Labbayka, allahoumma labbayk” “Here I am, Lord, here I a”) at regular intervals. On the plane, we were brothers of all races and colors: black, white, red, yellow, blue-eyed, blond-haired… all together! We all worshipped the same God and had the same respect for each other.
That morning was when I first began to reappraise the “white man.” It was when I first began to perceive that “white man,” as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, “white man” meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been.
Autobiography of malcolm X
After completing the Hajj in Mecca, he later embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement and became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. The Muslim Islamic Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified, and he repeatedly received death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated in New York. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and sentenced to indefinite life imprisonment. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was engineered or aided by leading or additional Nation members or by law enforcement agencies persisted for decades after the shooting.
Joram van Klaveren ( 1979-) was a Dutch politician who decided to embrace Islam when he was writing an anti-Islamic book.
Joram van Klaveren, born January 23, 1979, in Amsterdam, is a Dutch politician. Elected as a representative to the Second Chamber of the States General in the 2010 elections, he was re-elected in the 2012 elections and, from 2014, sat in the Bontes-Van Klaveren (BvK) group with Louis Bontes, having left that of the Party for Freedom (PVV). From March 24, 2011, to June 11, 2014, he was also a member of the Provincial States of Flevoland. He has become notorious for his anti-Muslim comments.
Joram van Klaveren studied religion (Godsdienstwetenschappen/Religie) and philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam. After completing his doctorate, he taught philosophy and social sciences at the ISG Arcus interdenominational secondary school in Lelystad and the Trinitas Gymnasium ecumenical school in Almere.
Van Klaveren was known for his anti-Islam remarks: he spoke of a “Muslim miser.” In October 2018, while writing an anti-Islam book, he ended up embracing Islam and changing the title of his Book. In 2019, in interviews on the occasion of his publication: “The Renegade”, which recounts his search for religion and religiosity, he mentioned that he now accepts Muhammad(ﷺ) as the Prophet and said he had converted to Islam.
In his Book: “Apostate”, Van Klaveren wrote about his testimony of faith:
With the idea in mind that one God Whom Moses and Jesus, amongst others, spoke about is the same as the God that we read about in the Quran, and that Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, without any doubts fits the line of prophets from the Bible, I decided to pronounce the testimony of faith. This took place after an excellent dinner in a cozy, homely setting with a small group of people. After pronouncing the Shahada, it did not rain gold and did not see the stars sparkle more than usual. However, I did notice a certain personal delight and rest
Van Klaveren, Joram (2019). Apostate. Netherlands: Kennishuys. pp. 187–188
His former political leader, Wilders (PVV) Geert Wilders, never expected ex-PVV MP Joram van Klaveren to convert to Islam. “Like a vegetarian going to work in a slaughterhouse, pretty much,” Wilders said of the recent switch by the politician who left the PVV five years ago. “What a story, huh? I actually have no words for that.” Had Van Klaveren still been with the PVV, he would have had to leave immediately, Wilders made clear. Wilders has been critical of the role of Islam in the Netherlands for years.
His former VNL boss, Jan Roos, added that he was equally surprised: “Does this flip surprise me? Yes, totally.”
Video of Joram Van Klaveren explaining why he left the extreme right and embraced Islam
Jeffrey Lang 1954-, American mathematician and author
Lang was born on January 30, 1954, into a very Catholic family in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Although he attended a Catholic school, Jeffrey was an atheist by 18.
One of his pupils gave him a Quran and some books on Islam, and he was quickly won over:
“Painters can make the eyes of a portrait appear to be following you from one place to another, but which author can write a scripture that anticipates your daily vicissitudes?…
Each night, I would formulate questions and objections and somehow discover the answer the next Day. The author seemed to read my ideas and write in the appropriate lines in time for my next reading. I have met myself in its pages…”
In the early 1980s, he converted to Islam. He married a Saudi woman, and Lang pursued a career in mathematics. He received his master’s and doctorate degrees from Purdue University. Lang says mathematics has always fascinated him: “Math is logical. It consists of using facts and figures to find concrete answers.” According to Lang, having a mind that only accepts ideas if they are based on facts makes it difficult to believe in a religion, as most religions ask to be accepted on the basis of faith alone, whereas Islam appeals to man’s ability to reason.
