Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad @ Timothy Winters

Me and family decided to attend a kulliyah by Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad at Masjid Kelana Putra after Maghrib today. The Sheikh, formally Timothy Winters is supposed to be a renowned Islamic scholar who is currently attached to the University of Cambridge. He came with impressive credentials.

Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad graduated from Cambridge University with a double-first in Arabic in 1983. He then lived in Cairo for three years, studying Islam under traditional teachers at Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world. He went on to reside for three years in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and other ulama from Hadramaut, Yemen.

In 1989, Sheikh Abdul Hakim returned to England and spent two years at the University of London learning Turkish and Farsi. Since 1992 he has been a doctoral student at Oxford University, specializing in the religious life of the early Ottoman Empire. He is currently Secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London) and Director of the Sunna Project at the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University, which issues the first-ever scholarly Arabic editions of the major Hadith collections.

We arrived just after azan. I managed to join the congregation midway. Immediately after maghrib prayers, the Nazir of the mosque introduced Sheikh Abdul Hamid and the kulliyah started. It was quie difficult for me to make out what the Sheikh was saying partly because of his slang and partly because he was speaking in low tones. His topic of discussions was "Spirituality in the Age of Uncertainty", a very relevant topic indeed. As best as I tried to decipher what was being said, I had problems taking my notes. I was therefore surprised that a rather elderly man besides me who was nodding in approval every so often while I was struggling with my predicament.


Anyway, I did managed to write down the following:

1. "Good qualities" are good because they are the qualities of Allah. This is an important concept because in its absence, everything can be viewed in relative terms depending on the eyes of the beholder.

2. One would have achieved the "true Iman" when he wants to do what Allah swt has commanded him to do.

3. The purpose of our life is to turn away from the shadows and be in the light. It must however be realized that there will be no shadows without light.

4. Allah swt created everything with meanings. Nothing has been created without a purpose.

The Sheikh ended his kulliyah just before Isyak prayers. At the end of the session, the ADUN for Seri Setia, YB Nazmi, briefed the congregation that the Sheikh was brought to Malaysia by ABIM Outreach for the purpose of soliciting funds for the building of a mosque in Cambridge.