Understanding Islam Series

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Episode 5

Abdal Hakim Murad – Understanding Islam Series: The Five Pillars of Islam

Abdal Hakim MuradOctober 10, 2011100 min0 comments

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Shahada Comparative Religion Islamic History Five Pillars of Islam Prayer Hajj Zakat Fasting

Episode 4

Abdal Hakim Murad – Understanding Islam Series: Sunnah, Shari’ah, Sectarianism & Ijtihad

Episode 6

Abdal Hakim Murad – Understanding Islam Series: The Muslim Influence on Europe and the West

About this lecture

In this wide-ranging introductory lecture, Cambridge scholar Abdal Hakim Murad opens his Understanding Islam series by addressing the cognitive challenges of studying another's religion, the historical and contemporary significance of Islam as a world civilization, and a systematic overview of the Five Pillars — Shahada, Salat, Zakat, fasting in Ramadan, and Hajj. Drawing on the famous Hadith of Gabriel as a framework, he presents Islam's outward practices as the foundational but not final dimension of a religion encompassing body, mind, and heart. The lecture is richly illustrated with historical context, comparative insights, and personal anecdotes, making it accessible to both newcomers and those seeking deeper understanding.

Abdal Hakim Murad

Timothy John "Tim" Winter (born 1960), also known as Abdal Hakim Murad, is a British Sufi Muslim researcher, writer and teacher. His profile and work have attracted media coverage both in the Muslim World and the West. Conversant in both traditional Islamic scholarship and Western thought and civilization, Winter has made contributions on many Islamic topics. Education Born in 1960, Winter was educated at Westminster School, and graduated with a double-first in Arabic from Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge in 1983. He then studied and taught traditional Islamic sciences at the Al-Azhar University in Egypt for several years, and spent several more in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Shaykh Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad. In 1989, he returned to England and spent two years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he concentrated on Turkish and Persian. Career Winter is currently the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College, and a doctoral student at Oxford University, where he is studying the relationship between the government and Sufi brotherhoods in the Ottoman Empire. Winter is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London), Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe, President of the UK Friends of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Director of the Sunna Project, which has published scholarly Arabic editions of the major Sunni Hadith collections.

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