09 - Off the Cuff

Shaykh Taha Karaan is a Shafi’i researcher born in Cape Town, South Africa to a family eminent in both its maternal and fatherly ancestry for Islamic grant. His dad, Shaykh Yusuf Karaan, is one of the most established and most recognized Islamic researchers in the Cape. Shaykh Yusuf – well known for his interpretation of a large portion of Shaykh al-Hadith Mawlana Muhammad Zakariyya al-Kandhlawi’s original works – right now sits as the boss Magistrate for Islamic Civil Matters in the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC).

Shaykh Taha Karaan finished his Qur’anic remembrance in one year at the Waterfall Islamic Institute, the most seasoned Islamic theological college in South Africa. Amid his stay, he helped with the altering of the Qur’anic prints that the Institute has ended up well known for the world over. In the wake of completing four years of the ‘alim course in two years, he traveled to the Indian sub-mainland and Dar al-Ulum Deoband, moving on from that point in 1991 with the most astounding of qualifications – as did his dad – in a class of more than 700 understudies. He then went to the Middle East and finished a two-year graduate certificate at the Higher Institute for Islamic Studies in Cairo, Egypt.

Shaykh Taha Karaan is the beneficiary of various chains of transmission (ijazaat) – from very much regarded researchers in India, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others – in various fields of Islamic study.

At present, Shaykh Taha Karaan is an individual from the Ifta’ Department of the MJC, and sits as an official individual from the Muslim Personal Law Board and on the Islamic Advisory Board of ABSA, one of South Africa’s national banks. He is a looked for after speaker at Islamic symposia and gatherings however goes to them sparingly, wanting to invest the vast majority of his energy at the Islamic theological school, Dar al-Uloom al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah, that he established in 1996. The instructive push of the theological school reflects Shaykh Taha’s own particular spearheading vision and responsibility to unequivocally interface with the difficulties of the present day age through the twin goals of conservation and advancement.

In his instructing, composing and lawful verdicts (fatawa), Shaykh Taha Karaan routinely addresses contemporary issues, for example, the difficulties of post-advancement, woman’s rights, Islamic financial aspects and money, the old and new orientalisms, and fiqh issues influencing diaspora Muslim groups.

His understudies (and creators of this history) depict him as perfectly skilled with all encompassing information; had of a close photographic memory; an unquenchable bookworm inside of the Islamic sciences and without; an instructor that never stops to motivate; blessed with an exquisite calligraphic hand and an affinity for verse; completely unassuming, lovely, splendid and kind.