Abdul-Basser, Taha bin Hasan

Abdul-Basser was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, where he attended Prep for Prep as well as The Dalton School. His father, Hasan Abdul-Basser, converted to Islam at age sixteen upon the advice of his mentor, Malcolm X. Abdul-Basser graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree (A.B.) in the Comparative Study of Religion in 1996. He also completed a Master's (A.M.) in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and is an ABD from the same department. In addition, he has studied traditional Islamic disciplines with scholars from the Sudan, Tanzania, Yemen and Bahrain. He has received traditional licenses (ijazat; sing. ijazah) in Islamic law and ethics, Prophetic traditions (hadith) as well as other disciplines from several teachers, including Shaykh Nizam Yaquby; Shaykh Musa Maduri of Al-Azhar University; the qadi and mufti, Shaykh Muhammad al-Umrani; and Shaykh Dr. Muhammad Ghunaym. In Yemen, he studied at the Spectra Institute of Language Studies as well as other smaller institutes. Currently, Abdul-Basser is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard working on a dissertation on post-formative Islamic ethics and traditional Arabic literary theory. He lives in a Boston suburb with his wife, Monifa Matthew (Harvard College `98) and their three children.