Muhammad Ibn Alawi al-Maliki


Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Maliki was a Sunni Islamic scholar from Saudi Arabia. He has been recognised as the Mujaddid of 20th-21st century

Life

Family background

Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Maliki was born in Mecca to a family of well known scholars who, like himself, taught in the Sacred Mosque.

Education

With his father’s instruction, he also studied and mastered the various traditional Islamic sciences of Aqidah, Tafsir, Hadith, Seerah, Fiqh, Usul, Mustalah, Nahw, etc. Scholars of Mecca, as well as Medina, all of whom granted him full Ijazah to teach these sciences to others. Some of the scholars from whom he obtained ijazahs and chains of transmission from include: His father, al-Sayyid 'Alawi ibn 'Abbas al-Maliki al-Hasani, as-Sayyid al-Habib Ahmad Mashhur TaHa al-Haddad, Shaikh Hasanain Makhlouf, Muhammad Hafidh al-Tijani, Amin Kutbi, Mustafa Raza Khan, and numerous others.

Career

Regardless of criticisms against him, al-Maliki retained prominence. In an attempt to counter the Islamic revival in the early 1990s, the Government of Saudi Arabia began supporting practitioners of Sufism in the Hijaz region as a way to bolster religious support of the state; al-Maliki became the self-imposed leader of Hijazi Sufism under state sponsorship, with several thousand supporters.

Death

He died in 2004 and was buried in Mecca. After his death, Saudi dignitaries made condolence visits to his family. Crown Prince 'Abd Allah was quoted as stating that al-Maliki "was faithful both to his religion and country" as one western journalist noted, "the rehabilitation of his legacy was almost complete."

Literary Works

Al-Maliki has written on a variety of religious, legal, social and historical topics.

Selected works on various subjects

Aqidah