Abdal Hakim Murad

Abdal Hakim Murad, born Timothy John Winter in London on 15 May 1960, is a British Islamic scholar, author and translator. ¹ He is the founder and dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, Aziz Foundation Professor of Islamic Studies at the college and at Ebrahim College, Director of Studies in Theology and Religious Studies at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies in the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Divinity. ¹ The Arabic Wikipedia article records his residence as Cambridge. ² His lectures reach a wider audience through the college's YouTube channel, which had 135,000 subscribers in the founder's channel harvest of October 2026. ³

Winter grew up in Highgate, London; his father was the architect John Winter and his mother was a painter. ¹ He was educated at Westminster School and graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1983 with a double first in Arabic. ^{1 2} He then studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo and privately with individual scholars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and after returning to England he studied Turkish and Persian at the University of London. ¹ In 2015 he received a PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, with a dissertation assessing Islamic–Christian dichotomies in the light of Scriptural Reasoning; the dissertation is embargoed until 2050. ¹

Murad converted to Islam in 1979, according to the English Wikipedia article; the Powerbase profile dates his conversion to 1977, when he was seventeen. ^{1 4}

In 2009 Murad founded the Cambridge Muslim College, which trains British Muslim religious leaders, and he serves as its dean. ^{1 4} In 2008 he started the Cambridge Mosque Project, which raised funds for a purpose-built mosque; the Cambridge Central Mosque opened on 24 April 2019 as the first eco-mosque in Europe. ¹

He was awarded the Pilkington Teaching Prize by the University of Cambridge in 2003 and the King Abdullah I Prize for Islamic Thought in 2007, and he has been included consistently in The Muslim 500 list published by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, ranked 50th in 2012. ^{1 2}

His best-known short work is the booklet Bombing Without Moonlight, on the origins of suicidal terrorism, for which he received the King Abdullah I Prize in 2007. ¹ He has translated several classical Islamic texts into English, and his publications address Islamic theology and Muslim–Christian relations. ¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

His orientation, as the sources describe it. English Wikipedia describes him as a leading proponent of Islamic neo-traditionalism. ¹ Powerbase describes his advocacy of classical Sunni scholarship — Ash'ari theology, Shafi'i jurisprudence and Sufi spirituality — and his opposition to Wahhabi and Salafi currents as departures from classical Sunni orthodoxy. ⁴

Criticism directed at him. Powerbase also records critics who argue that the interfaith platforms in which he participates serve establishment cohesion frameworks; the museum records this criticism as attributed to its source. ⁴ Commercial biography sites differ on his school of jurisprudence — one describes him as Hanafi, against the Shafi'i formation described by Powerbase — so no compound school value is recorded for him in the museum's data. ⁴

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