Eyad Qunaibi

Eyad Abdel Hafez Qunaibi is a Jordanian academic and Muslim preacher, born in al-Salmiya, Kuwait, on 16 Shawwal 1395 AH, corresponding to 22 October 1975, to a Jordanian family; his family moved to Amman while he was a child. ¹ He is a pharmacology specialist who worked at Jerash University in Jordan and was promoted there to full professor in 2022. ¹ He is counted among the influencers on social media, presented the YouTube series "Journey of Certainty" (Rihlat al-Yaqin) on questions of faith and criticism of the theory of evolution, and was arrested and imprisoned in Jordan more than once over his intellectual publications, most recently in 2015. ¹

He was born in al-Salmiya, Kuwait, to a Jordanian family and grew up in Amman. He studied pharmacy at the Jordan University of Science and Technology and took his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Houston in the United States in 2003. ¹

He memorised the Qur'an with a connected chain of transmission in the reading of Hafs from 'Asim under Shaykh Abd al-Rahman ibn Ali al-Mahmud, having earlier received an ijaza in that reading, and took a special interest in books of tafsir and the Prophet ﷺ's biography. ¹

Qunaibi worked for a year and a half at the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company in research and development and in drug information, then at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Applied Science Private University, as a part-time lecturer at the University of Jordan and the Jordan University of Science and Technology, and as an associate professor of pharmacology at Jerash University, where he was promoted to full professor in 2022. ¹

He took part in the scientific review of the seventh edition of "Lippincott Illustrated Reviews: Pharmacology", received a best-researcher award at the Applied Science University's pharmacy faculty, and Al Jazeera reported that he also received a best research-evaluation title from international reviewers for his pharmacology research. ¹

On his YouTube channel Qunaibi presented the series "Journey of Certainty", in which he addressed questions of faith and devoted a number of episodes to criticising the theory of evolution, also criticising attempts to reconcile it with faith. ¹ The article notes that he belongs officially to no Islamic organisation, and that his preaching and intellectual output spans articles, books and filmed video clips. ¹

His books include "Thinking Well of God" (Husn al-Zann bi'llah; Bidaya publishing house, 2019) and "The Pleasure of Contemplation" (Mut'at al-Tadabbur), written with his team (Bidaya, 2020). ¹

This section should be read as an account of positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's judgement on them.

Description and response: The article reports that some analysts describe him as close to the Salafi-jihadi current or one of its theorists, and that he previously had links with the Salafi-jihadi theorist in Jordan Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi; he rejects that description and considers it "a restriction on his preaching". ¹

His reported views: The article quotes his view that the al-Nusra Front represented "a renewalist current within al-Qaeda", and his praise for what he called the purity of the Front's method and the good conduct of its fighters. Conversely, in 2015 he attacked the Islamic State organisation and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, calling him "the alleged caliph", defended the Taliban, and repeatedly warned of the "danger" of the Islamic State organisation while rejecting an international war against it. He also criticised Jordanian policies, including the invitation of former Israeli president Shimon Peres and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the 2015 World Economic Forum, the memorandum to import gas from Israel, and Jordan's participation in the Paris march after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper. ¹

Arrests and trials: Qunaibi was detained four times over his sermons. The General Intelligence Directorate first arrested him on 15 January 2010 for twenty days. He was rearrested in 2013 and sentenced to two and a half years for acts said to "disturb" Jordan's relations with foreign states; the Court of Cassation then overturned the verdict and declared him not responsible for what was attributed to him. He was detained again on 16 June 2015 and on 7 December 2015 was sentenced to three and a half years for "promoting Islamic groups" and "incitement" to undermine the system of government, over articles criticising Jordanian government policies; the sentence was then reduced to two years. Human Rights Watch criticised the verdict, saying it "signals a harsher approach by the authorities towards offences related to freedom of expression"; on 16 May 2016 the State Security Court reduced the sentence to one year, and he was released a day after the decision. ¹

The article describes him as one of the influencers on social media and a public figure with a presence, whose public standing rests on his filmed videos — above all the "Journey of Certainty" series — alongside his articles and books. ¹ His own YouTube channel, published under the handle @eyadqunaibi and named as his official channel, recorded 2.21 million subscribers in a channel harvest checked on 25 October 2026. ²

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