Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad; The Towering Personality of Neo-Traditionalism

Part 1

Timothy John Winter is also known as Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad was born in 1960 as the son of an architect in the family of Norfolk congregational ministers. He is a converted Muslim and one of the most well respected western theologians. His unassailable contributions placed him in an indomitable position. And his numerous and yet valuable works in both academics and aesthetics make him an acknowledged scholar in the world. He interfered in political, social and religious matters. When the world trade centre has attacked the stand he held was appreciable and controversial. 

Education

Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad attended the elite Westminster School in the 1970s. After that, he studied at Cambridge University and graduated from there with a double first in Arabic in 1983. 

He ended up as a Unitarian when he was studying at Cambridge. In those times he had been attending evening classes at a small college in London in Arabic with an intention to do economics in Arabic at Cambridge. But it helped him later to know further about the religion. After graduating, Sheikh Murad studied at Al-Azhar Islamic university in Egypt and worked in Jeddah before he returned to England in the late 80s to study Turkish and Parisian. After he studied these two languages in London he had admitted to further private studies from individual scholars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. 

The waves of his transformation began when he was studying at Westminster school. After that, his soul embraced Unitarian thoughts and expressed reluctance to the Christian ideologies like Trinity and blood atonement. The study of the Arabic language helped him to traverse further barricades which were released in front of him as he moved forward. 

Transformation

There are various factors that caused the transformation from Timothy winter to Abdul Hakim Murad or from Christianity to the verdant shore of Islam. Those components haven't any common relation but they defined and picturized the reality of Islam in front of him. As we mentioned in the past chapter he was not interested in mainstream Christian beliefs. As he was troubled with those counter-intuitive beliefs he stepped up to the Unitarian church. In Westminster school, he steeped in thinking religious thoughts. In his mind, Christianity was already tarnished because, as he mentioned in an interview, "our school chaplain failed to explain and answer to our sneering sceptical young minds the basic teachings of Christianity like the incarnation, the trinity and the blood atonement." None of it made any sense and the chaplain admitted that it was something that should just be accepted on faith and didn't have any biblical or rational basis. As he said, nonconformity was in his mind. And in his teenage years, he was loved by alienation from the modern conditions with a restless desire to be free of its brilliant mediocrity. The Unitarian minister William Channing (d.1842) in whose college Sheikh's sister was studied, influenced him as he spoke against the injustice implied to the blood atonement. He resonated with Sheikh Murad. Later he found the words of Ruqaiyyah Maqsūd about blood atonement that God does not need a sacrifice to forgive anyone. This realization vehemently tended him to Islam.

As moving with non-conformity, the Hayward Gallery exhibition in 1976 unveiled before him the aesthetic sense of arts in Islam. He got spell-bonded and enthralled by calligraphies, arabesques, and other Islamic decorations. It reminded him of the fact of creation and merciful God. He understood that this world is woven by the signs of God. Moreover, the Quran influenced him and led him to a righteous path. 

Its ego-less diction and unworldly strangeness dazzled him. Also, Maxim Robinson's Life of Muhammed helped him to know about the prophet (PBUH). Between the lines of this book Sheikh understood and grabbed various social values like forgiveness. He learned the power of forgiveness from prophetic life. As he agreed, none of his discoveries was original. Then he continued the journey to the truth. In that voyage, he addressed and found many Unitarians and people who rejected the trinity. The book myth of God incarnate had influenced him and helped him more to know about the non-factual understandings of incarnation. 

Moreover, the nominally Anglican Sheikh got a chance to visit Cairo in 1979. He spent weeks there and was attracted by invariably-polite Egyptians and Islamic architectures which reminded. him the majesty of the religion. In his autobiographical note ‘Quicunque Vult or A teenage journey to Islam’, he says, "in Cairo one afternoon I was sitting against a pillar into the mosque of Imām al ShāfÄ«' telling a young man of my troubles and hearing his reflections, without compromising Islam, reminded me of God's mercy to Ahl-kitāb."

When he went to Cambridge he ended up as a Unitarian. From there he continued his unfilled observations. As a part of studying the Arabic language, he became familiar with theology. It helped him to know more about Islam.