Testimonials

Statement by Dr. Jeremy Henzell-Thomas:

"I appreciate the work you have done in summarizing some key points from my articles…May Allah guide your Ghazali project - there is such a need for the revival of an authentic concept of Islamic education which connects with the best of other traditions."

Dr. Henzell-Thomas is a curriculum development specialist, formerly Director of Studies at a leading independent school in England. He holds degrees in English and Applied Linguistics, and a Ph.D. in the psychology of learning, and has extensive experience as a teacher at all levels of education in the United Kingdom and overseas. Formerly a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and a supervisor of Ph.D. students in the field of curriculum development and course design, he also has extensive experience in school management and is a registered inspector of independent schools in the UK.

Dr. Ingrid Mattson on the Ghazali Project

"The Ghazali Project is a wonderful way to introduce the profound wisdom and learning of classical Islam to the general Muslim community. These summaries can be used in student study circles, adult education programs in Islamic centers and in Muslim book clubs. I am confident that, once introduced to this enlightened and enlightening literature, many Muslims will want to deepen their knowledge by reading the original texts."

Dr. Mattson is a Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations and Director, Islamic Chaplaincy Program at the Hartford Seminary.

Imam Zaid Shakir on the Ghazali Project

"The summaries currently being made available through the al-Ghazali Project, along with planned future works, provide an excellent opportunity for Muslims to benefit from the wealth of knowledge bequeathed to us by our rich tradition, without spending an excessive amount of time perusing the summarized works in their entirety. This is extremely important in our high-paced society which bombards us with a plethora of information that is becoming increasingly difficult to process. By proceeding directly to the heart of the matter, al-Ghazali summaries both save time and render the information far more easier to process and hence to benefit from.
The al-Ghazali summaries also fill an important void by making these summaries available to beginning students of Arabic and Islamic studies. The student will now be able to understand the gist of the summarized work and can use that summary as a guide to deeper study of the original work. Such an endeavor is long overdue."

Imam Zaid Shakir is amongst the most respected and influential Muslim scholars in the West. He serves as a scholar-in-residence and lecturer at Zaytuna Institute where he teaches regular courses on Arabic, Islamic Law, History, and Islamic Spirituality. He has lectured at many of the Bay Area's top universities, including Stanford and U.C. Berkeley, and is a frequent speaker at local Muslim events. He is widely regarded as an articulate voice on Islam and African-American issues and as a visionary leader in the emergence of an Islamic community and tradition and that is indigenous to America.

Dr. Sulayman Nyang on the Ghazali Project

"This is a noble endeavor because of the great contributions such a luminary has made, and continues to make, in the Muslim understanding of their Din(religion). The project's relevance to Americans and to others in the West rests on three things. First of all, such a project forces American and Western Muslims to use their intellectual torch lights to illuminate many corners of our societies and to resume an aborted dialogue between Muslims and the European Christians in the Middle Ages. Secondly, the project opens new vistas of intellectual encounters between this great mind and contemporary Muslims who are grounded not only in their own Western intellectual tradition but are fully conscious of the need to come up with new syntheses of the contributions of the two traditions. If such an endeavor is successfully carried out, we will once again witness the resumption of another aborted enterprise in Andalusia(Muslim Spain). Thirdly, such a project challenges Western Muslims as well as others living in other lands to recognize the fact that Imam al-Ghazali was a world class scholar who learning could benefit all humankind. His powerful writings raised, and continues to raise, his readers from their slumber and challenges them to confront once again the perennial questions: who are we, where do we come from, where are we going,what are the values and virtues that keep us going, and how can we keep our religion from withering away or being distorted? American and Western Muslims can engage this proof of Islam's power and vitality through what Allah has provided for them. They are presently the beneficiaries of three legacies with respect to Islamic Studies in the West. They could be the custodians and beneficial of the classical Islamic corpus of knowledge and Imam al_Ghazali is surely one of its major contributors. Secondly, they are the inheritors by default of the vast amount of Islamic materials that were collected by orientalists who never thought that history would make practicing Muslims the inheritors and beneficiaries of such treasures.Finally, the American Muslims and their Western counterparts are in a historically challenging position to write their own responses to both the legacies of Imam al-Ghazali and others on the one hand, and to the negative or positive contributions of the large number of orientalists, on the other. Being the unintended beneficiaries of the vast corpus of materials stored in American and other centers of learning,it is critical that such a project be embraced by all Muslims who have a vision of the future and are mindful of their responsibilities to Allah and to humankind."

Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang is professor and chairman of the African Studies Department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and co-principal investigator of Project MAPS. A former deputy ambassador and head of chancery of the Gambia Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Nyang has served as consultant to several national and international agencies and on the boards of the African Studies Association, the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. [1] He has written extensively on Islamic, African and Middle Eastern affairs. He holds a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia