Ramadan al-Bouti

Al-Bouti was born in 1929 in the village of Jeilka, located near Cizre, Turkey. His father was Mulla Ramadan Al-Bouti, an ulama and hails from the Hadhabani Kurdish tribe that was present in a number of regions across Levant, Iraq, and Turkey. When Al-Bouti was four years old, his family migrated to Damascus due to Ataturk's secularization. He was enrolled in a primary school and received specialized religious tutoring from his father. At the age of eleven, al-Bouti studied the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad's biography with Shaykh Hasan Habannakah and Shaykh al-Maradlnl in the Manjak Mosque in al-Midan. Later when the mosque was transformed into the Institute of Islamic Orientation, he studied Qur'an exegesis, logic, rhetoric and the fundamental principles of Islamic jurisprudence until 1953. On the completion of his three-year degree in law from the Faculty of Sharia Al-Azhar, and another Diploma in Education from the Faculty of English again at Al-Azhar, al-Bouti returned to Damascus with a Sharfa teaching qualification (ijaza) and an education diploma. ==Career==

Al-Bouti started his career teaching at a secondary school in Homs between 1958 and 1961. He returned as an instructor at the University of Damascus in 1965, eventually becoming the dean of the Faculty of Sharia at the same university from 1977 to 1983. He subsequently became a lecturer in comparative law and religious studies at Damascus University; for some time he was also the Dean of the Sharfa faculty. Al-Bouti was professor of comparative law, and worked as lecturer on Islamic Creed (aqeedah) and Muhammad's Biography (seerah). of the Supreme Council of the Academy of Oxford and of the Supreme Advisory Council for the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi. During the Muslim Brotherhood's revolution in 1979 in Syria, al-Bouti vocally condemned the attacks against the Syrian Baathist government by Islamist militants, while most of his senior colleagues were either silent or supportive of the opposition. Al-Bouti was chosen for the Dubai International Holy Quran Award in its eighth session in 2004 (1425 AH) to be the "personality of the Muslim world". In 2008, Al-Bouti was appointed preacher of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. ==Ideologies==

Most of al-Bouti's ideas are put forward within the framework of traditional legal scholarship, frequently referring to Qur'anic verses, Hadith and the opinions of the leading classical authorities, in particular al-Nawawi, Ibn al-Arabi, al-Ghazali, and al-Shafi'i. Due to his profession, al-Bouti regards Islamic law as the core of the Islamic religion; whenever he speaks of Islam he means the principles, injunctions and practical implications of the Sharia. In addition he criticized the proponents of what some viewed as Islamic reform, from modernist Muhammad Abduh to Salafi literalist Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani. • ''Al-La Madhhabiyya (Abandoning the Madhhabs) is the most dangerous Bid‘ah Threatening the Islamic Shari'a'' • As-Salaf was a blessed epoch, not a school of thought. Al-Bouti had a "long-standing opposition to both military and political activism in the name of Islam" based on the belief that Islam should be 'the common element that unites' all political forces rather than taking the side of one force, which he explained in his book Jihad in Islam (1993). Al-Bouti specialized in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and usul al-fiqh (principles of jurisprudence) according to the Shafi'i school of law. Most of his views are based on the Qur'an, hadiths and the opinions of the leading classical authorities, such as al-Nawawi, al-Ghazali and al-Shafi’i. ==Syrian protests 2011 and his position==

Following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, Al-Bouti criticised anti-government protests and urged demonstrators not to follow "calls of unknown sources that want to exploit mosques to incite seditions and chaos in Syria." ==Death==

was in the hand of Al-Bouti at the time of assassination Al-Bouti was killed while giving a religious lesson to students at the Al-Iman Mosque in the central Mazraa district of Damascus. The bomb attack reportedly killed at least 42 people and wounded more than 84. It marked the first time during the civil war a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a mosque. According to Thomas Pierret – a lecturer in Contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh – the death of Al-Bouti means the loss of the "last credible ally among the Sunni religious elite" for the Syrian government. Al-Bouti was "a Muslim scholar of world standing," Pierret states. Official film footage shown on Syrian television taken after the bombing appears to belie a bomb scene, showing "superficial debris, but not the kind of structural damage or bloodbath that would be expected from a huge bomb killing 50 people in an enclosed space". "All the injured told the same story of the bombing, a man entered the mosque & sat alone. Later he walked and bombed himself. My father leaned to the right after being injured and tried to adjust his hat. When the injury took effect he fell to the left." In December 2013, Syrian television showed what it claimed were confessions to the murder of al-Bouti by Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian members of Jabhat al-Nusra. == Works ==

Al-Bouti published nearly 60 books and religious publications (in Arabic),) • الجهاد في الإسلام: كيف نفهمه؟ وكيف نمارسه؟ (The Jihad in Islam: How Should We Understand? And How Should We Practice?) • الإنسان مسير أم مخير (Human beings between compatibilism and determinism) • هذه مشكلاتهم (These Are Their Problems) • عائشة: ام المؤمنين (Aisha: Mother of Believers) • في سبيل الله والحق (In the Sake of God and Rightness) • الحِكم العطائية شرح وتحليل (Al-Attaúah Advices, Explanation, and Analysis) (4 volumes) • مشورات اجتماعية (Social advices) • هذا ما قلته أمام بعض الرؤساء والملوك (That's What I Said to Some presidents and Kings) • التعرف على الذات هو الطريق المعبد إلى الإسلام (The recognition of self is a Paved Way to Islam) • من روائع القرآن الكريم (Some Masterpieces of the Holy Koran) • شخصيات استوقفتني (Personalities That attracted my observation) TV programs: • لا يأتيه الباطل – Shaam channel / Sani'ou al Qarar channel • Koranic studies, Syrian Satellite TV • شرح كتاب كبرى اليقينيات الكونية – in the series "Al Kalaam al Tayyeb" – Al-Resalah Satellite TV • مشاهد وعبر – Al-Resalah Satellite TV • فقه السيرة – Iqraa TV • شرح الحكم العطائية – Sufiah channel. • الجديد في إعجاز القرآن الكريم – Iqraa TV • هذا هو الجهاد – Azhari TV channel. ==References==