Centre for Islamic Knowledge - CIK @ciknowledge

We are honoured to welcome Dr. @YakoobAhmed0 as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Dr. Ahmed will be teaching Reviving Islamic Historical Consciousness: Why History Matters for Muslims Today and Studies in Late Ottoman History. Dr. Yakoob Ahmed is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Theology (İlahiyat) at Istanbul University and a researcher at the Institute of Islamic Studies (ISAMER). He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Languages and Cultures at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he also completed a Master’s degree in Near and Middle East Studies with a focus on Ottoman history and Turkish politics. ​Dr. Ahmed is the author of The Ottoman Ulema and the Quest for an Islamic Constitution: Revolution and Revelation (Edinburgh University Press), a major study re-examining the intellectual and political role of the Sunni ulema during the late Ottoman constitutional period. He is also the author of Why History Matters: Reviving Faith Through the Lens of History (Ketebe), which explores the relationship between historical consciousness, identity, and the renewal of Islamic thought in the modern age. ​ His research focuses on Late Ottoman history, Muslim intellectual thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Islamic constitutionalism, nation-state formation, the intellectual history of the late Ottoman ulema, and questions of identity and collective memory. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Ahmed is a regular contributor to Middle East Eye and TRT World, where he writes on contemporary political and historical developments in the Muslim world. Learn more about the program and apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…

We are honoured to welcome Dr. Kasım Kopuz as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Dr. Kopuz will be teaching The Idea of Tajdīd as Presented in the Prefaces (Dībājah) of Fiqh Commentaries on the Multaqā. Dr. Kasım Kopuz graduated from the School of Law and Sharia at Al-Azhar University and from the Law School of Istanbul University. He has studied history and sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY), where he earned his MA in Ottoman History and later completed his PhD on 'Reproduction of the Ottoman Legal Knowledge'. He was part of the research group for the Structures of Social Sciences at Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations. His academic concentration is on the reproduction of legal culture in Ottoman society during the 17th and 18th centuries. His main areas of interest are fiqh, usul al-fiqh, Islamic legal thought, social theory, cultural studies, knowledge production, world systems and civilizations. He has taught at various universities in the USA and Türkiye, including Istanbul Sehir University, State University of New York Empire State College, State University of New York at Binghamton, and currently he is a faculty member at Marmara University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Learn More About the Program and Apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…

We are honoured to welcome Dr. Necmettin Kizilkaya as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Dr. Kızılkaya will be teaching ʿAmal and the Formation of Knowledge in the Islamic Intellectual Tradition. Dr. Necmettin Kızılkaya is the Head of Department and Professor of Islamic Law and Economics at the Faculty of Divinity, Istanbul University, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Islamic Economics and Finance. He holds a BA and MA in Islamic Studies and Islamic Law from Marmara University and earned his PhD in Islamic Law from the Institute of Social Sciences at Selçuk University in 2011. Dr. Kızılkaya has held visiting fellowships at prestigious institutions, including Princeton University, Columbia University, and the University of Cambridge. His scholarly work lies at the intersection of Islamic law, economics, and modernity, with research interests spanning the history of Islamic law, Islamic corporate law, the methodology of Islamic economics, migration, halal food regulation, and other contemporary issues viewed through a legal lens. He is the author of several books, including Legal Maxims in Islamic Law: Concept, History and Application of Axioms of Juristic Accumulation (Brill, 2021) and Methodology of Islamic Economics: Problems and Solutions (Routledge, 2020). His research has been widely published in leading academic journals and continues to contribute to scholarly discourse in both Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic economics. ​ Dr. Kızılkaya serves as a member of the Governance and Ethics Board at the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). He is the Editor-in-Chief of both the Darulfunun Ilahiyat Journal and the Turkish Journal of Islamic Economics (TUJISE), as well as an Editor at Iktisat Publishing House. Learn More About the Program and Apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…

We are honoured to welcome Dr. @issameido as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Dr. Eido will be teaching Hadith and Islamic Legal and Theological Schools, with Readings from Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī​ Dr. Issam Eido is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Undergraduate Studies of the Department of Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He was a former Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Eido's research focuses on the Qur'an and Ḥadīth Studies and Sufism. Prior to the Syrian uprising, Eido served as a lecturer in the faculty of Islamic Studies in the Department of Qur'an and Ḥadīth Studies at the University of Damascus. His doctoral work, 'Early Ḥadīth Scholars and their Criteria of Ḥadīth Criticism,' presented a new understanding of the criteria used by Muslim scholars in accepting or rejecting traditions attributed to the Prophet and the transformations of that criteria from the classical to the modern period. Eido is one of the main students of well-known muḥaddith Shaykh Nūr al-Dīın ʿItr. In addition to Shaykh ʿItr, Eido studied and got traditional ijaza from several well-known scholars such as Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Kurdī, Shaykh Muḥammad ʿAwwāma, and Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāghūrī, and Shaykh Maḥmūd Maṣrī. Currently, his research focuses on the question of authenticity and authoritative Islamic texts among Muslim scholars in the Islamic formative period. He has published extensively, including:​ ​ - Early Ḥadīth Scholars and their Criteria of Ḥadīth Criticism (two volumes) - A critique on Khadiga Musa’s critical edition of ʿUmdat al‑Nāzir (published in Reading Religion, American Academy of Religion) - The Rise of Syrian Salafism: From Denial to Recognition in The Syrian Uprising: From Denial to Recognition (Routledge, 2018) - “Ṣaḥīḥ Al‑Bukhari’s Criteria: An Epistemological Perspective” (Ibn Haldun University Press, 2020) - “Ḥanafī’s Criteria of Ḥadīth Criticism: The Role of Islamic Legal Maxims” in The Journal of Islamic Sciences, Al‑Fātiḥ University (Arabic, 2020) - “Confession in the Public Sphere: A Trusteeship Criticism of Foucault’s Concepts of Confession and Power,” in The Theory of Trusteeship of Taha Abdulrahman (Brill, 2020) Learn More About the Program and Apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…

