LibForAll Foundation - About Us

The International Institute of Qur'anic Studies was established in March of 2008 by H. E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, Dr. A. Syafii Maarif, Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, and C. Holland Taylor, in order to "lay the foundation for a global renaissance of Islamic pluralism, tolerance and critical thinking."

Since its inception, the IIQS has attracted a world-class board of advisors consisting of top Qur'anic scholars from the Middle East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Key advisors include: Dr. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Chairman of the government of Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology; Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, noted Iranian authority on Islamic law and women's rights; Dr. Ali Mabrook, Professor of Islamic Philosophy at Cairo University; Slaheddin Jourchi, noted Tunisian human rights activist; Dr. Hmida Ennaifer, prominent Tunisian intellectual and activist; Dr. Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, one of the world's most important contemporary Shia clerics, and a highly influential Iranian philosopher, theologian, author and professor at Tehran University; and Dr. Abdulkarim Soroush, prominent Iranian thinker, philosopher and reformer, named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time Magazine in 2005, and the world’s seventh most influential intellectual by Prospect magazine in 2008.

In Memoriam

H.E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid (1940 - 2009)

The first democratically-elected president of Indonesia and long-time head of the world's largest Muslim organization (the 40 million member Nahdlatul Ulama), H.E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid was "the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world" (Wall Street Journal) and "the world’s pre-eminent Islamic humanist" (Far Eastern Economic Review).

Abdurrahman Wahid's progressive mindset and immense spiritual authority were instrumental in safeguarding Indonesia's traditions of religious pluralism and tolerance in the midst of intense political and social upheaval, and Wahhabi-inspired attempts to radicalize Indonesian Islam. Custodian of one of the world's great religious traditions, President Wahid was renowned for his protection of ethnic and religious minorities—for which he was given the 2003 Friends of the United Nations Global Tolerance Award, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Medal of Valor in 2008.

President Wahid regarded the IIQS as a key component of his legacy—established to help Muslims "embrace the universal and cosmopolitan principles that characterized Islamic civilization at its height, while adapting peacefully to the modern world."

"In its original Qur’anic sense, the word shari’a refers to "the way," the path to God, and not to formally codified Islamic law, which only emerged in the centuries following Muhammad’s death. However, the historical development and use of the term shari’a to refer to Islamic law often leads those unfamiliar with this history to conflate man-made law with its revelatory inspiration, and to thereby elevate the products of human understanding—which are necessarily conditioned by space and time—to the status of Divine.

"Shari’a, properly understood, expresses and embodies perennial values. Islamic law, on the other hand, is the product of ijtihad (interpretation) which depends on circumstances (al-hukm yadur ma‘a al-‘illah wujudan wa ‘adaman) and needs to be continuously reviewed in accordance with ever-changing circumstances, to prevent Islamic law from becoming out of date, rigid and non-correlative – not only with Muslims’ contemporary lives and conditions, but also with the underlying perennial values of shari’a itself...

"Sanctions against freedom of religious inquiry and expression act to halt the developmental process of religious understanding dead in its tracks – conflating the sanctioning authority’s current, limited grasp of the truth with ultimate Truth itself, and thereby transforming religion from a path to the Divine into a “divinized” goal, whose features and confines are generally dictated by those with an all-too-human agenda of earthly power and control."

~ H. E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, God Needs No Defense

Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd was a world-renowned Egyptian scholar and pioneer in the field of Qur'anic hermeneutics, famous for his project to create a humanistic and contextualized understanding of the Qur'anic revelation, consistent with the great spiritual and intellectual traditions of Islam. His goal, and that of the IIQS, was to enable Muslims to build a bridge between their own tradition and the modern world of freedom, equality, human rights, democracy and globalization.

Dr. Abu-Zayd was widely regarded as a reformist hero for his courage in opposing Islamist attempts to stifle freedom of speech in his native Egypt. The object of death threats issued by Ayman al-Zawahiri (Osama bin Laden’s lieutenant), he fled to the Netherlands, where he occupied the Ibn Rushd Chair of Humanism and Islam at the University of Humanistics in Utrecht, while supervising MA and PhD students at the University of Leiden, prior to joining LibForAll to establish the IIQS.

