Fazlur Rahman Malik

Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919–1988) was a scholar and intellectual, respected by both the Muslim world and the Western academia circle. He attended Punjab University in Lahore where he graduated with distinction in Arabic and later also acquired an MA degree. In 1946, he went to Oxford where he prepared a dissertation on Avicenna’s (Ibn Sina) psychology under the supervision of Professor Simon van den Bergh. After receiving his PhD from Oxford, he taught Persian and Islamic philosophy at Durham University (1950–1958). He then left England to become associate professor in Islamic Studies at McGill University, Montreal. From 1961 to 1968, he was Director of the Institute of Islamic Research as well as in the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology, the supreme policy-making body that advises the government of Pakistan.

When his calls for social reforms were denounced by politically-motivated groups and hardliners, Fazlur Rahman left Pakistan and was made visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969, he was appointed as professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago and in 1986, named as Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the same university. Fazlur Rahman died of heart complications in 1988. Amongst some of his major writings, widely regarded as authoritative by many academic institutions worldwide, are Islamic Methodology in History (1965); Islam, 24 Edition (1979); Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (1982); Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition (1987); and Major Themes of the Qur’an (1989).