He received his MS and PhD from Purdue University and is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kansas. A mathematician, Jeffrey Lang has also written numerous articles and three best-selling books on Islam in the USA. One of his most important books is Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America.
Video of Jeffrey Lang speaking on the purpose of life :
LAURENCE B. BROWN 1959 – American physician and author
Dr. Laurence B. Brown (1959-) graduated from Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences, Brown University Medical School, and the George Washington University Hospital residency program. He is a retired Air Force officer, medical director, and chief ophthalmologist of a major Middle Eastern ophthalmology center, an ordained interfaith minister, and author of four books on comparative religion.
He has recently discovered a passion for writing reality-based fiction. His action/adventure novel, The Eighth Scroll, became a Kindle bestseller in the categories of church history, religion and spirituality, fiction, Christianity, and religious fiction. Over the past two decades, he has divided his time between America, England, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Brown’s immediate family consists of his wife, three daughter,s and an ever-changing assortment of hamsters and parrots.
A convinced atheist for many years, his daughter was about to die, and the doctors could do nothing. Having lost all hope, he turned instinctively to his Creator, promising to seek the truth if he healed his daughter; his daughter was healed, and he honored his promise:
The next few years I tried to fulfill my side of the bargain, but failed. I studied Judaism and a number of sects of Christianity, but never felt that I had found the truth. Over time I attended a wide variety of Christian churches, spending the longest period of time in Roman Catholic congregation. However, I never embraced Christian faith. I never could, for the simple reason that I could not reconcile the biblical teachings of Jesus with the teachings of the various sects of Christianity. Eventually I just stayed home and read, and during this time I was introduced to the Holy Quran and Martin Lings’ biography of the prophet, Muhammad, entitled, Muhammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources.
During my years of study, I had encountered the Jewish scriptures referencing three prophets to follow Moses. With John the Baptist and Jesus Christ being two, that left one according to the Old Testament, and in the New Testament Jesus Christ himself spoke of a final prophet to follow. Not until I found the Holy Quran teaching the oneness of God, as both Moses and Jesus Christ had taught, did I begin to consider Muhammad as the predicted final prophet, and not until I read the biography of Muhammad did I become convinced. And when I did become convinced, suddenly everything made sense. The continuity in the chain of prophethood and revelation, the One-ness of Almighty God, and the completion of revelation in the Holy Quran suddenly made perfect sense, and it was then that I became Muslim.
LAURENCE B BROWN
Dr brown tells the story of his conversion :
William Henry Quilliam (1856-1932), British lawyer and founder of England’s first mosque
William Henry Quilliam (April 10, 1856 – April 23, 1932), who changed his name to Abdullah Quilliam and later Henri Marcel Leon or Haroun Mustapha Leon, was a 19th-century convert from Christianity to Islam, famous for foundingEngland’s first mosque and Islamic center.
Quilliam converted to Islam in 1887 after visiting Morocco to recover from an illness. Quilliam bought Nos. 8, 11, and 12 Brougham Terrace, Liverpool, following his conversion, thanks to a gift from Nasrullah Khan, Crown Prince of Afghanistan. Brougham Terrace became the Liverpool Muslim Institute, Britain’s first working mosque, opening on Christmas Day 1889.
Quilliam influenced the paths of other converts, including his former Methodist mother, sons, scientists, and intellectuals, and his example led to the conversion of over 150 Englishmen to Islam. Quilliam played an essential role in advancing knowledge of Islam in the UK and won other converts through his literary works and the charitable institutions he founded.
Quilliam also opened a boarding school for boys and a day school for girls, as well as an orphanage, Medina House, for non-Muslim parents who were unable to care for their children and accepted that they be raised as Muslims. In addition, the Institute hosted educational classes covering a wide range of subjects and included a museum and science laboratory.