Dr. Abu-Zayd authored 14 books and scores of articles in his native Arabic. His writings have been widely translated into Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Persian and Turkish and other languages.

Dr. Ahmad Syafii Maarif

Dr. Ahmad Syafii Maarif, a 2008 recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award (often considered Asia's Nobel Prize) in the category of Peace and International Understanding, is the immediate past Chairman (1998-2005) of the Muhammadiyah – the world’s second largest Muslim organization. Under his leadership, the 30-million member Muhammadiyah demonstrated a strong commitment to a pluralistic, tolerant and peaceful understanding of Islam, and to the nation of Indonesia. A prolific author and speaker, he is also the founder and chairman of the Maarif Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental institution promoting the values of Islam, humanity, and Indonesian culture.

As the citation for Dr. Maarif's Magsaysay Award aptly states:

"In Islam, authority rests in knowledge. In times of crisis and for guidance in day-to-day life, Muslims turn to scholars. It is their role to apply the truth of the Holy Qur'an and the lessons of the Prophet Muhammad to human life in matters large and small. Yet, Islam's religious scholars – who these days may be teachers or preachers or public intellectuals, and are often all three – do not always see eye-to-eye. Their debates over the centuries have produced the heterogeneous world of Islam today, with its various sects and schools of law. In such debates, the authority of individual thinkers weighs heavily. And in countries like Indonesia, with vast Muslim majorities, intellectuals such as Ahmad Syafii Maarif can influence millions and shape the character of national life.

"Through his family and early schooling, Dr. Maarif was exposed to the teachings of reform Islam as espoused by Muhammadiyah, one of two mass organizations that dominate Muslim life in Indonesia. After university, he shifted naturally into teaching and later earned his doctorate in Islamic thought at the University of Chicago under the eminent scholar of Islam, Fazlur Rahman. By the 1980s, he was an intellectual of serious reputation and a rising leader in Muhammadiyah.

"The downfall of Suharto's thirty-year-long dictatorship in 1998 brought a new era of openness, reform, and democratizaton to Indonesia but also tumultuous sectarian conflict. It was at exactly this time that Syafii Maarif assumed leadership of Muhammadiyah and its thirty million members and sympathizers.

"Syafii Maarif embraced his country's fresh hopes for democracy and good governance and, in the stormy seas ahead, became a force for calm and moderation. When violence erupted between Indonesian Muslims and Christians, he reminded Muslims that Islam teaches the equality of all people; he took the lead in interfaith dialogues and warned against provocateurs who fanned fear and hate. When activists revived the call for an Islamic state and pressed urgently for implementation of the Shari'a, he opposed them; the nonsectarian principles of Panca Sila, he said, were the right ones for Indonesia's plural society. And when the impact of 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq reached Indonesia, and when terrorism struck home in Bali and Jakarta, he stressed that "Terrorism is not the authentic face of Islam." In concert with other moderate leaders, he denounced it as a "crime against humanity." He said much the same about the new American wars but urged Indonesian Muslims to reject spurious calls to Holy War and to make their protests peacefully. He did so himself.

"As Muhammadiyah's president, Syafii Maarif spurned the trappings of power and resisted the call to politics. Today, at seventy-three and retired, he relishes his role as an independent thinker and mentor to the young. We must learn to look beyond our individual nations, he says, and see the world from a global perspective – "from a human perspective and from a justice perspective." Indeed, justice is the key to "global wisdom." Without it, he says, "I think the world will go astray forever."

"In electing Ahmad Syafii Maarif to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the board of trustees recognizes his guiding Muslims to embrace tolerance and pluralism as the basis for justice and harmony in Indonesia and in the world at large."

~ CITATION for Ahmad Syafii Maarif, Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies, 31 August 2008, Manila, Philippines

"Faith is an inner activity, the deepest, innermost endeavor of man, and links us to that which is hidden and mysterious, the Unseen, which is beyond the reach of the human intellect… that is, God."

~ Dr. A. Syafii Maarif in LibForAll's TV/Video series Ocean of Revelations,
Episode 1, "Islam and Faith"

Her Excellency Ibu Hajjah Sinta Nuriyah

Ibu Sinta Nuriyah Wahid is the widow of former Indonesian president Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, and the mother of their four daughters, Alissa, Yenny, Anita and Inayah. Born into a prominent Nahdlatul Ulama pesantren (Islamic boarding school) family, Mrs. Wahid has been a tireless proponent of women’s rights her entire life.

The founder of Puan Amal Hayati—an Islamic boarding school dedicated to empowering women—Ibu Sinta is famous throughout Southeast Asia and beyond, for her pioneering work in the field of Qur’anic studies, and gender equality.

A vocal opponent of polygamy, Ibu Sinta received her Master’s degree at the University of Indonesia in the field of women’s studies, and has been instrumental in changing the perception of many traditional ulama regarding the proper status and role of women in Muslim society.

Ulama have long justified the subordination of women by citing traditional commentaries on the Qur’an and Sunnah (the example of the Prophet Muhammad). According to Ibu Sinta, many of these commentaries deviate from the actual spirit and teachings of the Qur’an, by subordinating women to men, as in a classic text which states, “In the household, a wife is like the prisoner of the master (husband).” This and many other degrading statements about women, contained in these traditional Qur’anic commentaries, led Ibu Sinta to wonder, “Does Islam really teach such things?”

Ibu Sinta conducted a thorough review of several prominent commentaries, and incorporated her findings into a book entitled “Youth Marriage and Reproductive Health.” Her book concluded that anyone who thinks polygamy is permissible in Islam, needs to restudy the Qur’an. Specifically, she advises Muslims to penetrate beyond the literal text to examine the contextual circumstances of the revelation, and its purpose for humanity.

Muslim polygamists often justify their position by citing the Qur’anic verse which reads, "marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four” (fa inkihû mâ tâba lakum min al-nisâ’ mathnâ wa thulâth wa rubâ’). According to Ibu Sinta, Muslim scholars err in citing just that phrase of the verse, which concludes, “…but if you fear that you will not do justice (between them), then (marry) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course” (fain khiftum allâ ta’dilû fawâhidah aw ma malakat aymanukum, zalik adna ala ta'olou) (Qs. 4: 3).

Ibu Sinta adds that Muslim scholars frequently misinterpret even the complete verse, for “justice” is often in the eye of the beholder, and depends upon whose perspective is consulted. To a woman emotionally suffering from polygamy, superficially “equal” treatment of wives may not appear just at all.

In addition, the term “just”—as it appears in this Qur’anic verse—has at least two levels of meaning. The first refers to material/financial justice in the treatment of wives. The second transcends material considerations, to encompass love, kindness, and physical, emotional and psychological nurturing. Ibu Sinta maintains that the more important aspect of justice, in regard to this polygamy verse from the Qur’an, is the subtle, immaterial aspect of justice, which she maintains can never be achieved through polygamy. As proof of her assertion, Ibu Sinta quotes another verse of the Qur’an, from the same chapter: “And you will never be able to do perfect justice between wives even if it is your ardent desire.” (Wa lan tastatî’u ‘an ta’dilû baina al-nisâ’ walau haratstum.) (Qs. 4: 129).

From her study of the Qur’an, Ibu Sinta concluded that Islam’s holy scripture does not encourage polygamy. She also cites the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who rejected his son-in-law Ali’s request to take another wife, in addition to the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. The fact that ulama often claim that polygamy is in accord with the Sunnah, or example of the Prophet himself, does not hold water, according to Ibu Sinta, who affirms that God sent Muhammad to free women from the shackle of male domination. During Muhammad’s lifetime, women experienced a dramatic increase in their social status and protections. Yet with his death, the innate tendency of men to oppress women resurfaced, and continues to this day.

Management

Deputy Director of Academics, International Institute of Qur'anic Studies (IIQS) and head of its public policy division, the Center for Contemporary Islam (CCI): Dr. Ali Mabrook

Dr. Mabrook is a professor of Islamic Philosophy at Cairo University, noted expert in the field of Qur'anic Studies and regular columnist for al-Ahram, one of the oldest and most widely-read newspapers in the Arab world. A former student of the renowned Egyptian scholar Dr. Hassan Hanafi and colleague of IIQS co-founder Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd for nearly 30 years, Dr. Mabrook is deeply involved in Egyptian and pan-Arab discourse concerning the nature and role of shari‘a in public policy, and the future of democracy in the Middle East.

Based in Cairo, Egypt, Dr. Mabrook is fluent in Arabic and English.

Dr. Ratno Lukito is Director of LibForAll’s International Institute of Qur’anic Studies (IIQS) in Southeast Asia. In this capacity, he is responsible for setting the direction of Institute activities within Indonesia; developing the IIQS network and coordinating ongoing relationships with associates, institute faculty and alumni; and organizing all institute activities, including various courses and special programs.

Dr. Lukito has extensive experience in developing and assessing academic programs, and currently teaches Islamic Law at the prestigious Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University (UIN), Yogyakarta. At the Muhammadiyah University, Yogyakarta, Dr. Lukito was responsible for developing a doctoral program in Islamic Studies, and serves as the secretary of this program. At the Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Dr. Lukito is a member of the teaching staff in the American Studies postgraduate school where he lectures Masters students in religion and state in America and the American legal system. He has held positions of national trainer and central committee secretary on basic education projects sponsored by the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Asian Development Bank. He serves as an assessor for the Indonesian National Board of University Accreditation and is a member of the International Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism.

Dr. Lukito is the author of 9 books and over 30 articles on Islamic Law, especially as it relates to the Indonesian context. His 2008 book on conflicts between religious and secular law, and their resolution in the Indonesian context, was distributed by the Supreme Court of Indonesia to judges throughout the country.

Born in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Dr. Lukito holds a BA from the State Islamic University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and both an MA in Islamic Studies and a Ph.D. in Civil Law (DCL) from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is fluent in Javanese, Indonesian/Melayu, English, Arabic and French.

Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush, prominent Iranian thinker, philosopher and reformer, was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time Magazine in 2005, and the world’s seventh most influential intellectual by Prospect magazine in 2008. Doctor Soroush, a well-known figure in the religious intellectual movement in Iran, is currently a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs in Washington, D.C. He has also served as a visiting professor and scholar in residence at several prestigious institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. A Rumi scholar, Dr. Soroush previously taught at the University of Tehran.

Dr. Hmida Ennaifer (Ph.D., Sorbonne) teaches dogma and theology at the Faculty of Muslim Theology, Zitouna University, Tunis, Tunisia. His interests also focus on modern Islamic thought and Islamo-Christian dialogue, and he is President of the Groupe de Recherche Islamo-Chrétien (Islamo-Christian Research Group).

Slaheddine Jourchi, President of the Al-Jahez Foundation and Vice-President of the Tunisian League of Human Rights, is a noted Tunisian human rights and democracy activist, writer and expert in Islamic affairs.

Dr. Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, one of the world's most important contemporary Shia clerics, is a highly influential Iranian philosopher, theologian, author and professor at Tehran University, where he teaches comparative religion and theology, and regularly organizes international conferences on the theme of Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Trained at a seminary in Qom for seventeen years – followed by eight years as director of the Shiite Islamic Center in the Imam Ali Mosque in Hamburg, Germany – he served as a member of the first parliament of Iran after the revolution, but distanced himself from politics thereafter.

Ayatollah Shabestari's most significant contribution to Shiite theology may be his authoritative commentary on the essentially limited nature of religious knowledge and rules, and thus the necessity of complementing it with extra-religious sources.

Dr. Shabestari argues that distinguishing the eternal (values), from the changeable (instances and applications) in religion needs a kind of knowledge that is not, itself, contained in the rules developed in Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh). He laments the lack of such a body of knowledge in Islamic society: In the same vein, he underscores the limited nature of religious knowledge in general, and religious jurisprudence, in particular. In Dr. Shabestari's view, what is essential and eternal is the general values of Islam not particular forms of their realization in any particular historic time, (including the time of the prophet).

Dr. Shabestari suggests that there has been a divine providence for a separation of religious values and secular realities: In his book, Naghdi Bar Ghera'at e Rasmi az Din (A Critique of the Official Reading of Religion, December, 2000) Dr. Shabestari pursues his critique of religious absolutism as hermeneutically naive and realistically unworkable. Also, he launches a major defense of modern concepts of individualism, democracy, and human rights, although they have not been articulated as such in Islamic sources.

In Dr. Shabestari’s view, human rights and democracy are products of human reason that have developed during the course of time and continue to evolve. As such, they are not already prescribed in the Koran and Sunna.

Indeed, the Koran remains mute with regard to our modern understanding of human rights, and yet these do not in any way contradict the divine truth contained in the Koran. Drawing on modern hermeneutics, Shabestari dismisses any claim that man could ever come into direct possession of God’s absolute truth.

Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, an Iranian legal anthropologist specializing in Islamic law and women’s rights, is a well known and highly sought-after scholar of Islamic Feminism. Presently associated with the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Dr. Mir-Hosseini is a prolific author, having written extensively on the topic of women’s rights and family law in Iran. Her publications include Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco; Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran; Feminism and the Islamic Republic: Dialogues with the Ulema; and Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (with Richard Tapper). Dr. Mir-Hosseini challenges stereotypes about Muslim women, builds bridges between cultures by addressing universal human concerns, and has established a dialogue with Islamic scholars on the issue of human rights.

Dr. Mir-Hosseini has also co-directed two award-winning and thought-provoking feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001).

Dr. Mir-Hosseini has held a number of research fellowships and visiting professorships, including Hauser Global Law visiting professor at New York University School of Law, and a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. She is a member of Council of Women Living under Muslim Laws, based in the UK, Senegal and Pakistan, and a founding member of Musawah Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family, based in Malaysia.

Dr. Mir-Hosseini received a B.A. in sociology from Tehran University and her Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Muhammad Khalid Masud is the current Chairman of the Pakistan Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistan government and parliament.

A renowned scholar and academician, Dr. Masud previously held the position of Academic Director at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands. He has held numerous research fellowships and visiting professorships including: distinguished visiting professor, Faculty of Law, International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malyasia; senior lecturer, Center for Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria; visiting lecturer, École des Haute Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France; visiting professor, College de France, Paris; sessional lecturer and Ph.D. thesis supervisor, Quaid-i Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan; tutor, M.Phil. and Ph.D. thesis supervisor, Allama Iqbal University; and researcher, Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad.

Dr. Masud has written extensively on Islamic law and social change. His publications include: Shatibi’s Philosophy of Law; Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Ijtihad; Islamic Legal Interpretation: The Muftis and their Fatwas (with B. Messick and D. Powers); the edited volume Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablîghî Jamâ’at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal; and Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (with A. Salvatore, and M. van Bruinessen). He is also past editor of the journal Islamic Studies and has authored over ninety-five research articles, chapters and encyclopedia articles published in international journals.

Dr. Masud is a member of: Middle Eastern Studies Association, New York; Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies, Social Science Research Council, New York; Editorial Board, Islamic Law and Society, Brill, Leiden, the Netherlands; Advisory Board, Philanthropy for Islamic Social Justice, Jakarta, Indonesia; and Editorial Board, Rights at Home Project, ISIM, Leiden.

Dr. Masud is also the founder and author of MARUF (MAss-communication and Religious Understanding Forum) on the web at www.maruf.org. The website is a forum for an understanding of norms and rights from the perspectives of social construction, communicativity and self consciousness.

Dr. Masud obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at McGill University, Canada. He is fluent in Urdu, English and French, and reads Persian, Arabic, German and Spanish.