Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani

Muhammad Taqi Usmani (born 3 October 1943)  is a Pakistani Islamic jurist and leading scholar in the fields of Qur'an, Hadith, Islamic law, Islamic economics, and comparative religion. He was a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology from 1977 to 1981, a judge of the Federal Shariat Court from 1981 to 1982, and a judge in the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan from 1982 to 2002. In 2020, he was selected as the most influential Muslim personality in the world. He is considered a leading intellectual of the contemporary Deobandi movement, and his opinions and fatwas are widely accepted by Deobandi scholars and institutions worldwide, including the Darul Uloom Deoband in India. Since 2021, he has been serving as the Chairman of Wifaq ul Madaris Al-Arabia. His father, Shafi Usmani, was the Grand Mufti of Darul Uloom Deoband and Taqi Usmani migrated to Pakistan with his family after the partition of India in 1948.

Muhammad Taqi Usmani studied at Darul Uloom Karachi, the University of Karachi, and the University of the Punjab. He began teaching at Darul Uloom Karachi in 1960. Since 1967, he has been the editor of the Urdu magazine Al-Balagh and the English magazine Al-Balagh International since 1976. He is recognized as an authority in the field of Islamic law and its application. He is a permanent member of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the OIC and a former deputy chairman. He is also a member of the Muslim World League based in Mecca. At the age of 17, he wrote his first book titled Islam and Birth Control. He is the author of 143 books on various subjects in Arabic, English, and Urdu. He is widely recognized for his contributions to Islamic economics, where he has played a leading role in Islamizing the banking and finance industry in Pakistan and abroad.

 In 1998, his book on Islamic economics, An Introduction to Islamic Finance, was considered significant. His extensive work in Islamic economics led to his appointment as the Chairman of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), a Bahrain-based Islamic Financial Institution of the Islamic Development Bank. In 2014, he was appointed as the Chairman of the Shariah Board of the State Bank of Pakistan. He has also served as the Chairman of the Shariah Board in more than a dozen Islamic banks and financial institutions. In recognition of his contributions to Islamic economics, he received the Islamic Development Bank Prize in 2014. Under his supervision, the English translation of Ma'ariful Qur'an was completed. He has authored translations and explanations of the Quran in both English and Urdu, which were published as The Noble Quran and Tauzeeh Al-Qur'an, respectively. Along with Ulum al-Quran, these works are his major contributions to the study of the Quran.

 In the field of Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), his notable works include Fatawa-e-Usmani, Fiqh al-Buyu, Fiqhi Maqalat, Islam and Modern Economic Problems, and Buhuth fi Qadhaya Fiqhiyyah Mu`asirah, among others. His comprehensive explanation of Sahih Muslim, titled Takmilah Fath al-Mulhim, spans six volumes and is considered his finest work. The Hadith encyclopedia Al-Mudawwanah al-Jāmiʿah was compiled under his supervision. Among his other works in the field of hadith sciences are Inamul Bari, Darus Tirmizi, and The Authority of Sunnah. In recognition of his services in public welfare, he was honored with Pakistan's civil award, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, in 2019. In 2010, Abdullah II of Jordan bestowed upon him the Order of Independence. In 2022, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from an American International Theism University.