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Witness interviews Shaykh Dr. Gibril Haddad during his tour of South Africa
Shaykh Dr. Gibril Haddad was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1960 (1380H), and was raised in a typical middle-class Lebanese Catholic family and attended the Jesuit school that his predecessors had attended earlier.
He embraced Islam while a graduate student in French Literature at Columbia University in New York. Shortly after taking shahadah, he met Shaykh Hisham Kabbani and was guided by him in the path of Islamic scholarship. He lived and studied in Damascus, Syria, for about 10 years where he studied under many Islamic scholars, chief among them being Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani of Turkish Cyprus, who is his spiritual guide of the Naqshbandi Spiritual Order. In Damascus, he studied under many scholars like Shaykh `Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda, Imam Muhammad Zahid al-Kawthari, Dr. Nur al-Din `Itr, Shaykh Adib Kallas, Shaykh Wahbi al-Ghawji, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ya`qubi, Dr. Samer al-Nass, Dr. Wahba al-Zuhayli, Shaykh `Abd al-Hadi Kharsa, Shaykh Muhammad Muti` al-Hafiz, Shaykh Bassam al-Hamzawi, Shaykh Munir al-Hayek. From Makkah, Dr. Muhammad `Alawi al-Maliki, from Morocco, Sidi Mustafa Bassir (Morocco) and from Beirut, Shaykh Husayn `Usayran, the last of the close students of the pious Qadi Shaykh Yusuf al-Nabhani. He holds ijazas from more than 100 Islamic scholars and Shaykhs from Algeria to Yemen.
Shaykh Gibril is an accomplished and influential Islamic scholar, religious leader, author, and Arabic translator of classical Islamic texts. He is also a teacher on the traditional online Qibla Islamic institute (formerly SunniPath) [website]. He was listed in the inaugural edition “500 Most influential Muslims” and was referred to as “one of the clearest voices of traditional Islam in the West”. He is also a contributor to the website eshaykh.com, which offer guidance and traditional teachings on various aspects of Islam.
He currently resides in Brunei Darussalam with his wife and children.