In 1889, he first published The Faith of Islam, which focused on the Dawahah of Islam and its key principles. Initially, 2,000 copies were published, but a further 3,000 copies were produced in 1890. Quilliam also published The Crescent, a weekly account of Muslims in Britain, and Islamic World, a monthly publication with a worldwide audience.
Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936) Journaliste, romancier Britannique
Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (born Marmaduke William Pickthall; April 7, 1875 – May 19, 1936) was a British Muslim scholar known for his 1930 English translation of the Quran, called The Meaning of the Glorious Quran. His translation of the Quran is one of the best-known and most widely used in the English-speaking world.
Marmaduke William Pickthall was born in Cambridge Terrace, near Regent’s Park, London, on April 7, 1875, the eldest of two sons of the Reverend Charles Grayson Pickthall (1822-1881), his father an Anglican clergyman and rector of Chillesford, a village near Woodbridge, Suffolk.
Pickthall is a novelist esteemed by D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, and E. M. Forster. He is also a journalist, director, politician, and political and religious leader.
He dramatically declared his conversion to Islam after delivering a debate on “Islam and Progress” on November 29, 1917, at the Muslim Literary Society in Notting Hill, west London. Pickthall, who identified himself as a “Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school,” was active as a “natural leader” in several Islamic organizations. He preached Friday sermons both at the Woking mosque and in London. Some of his khutbas (sermons) were subsequently published.
Gary Miller, mathematician and evangelist, author of the Book The Amazing Quran.
Gary Miller is a Canadian mathematician and lecturer on religion. A Christian missionary for 15 years, he was a student of religion and often wrote to church figures from different Christian sects, asking them what they thought of a particular Bible verse or its interpretation and posing complex arguments.
Around 1977, Miller turned his attention to the Quran for the first time, wishing to test it similarly. As he read the Quran, he continued to find it consistent with his beliefs and what he thought was common sense. He concluded that he had already been a Muslim for years without knowing it. He adopted a Muslim name, Abdul-Ahad Omar, although he continued to use his original one.
Ask a thoughtful Christian why he is a Christian, and he will usually reply, “The miracle of the resurrection.” The basis of his belief is that some two thousand years ago, a man died and was raised from the dead. This is his miracle, his “touchstone” because everything else depends on it.
Ask a Muslim: “Well, what’s your miracle? Why are you a Muslim? Where is your miracle?” the Muslim can go and take his miracle off the shelf and hand it to you because his miracle is still with us today. It’s the Quran; it’s his “touchstone”.
He recorded his amazement in the Book: “The Amazing Quran.”
After hosting his own television and radio show in Canada, Miller turned to mathematics. After teaching mathematics in Canada and the US (where he was the entire mathematics department at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon), Miller moved to Saudi Arabia, where he taught mathematics at King Fahd University as well as graduate courses at the women’s College in Dammam.
An old video of Gary Miller answering some questions :
Jonathan AC Brown (1977 ) Doctor of Islamic Studies
Jonathan Andrew Cleveland Brown (b. 1977) is an American scholar of Islamic studies. Since 2012, he has been an Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair in Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University.
Brown was born on August 9, 1977, in Washington, D.C. He was raised Episcopalian (Anglican Church) before converting to Islam in 1997 (1418 AH). Brown is Sunni and follows the Hanbalite school of jurisprudence (madhhab).
In 2000, Brown graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Letters in History from Georgetown University, then studied Arabic for a year at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad at the American University in Cairo, finally completing his PhD in Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago in 2006.
He is the author of several books, including “Slavery and Isla,” “Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy”, “Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World,” “Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, and The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim.” He has also published articles in hadith, Islamic law, Salafism, Sufism, and the Arabic language.
A lecture by Dr. Brown on justice and God’s Law :
Maurice Bucaille(1920-1998), French physician and Egyptologist, author of “The Bible, the Quran, and Science.”
