Muhammad al-Yaqoubi

Muhammad al-Yaqoubi was born in 1963 in Damascus, Syria, into a distinguished scholarly family; three of his predecessors served as Maliki Imam at the Grand Umayyad Mosque. He received extensive Islamic training from his father, earned a degree in Arabic Literature from Damascus University, and pursued doctoral studies in linguistics at the University of Gothenburg, where he was appointed Mufti of Sweden in 1999. He trained in Sufism under his father and attained the rank of murshid, spiritual guide, in the Shadhili order.

He taught Islamic sciences at the Umayyad Mosque and other institutions in Damascus before being forced into exile in 2011 for publicly supporting the Syrian uprising. He has authored numerous books, including Refuting ISIS: A Rebuttal of Its Religious and Ideological Foundations, and founded Sacred Knowledge, an initiative dedicated to spreading traditional Islamic scholarship, through which he continues writing, publishing and teaching internationally.