Hisham Kabbani

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Hisham Kabbani bigraphy, stories - Amreican sufi leader

Hisham Kabbani : biography

28 January 1945 –

Muhammad Hisham Kabbani (born 13 Safar 1364 / 28 January 1945) is a prominent Lebanese-American Sufi Muslim. Kabbani advocates an understanding of Islam described by his supporters as fundamentally based on peace, tolerance, interreligious cooperation, respect and love. Kabbani has counseled and advised Muslim leaders around the world from Afghanistan to the UK to build community resilience against violent extremism. In the US, his vocal criticism of extremism has stirred controversy among some American Muslims. In 2012 the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre named him one of the top 500 most influential Muslims.

Activities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia

Among his activities outside the United States, Shaykh Kabbani has founded several organizations in the UK including the Haqqani Worldwide Educational Foundation Center for Teaching Islamic Divine Law and Spirituality, Sufi Muslim Council and the . In February 2010 CSCA celebrated its launch with His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, at a gala event entitled at the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, England.

In the Middle East, he is the co-developer and former General Manager of the Islamic Jeddah Medical Center in Saudi Arabia. In Southeast Asia, Kabbani has established a number of organizations including , and an adviser for the Inter-Religious Organization, Singapore.

Shaykh Hisham Kabbani has also been active throughout the world in the field of disaster relief and poverty alleviation. In 2010, he developed a series of water supply projects and relief supply centers in drought-affected regions of Kenya. He has also worked with local orphanages (e.g. , and ) in Nairobi to provide funding and material assistance. In addition he established the Ramadan Food Campaign where thousands of boxes of food were collected and distributed in remote areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as local slums of Nairobi.

Fatwas

In 2011 Shaykh Kabbani and Dr. Homayra Ziad (Islamic Studies, Trinity College, CT), wrote a fatwa using Quranic exegesis, a review of hadith, and linguistic analysis to determine that the Quran does not condone domestic violence. According to the authors of the fatwa, the broader message of the Qur’an is the promotion of harmony and affection between husband and wife so that they may develop amongst themselves a sacred bond of love and mercy.

Shaykh Kabbani has also written a fatwa on the principles of jihad, which was translated into Arabic and distributed by the US military in Iraq.

Views on extremism

In 1999, Kabbani was invited to speak at an open forum at the U.S. Department of State, in which he discussed the increasing threat of Islamic extremist discourses and practices in the United States. (In a 2000 interview with the Middle East Quarterly, he clarified that "the problem of extremism is not confined to the Muslim community… Extremism is an unwillingness to accept any viewpoint but one’s own… Ideological extremism can result in an act of violence when an individual pursues his ideas to such an extreme that he thinks only his ideas are correct and must therefore be enforced on everyone else.")

In his remarks at the State Department, Kabbani had noted that 80 percent of the Muslim American population have been introduced to extremist ideology., January 7, 1999 This statement was based on his interviews with religious clerics, educators, community members and young Muslims in 114 mosques in the US over an eight-year period (1991-1999).

Although the "80%" figure has been widely cited by public officials, and has been supported by several other reports—it has not been confirmed by a quantitative, peer-reviewed study. 

Given that the subject of violent extremism was minimally discussed in public national security forums prior to 2001, these comments brought Kabbani into conflict with various Muslim groups including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). These organizations responded, stating that Kabbani’s remarks "could have a profoundly negative impact on ordinary Muslim Americans" by casting suspicion on the entire community.