Maurice Bucaille (born July 19, 1920 in Pont-l’Évêque, Calvados – February 17, 1998) was a French physician, Egyptologist and author. In 1973, Bucaille was appointed family physician to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. His patients included members of the family of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Dr. Bucaille is best known for his book “La Bible, le Coran et la Science” (The Bible, the Quran, and Science), in which he discusses some of the scientific miracles of the Quran, as well as some of the historical miracles in comparison with those found in the Bible. In the preamble to his famous Book, Maurice Bucaille states: “The scientific aspects that only the Quran mentions among the sacred books first caused me great amazement. Ididn’tt think it was possible to find so many details on such a wide range of subjects, in perfect accord with modern scientific knowledge, and all this in a book that was written over thirteen centuries ago!”.
Maurice Bucaille also said: “I began by studying the Noble Quran, without any preconceived ideas and with total objectivity, in order to investigate the degree of concordance between the Quranic text and the data of modern science. Before embarking on this study, I knew from translations that the Quran referred to different kinds of natural phenomena, but my knowledge in this field was very limited. However, thanks to my in-depth study of the Arabic text, I was able to draw up a list, and after completing it, I realized that the Quran contained no verses that could be criticized from the point of view of modern science. And so it was with the same objectivity that I studied the Old Testament and the Gospels in the same way: as far as the Old Testament was concerned, I didn’t need to go beyond the first Book, i.e., Genesis, to find problems; indeed, I found their words incompatible with most of the scientific data of our time. As far as the Gospels are concerned, we find that the Gospel of Matthew clearly contradicts the Gospel of Luke, the latter clearly evoking an element perfectly incompatible with modern knowledge concerning the appearance of man on earth”.
Finally, Dr. Maurice Bucaille also said the following: “The first thing that astonishes anyone reading the Quranic text for the first time is the wealth of scientific subjects it deals with, and whereas we find monumental scientific errors in the Torah -today’s Torah – we find none in the Quran; therefore, if the Quran was the work of a man, how could he have reported scientific realities that were completely unknown in his time.”
A lecture By Dr Maurice Bucaille on The Bible, The Quran, and Science :
José Javier Gallego(1955-), Spanish author and thinker
Abu Bakr Gallego, whose original name is José Javier Gallego (Spanish: José Javier Gallego), is a Spanish author and thinker. His works revolve around the denunciation of ideas produced by current Western civilization, such as the myth that European history is the origin of civilization. He also criticizes the mechanism of culture through universities and schools and its distortion of the method of true knowledge.
He shows the impact of Western civilization and fast-paced contemporary life on the distortion of human nature and how it deprives us of happiness, balance, and health. He also discusses the idea of words dying and becoming emptied of meaning and proposes to revive them to redefine them in a new way. Islam is then presented as an alternative model and solution for Western societies.
Born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1955. In his youth, he was raised in the arms of General Franco’s dictatorship, which left an intellectual imprint on his early university years: at the Faculty of Geography and then at the Faculty of History at the University of Zaragoza.
Intellectual and political life under the dictatorship was so poor that he decided to leave his country and go to Paris. There, he studied literature at the Sorbonne and philosophy at Vincennes, where he took classes with philosophers Gilles Deleuze and François Châtelet.
As Paris failed to quench his thirst, he embarked on a series of journeys across Europe and America, where his only luggage was a bag containing a few clothes and a couple of books.
General Jaruzelski’s coup d’état in Poland in 1982 brought him back to Spain, where he settled down and raised a small family. There, he began his career as a language teacher.
As he moved around the world, he oscillated between ideas, philosophies, and religions, especially those of the East, and lived according to many different religious practices. He translated into Spanish most of the works of spiritual guide Eric Tolone.
However, after a long and tedious search, fate led him to learn about and convert to Islam in 1995, and he called himself Abu Bakr. He then moved to Istanbul and lived there, where he published a journal of Islamic thought in Spanish dealing with the criticism of history under the name of Skandati, which he then discontinued. He began writing his Book in English, Before The Sun Is Folded Up, with the help of his Polish wife Bibianna Roszko, who converted to IIslamwith him named Najate.
Video in Spanish of a course given by Abu Bakr Gallego :
Timothy John Winter (1960-) English academic, theologian, and Islamic scholar
Abdal Hakim Murad (born 1960 as Timothy John Winter), is an English academic, theologian and Islamic scholar. His work includes publications on Islamic theology, modernity and Anglo-Muslim relations, he has translated several Islamic texts and has an excellent command ofQuranicc Arabic.
