b. 1952 · Egypt · Jurist, former Grand Mufti of Egypt, professor at al-Azhar
Ali Gomaa was born in 1952 in Beni Suef, in Upper Egypt. He first took a degree in commerce at Ain Shams University in Cairo, finishing in 1973, while studying hadith and Shafiʿi law on the side. He then moved to al-Azhar, where he completed further degrees and a doctorate in legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) in 1988.
He taught at al-Azhar’s Faculty of Islamic and Arabic Studies for many years, covering creed, Qur’anic exegesis, hadith, legal theory and history. From 1998 he also held open teaching circles in a Cairo mosque, reading classical texts with students in the traditional manner. Gomaa follows the Shafiʿi school in law and the Ashʿari school in theology, and is associated with the Sufi tradition. In 2003 he was appointed Grand Mufti of Egypt, a post he held until 2013, issuing fatwas to the public and advising state institutions.
His books, said to number in the dozens, include specialist studies in legal theory (on abrogation, analogy and the sources of law), guides to approaching the classical heritage, collections of contemporary fatwas, and works on creed and Islamic civilisation. They are published mostly in Arabic by Cairo and Giza houses. His public statements on politics, especially after 2011 and 2013, have been controversial and are discussed in the sources listed below.
