AbdulWahid Hamid

writer, editor, educationalist, and teacher

Born in Trinidad in 1943.  His best-selling Islam: the Natural Way has been translated into several languages including French, Spanish, Turkish, Bossanski, Urdu, and Malay.

Earlier publications include a pioneering course for the teaching of Qur’anic Arabic, and life histories of the Companions of the Prophet based on original Arabic sources. He has edited several books including The Makkan Crucible by Zakaria Bashier, Pondering the Qur’an translated from Urdu by M. S Kayani and The Quest for Sanity – reflections on September the 11th and the Aftermath, published by the Muslim Council of Britain.

Prior to arriving in Britain in 1964, AbdulWahid was a primary school teacher and was as a student at Al-Azhar in Cairo. In London, while doing further ‘A’ levels in Latin and History, he joined the Labour Party but left in disgust at Harold Wilson’s Rhodesia policy.

AbdulWahid Hamid studied Middle East history and Arabic at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. As a student, he was president of the London Islamic Circle, general secretary of the Federation of Students’ Islamic Societies in the UK and EIRE, editor of its monthly publication The Muslim, a member of the team that launched Impact International in 1971, and was active in community work, in both Trinidad and Britain.

He was involved in founding and developing The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). He was a member of the MCB panel that presented evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Discrimations in October 2002.

He was responsible for the major refurbishment of the Rabitah Centre and Mosque, Goodge Street, Central London under the supervision of the architect Ayyub Malik and the graphic designer Zafar Malik. Zafar Malik has provided the graphic design for most of MELS publications.

His career has included work as a university lecturer and an educational consultant in Saudi Arabia and the teaching of Qur’anic Arabic in London, Chicago, Toronto, Trinidad, Bahrain and South Afri

“What I have also tried to do is to devise a course that would give the learner a great feeling of achievement, to be able to understand actual Quranic texts very early on in the course through the careful choice of Quranic passages and through using the principle of word frequency in the Quran..”

Abdul Wahid Hamid