His keen interest in understanding the nature of God and humanity led him on a journey to study the world’s religions. He first explored the religions of “the Far East,” then turned to Judaism in search of something that “finally embraced the world.” Finally, Winter stumbled upon Islam, which at the time was “something you encountered when serving in the colonial office or as a missionary, but otherwise not on the English radar, for better or worse.”
He knew about the faith because of his Arabic class, and when he started studying Islam, “things started to snowball.” Winter says he quickly realized that Islam “ticks the box” that Christianity doesn’t. Islam even made him feel closer to Jesus than when he was a Christian. He became a Muslim in 1979, at 19, while still a student at Cambridge University.
Murad became a Muslim in 1979. He attended Westminster School and graduated with a double first in Arabic from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1983. He then studied at Al Azhar University in Cairo and continued his private studies with individual scholars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
After returning to England, he studied Turkish and Persian at the University of London and Cambridge.
In 2009, Murad helped open the Cambridge Muslim College, an institute designed to train British imams.
Murad also directs the Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe and the Sunna Project, which has published the most scholarly Arabic editions of the significant Sunni hadith collections. He is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust.
Murad is active in translating key Islamic texts into English, including a two-volume translation of the Ihya Ulum al-Din by the Islamic scholar al-Ghazali. His academic publications include numerous articles on Islamic theology and Islamic-Christian relations, as well as two books in Turkish on political theology. His book reviews occasionally appear in the Times Literary Supplement.
He is also the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology and author of Bombing without Moonlight, which was awarded the 2007 King Abdullah I Prize for Islamic Thought. Murad is also a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. In addition, Murad is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter from Islamic scholars to Christian leaders calling for peace and understanding.
A lecture by Timm Winter on Islam and science :
Professor Arthur J Ellison (1920-2000), an engineer, educator, and psychology researcher, was twice president of the Society for Psychical Research.
Abdullah Ellison (born January 15, 1920; died September 6, 2000) or Arthur Ellison (English: Arthur Ellison) was a British electrical engineer and scientist, Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at City University, London, where he held the post from 1972 until his retirement in 1985.
In 1974, the first international conference on electrical machines was held at City University, London. Arthur Ellison was elected the conference’s first president and had the post from 1974 to 1984. His idea was to open up a wide field of communication between professional engineers from all over the world who are working with electrical machines and drives. Ellison was Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at City University, London, and a member of the Board of Directors of the British Abnormal Phenomena Society.
In 1976-79 and 1981-83, he was also president of the Society for Psychical Research, a British non-profit organization founded in 1882 to study paranormal phenomena from a scientific point of view.
Ellison entered Islam in 1985 when he presented a research paper with the participation of Dr Muhammad Yahya Al-Sharafi. Ellison met Al-Sharafi while studying at the same university. Ellison presented the paper on the relationship between death during sleep and states of consciousness studied by paranormal phenomenologists. When Al-Sharafi learned that Ellison was studying psychological states during sleep, he pointed him to the verse :
Alison was amazed by this and went on to study this Quranic reference and came away with the scientific paper with which he attended the conference. At the end of the last session of the conference, Ellison announced his conversion to Islam in front of the conference participants.
Arthur James Ellison (Abdullah Ellison) died on September 6, 2000, at 80.
Video of Arthur J Ellison pronouncing the shahada :
Arnoud Van Doorn ( 1966-) Dutch politician and former Islamophobe
Arnaud van Doorn was born in 1966. In 2008, he helped promote Fitna, a short film produced by Party for Freedom (PVV)Quranic Geert Wilders, which portrays Islam as a vector of violence and terrorism.
He was a municipal councilor in The Hague (Netherlands) under the colors of the PVV, a far-right Dutch political organization, until December 2011, when he became an independent. He converted to Islam in 2013. In April of the same year, he visited Mecca and the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. According to his own statements, the PVV’s anti-Muslim rhetoric led him to learn more about the Muslim religion.
