Our Patron

Ours is a way of knowledge, truth, purity and service. All one’s spiritual affairs and needs are taken care of when one walks this path. Desire only to be desireless. Seek to be such that you seek nothing…

Al-Ma’rifa Institute has been established under the direct guidance, careful supervision and loving gaze of the erudite scholar and sage of our age, Shaykh ul-Islam Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri. Shaykh ul-Islam is one of the greatest living custodians of the Islamic tradition, holding and issuing scholarly licences in all the disciplines of the classical Islamic curriculum. 

The Shaykh is a remnant of the classical age of Islamic scholarship, combining outward expertise of the rational and transmitted sciences with inward mastery of spiritual realities; encyclopaedic knowledge with an angelic presence; eloquence of speech with a serene soul that permeates everything in his environment. 

Raised under the visionary guidance and tutelage of his father, the polymath Shaykh Dr. Fariduddin Qadri, a graduate of Firangi Mahal (of the oldest & most prestigious seats of classical learning in the Subcontinent), Shaykh ul-Islam assiduously gave himself to the study of classical works in Arabic grammar, literature, rhetoric, logic, law, legal theory, spirituality and other disciplines for over 15 formative years. Under one of his primary teachers, Allama Abdur-Rashid Jhanghwi, the Shaykh would spend 15 hours a day immersed in the study of the traditional sciences, completing the most advanced works of the classic Nizami curriculum, as well reading the canonical works of Hadith and attaining licences to narrate them from several Hadith masters including Shaykh Sardar Ahmad al-Qadri, Shaykh Sayyid Abul Barakat Alwari and Shaykh Ahmad Sa’id Kazimi.       

Shaykh ul-Islam has continued this way of life to this very day, where in his 70s, when not travelling, he spends 12-16 hours a day studying, researching, writing, counselling and serving the intellectual and spiritual needs of people the world over. In the last 40 years, he has published over 700 titles in multiple sciences, each of which takes a lifetime to master. He has skilfully translated the Holy Quran into 2 languages, completed 3 works of varied length on the exegesis of the Quran, written an (unpublished) commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari and compiled an 8-volume encyclopaedia on the Hadith sciences.

Shaykh ul-Islam is a master educationalist; a Murabbi, nurturing hearts, souls and minds; transforming millions of people, young and old, across the world by empowering them to lead spiritually fulfilling lives through the sacred knowledge tradition of Islam. He is an embodiment of Prophetic concern, endlessly contemplating the state of the Umma and its needs; planning projects to revive the principles and ideals of the Muhammadan Way. Al-Ma’rifa is but one of his dreams.