Khaled Abou El Fadl - Background

Background

Among his honors and distinctions, Abou El Fadl was awarded the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, the Leo and Lisl Eitinger Prize in 2007, and named a Carnegie Scholar in Islamic Law in 2005. He was previously appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, and also served as a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch. He continues to serve on the Advisory Board of Middle East Watch (part of Human Rights Watch) and regularly works with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (Human Rights First) as an expert in a wide variety of cases involving human rights, terrorism, political asylum, and international and commercial law. In 2005, he was also listed as one of LawDragon’s Top 500 Lawyers in the Nation. He has been listed in the Arabian Business Power 500 List of the World's Most Influential Arabs (2011, 2012).

Abou El Fadl is the author of numerous books and articles on topics in Islam and Islamic law. He has lectured on and taught Islamic law in the United States and Europe in academic and non-academic environments for over twenty years. His work has been translated into several languages including Arabic, Persian, French, Norwegian, Dutch, Russian, Vietnamese and Japanese.

Abou El Fadl is noted for his scholarly approach to Islam from a moral point of view. He writes on universal themes of humanity, morality, human rights, justice, and mercy, and is known for his writings on beauty as a core moral value of Islam. He is a critic of puritan and Wahhabi Islam. Abou El Fadl has appeared on national and international television and radio, and published in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Review.

He is the founding Advisory Board Member of the UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law (JINEL), and an Editorial Board Member for Political Theology, the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of Islamic Law and Society, the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, and Hawa: Journal of Women of Middle East and the Islamic World. He also serves as an Advisory Board member for the University of Adelaide Research Unit for the Study of Society, Law and Religion (RUSSLR) in Australia; the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Islam Initiative Publications Project; the Harvard Press Series on Islamic Law; and the Journal of Islamic Studies (Islamabad).

His recent works focus on authority, human rights, democracy and beauty in Islam and Islamic law. His book, The Great Theft, delineated key differences between moderate and extremist Muslims, and was named one of the Top 100 Books of the year by Canada’s Globe and Mail. His book, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books, is an important work in modern Muslim literature.

Abou El Fadl holds a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Islamic law from Princeton University. Abou El Fadl is also an Islamic jurist and scholar, having received 13 years of systematic instruction in Islamic jurisprudence, grammar and eloquence in Egypt and Kuwait. After law school, he clerked for Arizona Supreme Court Justice James Moeller, and practiced immigration and investment law in the U.S. and the Middle East. He previously taught Islamic law at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, Yale Law School and Princeton University.

Abou El Fadl is a critic of terrorism and the puritanical Wahhabi understanding of Islam that is promoted by an influential party of Muslim religious authorities in Saudi Arabia and other countries, including the U.S. and Europe. He condemns religious fanaticism and supports religious and cultural pluralism, democratic values and women’s rights.