“An immoral man of learning is a great evil;
Yet a greater evil is an ignoramus leading a godly life.
Both are a great trial everywhere
To whomever clings to his religion.”
Imam Burhan al-Din al-Zarnuji cited the above lines of his poetry in his work, “Ta’lim Al-Muta’allim” (Instruction of the Student). A good reminder to all, especially to those who teach.
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Shaykh Seraj Hasan Hendricks and Shaykh Dr Hisham, with Shaykh Ahmad Hasan Hendricks, cowrote “A Sublime Way: the Sufi Path of the Sages of Makka”, as a comprehensive exposition of the tariqa. This website went live following the book’s completion, and is under the supervision of Shaykh Dr Hisham and his students.
A Concise Obituary of al-marhum al-‘allama Shaykh Seraj Hassan Hendricks
In July 2020, Shaykh Seraj Hassan Hendricks of Azzawia Institute — one of South Africa’s greatest Muslim scholars — was laid to rest in Cape Town, having died on 9 July at the age of 64 from COVID-19 complications.
A scion of a distinguished scholarly family, Shaykh Seraj taught at Cape Town’s Azzawia Institute before travelling to Makka in 1983 to study at Umm al-Qura University, graduating with honours in fiqh and usul al-fiqh in 1992. Outside the university, he studied under the muhaddith of the Hijaz, Sayyid Muhammad b. Alawi al-Maliki, from whom he and his brother Shaykh Ahmad received full ijazas and khilafa. He subsequently completed an MA in Sufism at UNISA with distinction, and co-authored A Sublime Way: the Sufi Path of the Sages of Makka.
His positions included head of the Muslim Judicial Council’s Fatwa Committee, Dean of the Madina Institute, and lecturer at multiple universities. He was listed consecutively in the Muslim500 from 2009 to 2020. His scholarly interests ranged across fiqh, Sufism, Islamic civilisation, gender, and interfaith dialogue.
Shaykh Seraj was no quietist; active in the anti-apartheid struggle, he participated in the Purple Rain March of 1989, and was imprisoned for his opposition to the regime. He was equally committed to empowering women as religious figures in their own right.
Shaykh Seraj was a teacher to thousands and a pastoral presence to many more. The breadth of condolences following his passing — from the US to Turkey to the UAE to India and Indonesia — testified to the scope of his irreplaceable legacy.
[Extended versions of this were published in obituaries for Shaykh Seraj Hendricks in ‘ImanWire’ (USA publication) and TRT News (Turkish publication), with subsequent reprints elsewhere in the US, Indonesia and India. The author is Shaykh Dr Hisham. A more indepth set of articles on Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, his life, and his approach, is here.]
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“We pray that you, Shaykh Dr Hisham, fulfill this additional trust (amana) of being connected to this historic institution; and we ask that God grants you aid and support.”
[Shaykh Seraj Hendricks in his letter of appointment of ‘senior scholar’ of the renowned Azzawia Institute, and confirming his duty of muqaddam in the tariqa]
Born to an English father who embraced Islam at Al-Azhar and an Egyptian mother of ʿAbbāsī-Sudanese and Ḥasanī-Moroccan heritage, Shaykh Dr Hisham was shaped by the West and the Arab world in equal measure — and has never stopped moving between them. Trained in law and the social sciences at Sheffield and Warwick, and in the Islamic intellectual tradition across the Arab world and Southeast Asia, he was invested by Shaykh Seraj Hendricks — successor of the Makkan sage Sayyid Muhammad b. Alawi al-Maliki — with the traditional licensure (ijaza) in the Islamic sciences, and later authorised as a representative (muqaddam) of his Sufi order. A professor of Islamic thought at Bayan Graduate School, his career has spanned Cambridge, Harvard, and the Brookings Institution. He continues to divide his time between the West and the Arab world, teaching, researching, and offering counsel to students and communities worldwide.
Born to an English father who embraced Islam at Al-Azhar and an Egyptian mother of prophetic ʿAbbāsī-Sudanese and Ḥasanī-Moroccan heritage, Shaykh Dr Hisham was raised between the West and the Arab world — a breadth that continues to shape his vocation.
He began engaging the Islamic intellectual tradition in his teens, then seeking out classically trained scholars across Europe, the Arab world, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. His spiritual path eventually led him, in January 2009, to Shaykh Seraj Hendricks — successor of the Makkan sage Sayyid Muhammad b. Alawi al-Maliki. Shaykh Seraj accorded him the traditional licensure (ijaza) in the Islamic sciences, and later authorised him as a representative (muqaddam) for spiritual training and guidance within his tariqa / order, with a public announcement as such on the 19th of Ramadan 1437 at Azzawia in Cape Town.
He has held roles as Council member of the British Board of Scholars and Imams, the first professorial fellow in Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College, Fellow of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, and senior scholar of the Azzawia Institute. His professional analytical work has included positions at the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, and Warwick, in addition to research institutions such as the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Royal Institute for Defence and Security Studies.
He is regularly included in the scholarly section of The 500 Most Influential Muslims, and his published works include A Sublime Path: the Sufi Way of the Makkan Sages (Fons Vitae), The Islamic Tradition and the Human Rights Discourse (Atlantic Council), and A Luminous Lamp (Dar al-Turath al-Islami).
In accordance with the guidance of his teachers, he teaches regularly from the Islamic canon — in law (fiqh), spirituality (tasawwuf), and theology (aqida) — and offers counsel to students on living meaningfully and rootedly in the modern world. His class schedule can be found here. An Arabic profile can be found here.