Dr. Nuri Friedlander talks to author Michael Sugich about his book, The Luminous Virtues of the Sages of Islam, which introduces the groundbreaking illustrated biographical series, Exemplars for Our Time.
This beautifully made film is an introduction to the publication of Exemplars for Our Time, a nine-book biographical series profiling twentieth and twenty-first century Muslim sages whose knowledge, wisdom and beautiful character made them role models for generations of sincere seekers. Recorded at the series worldwide launch at the Bradford Literature Festival on July 2nd 2022, the film features Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College, acclaimed photographer and series co-editor, and author and series editor Michael Sugich in an illuminating conversation on the subject of sainthood in Islam, moderated by BBC presenter and Guardian contributing writer Remona Aly.
On September 23rd, 2022, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College and Michael Sugich, author of Signs on the Horizons and Hearts Turn and series editor of the newly published Exemplars for Our Time book series, met before an audience at the Zaytuna College auditorium in Berkeley, California. Shaykh Hamza, who had written the biography of his teacher Shaykh Murabit al-Hajj for the series, introduced Michael Sugich, who introduced the book series. The two men have been friends for over forty-five years and for the next ninety minutes traded stories of their encounters with the sages of Islam.
On December 6, 2022, author and translator Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi, photographer Peter Sanders, and author Michael Sugich met at Dr. al-Badawi’s home in Heliopolis in Cairo, Egypt for a rare, informal filmed conversation on the contemporary sages of Islam. All three men were students of the great 20th-century Ba ‘Alawi sage Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and all three have devoted themselves to sharing what they have learned from him and from other masters of the way they have met. Dr. al-Badawi is the author of the concise biography of al-Haddad in Exemplars for Our Time. Peter Sanders and Michael Sugich are the Exemplars series editors.
Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad (or in the Academy Dr. Timothy J. Winter) needs little or no introduction. Scholar, educator, lecturer, translator, publisher, activist, author, and imam, he is the founder and dean of Cambridge Muslim College and the driving force behind the construction and establishment of the Cambridge Mosque. And this is apart from his professorial responsibilities at Cambridge University and a myriad of other activities.
Along with Michael Sugich and Peter Sanders, Shaykh Abdal Hakim spent years in the company of Habib ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad and other contemporary sages.