We are honoured to welcome Dr. @NaokiQYamamoto as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Dr. Naoki will be presenting on Islam in East Asia and Our Intellectual and Cultural Imperative ​Dr. Naoki Yamamoto is an Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University of Science and Technology-Türkiye and Director of the Institute of Muslim Societies and East Asian Civilizations (IMSEAC) in Japan. He specializes in Ottoman Tasawwuf, Japanese classical culture, and comparative intellectual history, with a particular focus on Islamicate readings of East Asian traditions. He is the founder of Japanese Islamicate Art, a cross-disciplinary project encompassing scholarship, calligraphy, narrative fiction, and cultural commentary. His publications include a Japanese translation of Sulamī’s Kitāb al-Futuwwa, Introduction to Tasawwuf: The Way of Training (Shueisha, 2023), and an English translation of Liu Zhi’s Wugong Shiyi (The Exposition of the Five Pillars of Islam), which is forthcoming from Fons Vitae. Through teaching, writing, and artistic practice, his work seeks to explore how ethical traditions travel, settle, and take root without losing depth or integrity. Learn More About the Program and Apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…

CIK Summer Academic Intensive 2026: Prospective Student Information Session The Centre for Islamic Knowledge (CIK) invites prospective students to attend an information session regarding the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive, to be held at the historic Suleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Turkiye, from July 18–26, 2026, in collaboration with Ibn Haldun University. This nine-day intensive is designed to provide students with a rigorous engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition through seminars delivered by a distinguished international faculty. In addition to structured coursework, participants will have the opportunity to visit leading academic institutions in Istanbul and engage with contemporary scholarly discussions across a range of disciplines. To learn more about the program, we invite you to join a prospective student information session with Ustadh @AbuGhudda and Ustadh @Ibn_Asad2 on Monday, June 15, 2026, at 7:00 PM Central Time via Zoom. The session will address: - The academic vision and objectives of the program - Courses and areas of study - Student life and the educational experience in Istanbul - Admissions requirements and application procedures - Questions from prospective students Information Session Registration: us06web.zoom.us/.../WN_6LdABss…... Summer Academic Intensive Information: cikedu.org/summer-intensi… We look forward to welcoming you and discussing the program further, in sha Allah.

Introducing Faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, ​Türkiye. We are honoured to welcome Shaykh @hamzakaramali as part of the distinguished faculty for the 2026 CIK Summer Academic Intensive at the Süleymaniye Madrasa in Istanbul, Türkiye. Shaykh Hamza will be teaching Isnāds, Tawātur, and Rational Grounds for Affirming the Messengerhood of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Shaykh Hamza Karamali earned his BASc And MASc in Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, after which he moved abroad to study the Islamic sciences full-time in private one-on-one settings with distinguished traditional scholars in Kuwait, UAE, and Jordan, reading and memorizing traditional works in all of the Islamic sciences, and earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Islamic Law and Legal Theory from Jamia Nizamiyya in Hyderabad, India. He specializes in developing authentically Muslim responses to the problem of atheism (visit his personal website: hamzakaramali.com). He is developing The Thinking Muslim’s Guide to Atheist Arguments (a free YouTube series) as well as a curriculum of courses that are designed to take our Islamic education to a new level by basing all of their conclusions on rational evidence. All of his work is grounded in the scholarly traditions of traditional Muslim seminaries such as al-Azhar of Cairo, the Qarawiyyin of Fez, the Zaytuna of Tunisia, and the Deoband of India. He has described the evidence-based curriculum of these classical seminaries in his The Madrasa Curriculum in Context, and will develop that scholarly vision further in a forthcoming work that presents traditional Islamic logic in the idiom of contemporary logic and philosophy. He has taught the Islamic sciences online at SunniPath.com, then at Qibla.com, then taught advanced Arabic grammar and rhetoric at Qasid Institute, and then joined Kalam Research & Media, where he worked for three years, designing, managing, and participating in research and education projects around the integration of modern analytic philosophy and science with traditional Islamic theology and logic. In the summer of 2019, he founded @BasiraEducation to fill a gap in the religious education of Muslims in the modern world — his goal at Basira is to develop a deploy an original seminary-level curriculum that is grounded in the traditional Islamic sciences but fully integrates modern science and culture into an intelligent and God-centered worldview. Learn More About the Program and Apply: cikedu.org/summer-intensi…