“I want to correct the mistakes I made in the past. I want to use my talents and skills positively by re-establishing the truth about Islam and spreading its true message. I’m currently trying to make a feature-length film retracing the exceptional journey of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), with the financial support of the Canadian company Dawahah”, declared the former PVV MP, who has not given up on pPVV’scs for all that,
Arnoud’s conversion was followed by that of his son, who an “ear later declared: “I noticed that my father was considerably calmer after his conversion to Islam. It was then that I realized that there was something good about this religion, and my perception of Muslims was forever changed. I began to study the Holy Quran, and as I immersed myself in the Islamic precepts and their richness, my belief intensified, and I decided to deepen my knowledge and follow a high-level Islamic education, Iskander Van Doorn explained to the Dubai media before Arnoud’s embracing Islam along with 37 other people, on a blessed day that ma “ked a decisive turning point in his young life.
Arnoud’s conversion story in the video :
Torquato Cardilli ( 1942- ): an Italian politician and ambassador
Torquato Cardilli (born November 24, 1942) in L’Aquila, Italy. Cardilli graduated in Oriental Culture and Languages and Political Science from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples. He was first appointed to the Political office of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1967.
In 1964, while studying Arabic in Jerusalem, he converted to Islam. However, this only became public during his tenure as ambassador of Arnoud’s Arabia, when the Saudi media initially falsely reported that Cardilli had converted in Saudi Arabia.
Ancien Nazi Johann von Leers( 1902-1965)
Johann von L’Aquil alias Omar Amin was born January 25, 1902, in Vietlübbe, Germany, and died March 5, 1965, in Cairo, Egypt. A member of the National Socialist Party and the SS, he was a representative of the NSDAP’s “left-wing” and a particularly virulent anti-Semite.
After the Second World War, he went into exile in Argentina and then Egypt, where he worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Information. Since his youth, he had been fascinated by Islam and was a personal friend of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. In 1957, he converted to Islam and took the name Omar Amin.
Mohammed Knut Johan Richard Bernström (1919-2009) Swedish politician and ambassador
Mohammed Knut Johan Richard Bernström (October 22, 1919 – October 21, 2009) was a former Swedish diplomat who converted to Islam. He was also a Muslim scholar and translator of the Quran.
As a diplomat, he worked in Spain, France, the Soviet Union, the USA, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Morocco. He was Swedish ambassador to Venezuela from 1963 to 1969, Spain from 1973 to 1976, and Morocco from 1976 to 1983.
On his initiative, he entered boarding school in 1983, converted to Islam in 1986, and took the name Mohammed.
Keith Ellison( 1963-) American politician
Keith Ellison, born August 4, 1963, in Detroit, Michigan, is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party. He converted to Islam at the age of 17.
Ellison was elected to the US House of Representatives in November 2006 from Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District after serving as a member between 2003 and 2007. He is the first elected member of the US Congress to identify with Islam. In January 2019, he became the state attorney general.
Arthur Wagner, German politician and member of the Islamophobic AFD party
Arthur Wagner, a prominent member of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right German political party whose slogan is “Islam has no place in Germany,” recently resigned after converting to Islam.
Created initially as an anti-euro party, the AfD has recently been campaigning on an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim platform, sharply criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow over a million refugees into Germany since 2015.
Arthur Wagner sat on the party’s executive committee in the state of Brandenburg, accused Merkel of “making a big mistake” by allowing so many Muslim refugees into the country, and warned that “Germany is becoming another county”. On the following year, he left the party, citing personal reasons, but it was later revealed that he had converted to Islam
Lauren Booth, British journalist and activist (1967-)
Sarah Jane Booth was born and raised in London. Booth is a half-sister to Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the sixth daughter of actor Tony Booth. She trained as an actress at the London Academy of Performing Arts and spent several years touring Europe with various regional theater companies.
In 2010, Boot” converted to Islam a few years after she visited Palestine and became a practicing Muslim.” Booth, wearing a hijab, appeared at the Islam Channel’s Global Peace and Unity event on October 23, 2010, declaring, “My name is Lauren Booth, and I am a Muslim.” She attributed her awakening to her experiences in Palestine as a journalist.
