Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Muhammad Taqi ud Din al Hilali

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School
  
Zahiri

Era
  
Modern history

Name
  
Muhammad al-Hilali

Region
  
Died
  
June 22, 1987

Influenced
  
Muhammad Abu Khubza


Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali wwwalhilalinetfilesimagesalhilaliportal030

Born
  
1893
Sajalmasah

Influenced by
  
Dawud al-Zahiri, Ibn Hazm

Poem if following the prophet means that im a wahhabi shaykh muhammad taqi ud din al hilali


Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din bin Abdil-Qadir Al-Hilali, (1893-1987) was a 20th-century Salafi scholar from Morocco, most notable for his English translations of Sahih Bukhari and, along with Muhammad Muhsin Khan, the Qur'an, entitled The Noble Qur'an.

Contents

Early life and education

Hilali was born in Rissani, Morocco, near the oasis of Tafilalt in a valley near Sajalmasah in 1893 (1311 AH).

In his twenties, Hilali moved to Algeria in order to study Muslim Jurisprudence, moving on to Egypt in 1922. While there, Hilali enrolled in Al-Azhar University only to drop out after being disappointed with the curriculum. Instead, Hilali spent time under the tutelage of Rashid Rida,

In Asia and Europe

After finishing his duration of teaching in Mecca, Hilali enrolled in Baghdad University; he also served as an assistant professor while there. Hilali returned briefly to India for a second time, and enrolled in the University of Lucknow as both a student and a teacher, the most prominent of his own being Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi. Shakib Arslan, who was a close friend of Hilali, went through a contact at the German Foreign Office and helped Hilali enroll (again, both as a student and a teacher) at the University of Bonn.

Return to Morocco, then Iraq, then Morocco, then Saudi Arabia, then Morocco

Toward the end of World War II, Hilali left Germany for French Morocco, which was rocked with calls for independence. He returned to Iraq in 1947, once again taking up a teaching position at the university in Baghdad. After the 14 July Revolution, Hilali returned to a now-independent Kingdom of Morocco one more time. He was appointed to a teaching position at Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1959 and later at a branch in Fes.

In 1974, Hilali permanently retired from teaching, moving to Meknes initially and later to Casablanca, where he owned a house. Hilali died at June 22, 1987 (25th of Shawal in the year 1408 AH). He was buried in the neighborhood of Sbata.

Reception

Algerian national hero Abdelhamid Ben Badis considered Hilali to be one of the most knowledgeable Muslim clerics of their era.

Hilali was criticized by a number of Muslim scholars and Western academics due to his translation of the Qur'an. Dr. Ahmed Farouk Musa, an academician at Monash University, considered the Hilali-Khan translation as being a major cause of extremism and a work of propaganda distributed by Saudi religious authorities with money from its oil-rich government. Similarly, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, head of Bethesda's Minaret of Freedom Institute, has claimed that the translation is a Wahabi rendering of the Qur'an and is not accepted by Muslims in the US.

Additionally, Khaled Abou El Fadl and Khaleel Mohammed criticized Hilali's translation as being a distortion of the meaning of the Qur'an

A number of academics have also criticized the Hilali-Khan translation on stylistic and linguistic grounds. Dr William S. Peachy, an American professor of English at College of Medicine, King Saud University at Qasseem considered the translation "repulsive" and rejected by anyone outside of Saudi Arabia. Dr. Abdel-Haleem, Arabic Professor at SOAS, London University, noted that he found the Hilali-Khan translation "repelling". The Director of King Fahd International Centre for Translation, King Saud University, Riyad, Dr. A. Al-Muhandis, expressed his dissatisfaction with the translation’s style and language, being too poor and simplistic.

Works

Hilali worked with Muhammad Muhsin Khan in the English translation of the meanings of the Qur'an and Sahih Al-Bukhari. Their translation of the Qur'an has been described as ambitious, incorporating commentary from Tafsir al-Tabari, Tafsir ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qurtubi and Sahih al-Bukhari. It has also been criticized for inserting the interpretations of the Wahabi school directly into the English rendition of the Qur'an. It has been accused of inculcating Muslims and potential Muslims with militant interpretations of Islam through parenthesis, as teachings of the Qur'an itself.

Personal life

Hilali was an adherent of the Zahirite school of Islamic law according to his children and students. Administrators of his website edited his biography to remove all references to his adherence to the school, with which modern-day Zahirites took issue.

Hilali practiced polygyny, having married five women during his international travel. He married an Algerian woman, two Saudi women while living in Mecca, an Iraqi woman during the first time he lived in Iraq, a German woman whose first husband was Jewish and whom he protected from the Nazi while he lived in Germany, three Moroccan women. He fathered one daughter with the Algerian woman, two daughters with the Saudi women, a son and a daughter with the Iraqi woman and, one son with the German woman. He has no children with his Moroccan women.

References

Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali Wikipedia