A private invitation to support a rare revival of Islamic scholarship.
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An Invitation · Oxford DPhil · 2026
Imran Fazal — a fully qualified Islamic scholar, former Oxford philosophy tutor, and a decade of senior service in the UK civil service — has spent over twenty years preparing for one task: rebuilding the intellectual foundations of Islamic scholarship. His DPhil at Oxford is the moment that preparation goes to the world’s stage. This is an incredible opportunity to support life-changing scholarship.
The Journey
Over five years as student and then tutor to undergraduates, Imran’s skills of conceptual analysis and the testing of arguments were sharply honed — training that would later let him access the oldest layer of Islamic learning and engage with it on its own terms.
In the Middle East he completed the traditional scholarly training — and discovered, to his genuine surprise, that the civilisation-sustaining method of rigorous argument had receded into rote learning even in celebrated centres of learning.
“Stick to the book came the teacher’s cry when a poor student would ask a question to understand what they were reading.”
Following the example of the rare scholars who had emerged despite the system, Imran set himself on the same path: writing comprehensive books that restore and develop the dialectical practice of early Islamic scholarship — alongside the demands of a full-time career.
Senior roles brought direct exposure to real-world problems and honed skills of delivery and implementation — including work relating to Muslim communities, behind closed doors, at the heart of public policy.
There is a time for deep work, and a time for bringing ideas to a wider audience, subjecting them to the highest standards of academic critique, and building a research community around them. This is that time — and the DPhil will, God willing, pave the way.
The Problem
The raw material of Islamic education — the instructional books that form the minds of students and emerge as sermons, pastoral support, fatwas, laws and norms — the primary building blocks that shape Muslim culture around us, are themselves decayed and unfit for purpose. The problem recurs almost wherever Muslims are found, because it is structural.
Everyday conversations about Islam are caught between rejection and apologism — both often united by the same superficial reading, because nothing else is accessible.
The educational building blocks themselves — the texts and methods that form scholars — have decayed. The excellent scholarly minds that exist emerged despite the system, not because of it.
One focus: re-engineering those building blocks — rigorous academic work with primary classical Arabic texts, presented in works that change how Muslim scholars, and the communities they shape, think about Islam.
The Work So Far
Several comprehensive books in progress that restore and develop the dialectical practice of early Islamic scholarship — a contribution to its urgently required revival.
Traditional scholarly training completed in Damascus and Cairo, building on five years of philosophy at Oxford — a rare combination of both intellectual worlds.
Senior roles delivering on real-world problems — the practical counterpart to two decades of deep scholarly work.
Imran has taught this material in the Middle East and the West — to imams with their own communities, well-known Islamic scholars and established academics, who are already disseminating its distinctive ideas.
Why the DPhil
A rare set of full marks for the DPhil application, awarded by the University of Oxford’s academic review panel.
The research takes one focussed but significant area — the medieval Islamic discussion of when war against non-Muslims is justified — and shows how to rediscover the lost insights of an Islamic tradition that was more plural and humanitarian than is often thought today.
It does so in a way that is neither apologetic nor defensive, but instead, by the philological, analytical and historical scholarship standards it sets, an exemplar for future work.
The DPhil paves the way for a full-time academic career: a scholarly monograph, an accessible version for general readers, and a regular output of articles, books, discussions and talks on the topics that matter to Muslims today.
What Your Support Enables
Funding the DPhil doesn’t support a degree. It unlocks a life’s work — with outputs and impacts rippling outward across three concentric circles.
Academic Islamic Studies in the West often reflects an outsider’s perspective lacking real immersion in the texts. The plan: a full-time academic career, a scholarly monograph, an accessible general edition, and a regular output of serious scholarship in Islamic law and intellectual history.
Not an ivory-tower academic: writing for and empowering broader audiences, publicly representing with regularity and persuasive force, and having tangible impact on public policy and communications — as practised behind closed doors in the civil service.
A body of expert writings for the ’ulama and direct teaching of a new generation: critical editions of long-neglected Arabic texts, then dedicated Arabic works in law, theology and hadith — reviving ijtihad, rediscovering the breadth of classical opinion, and rebuilding an intellectual infrastructure that produces scholarship that is relevant, critical and authentic.
Standing With Him
Letters from the University of Oxford, scholars and institutions, and members of the core group of supporters will appear here.
A letter of support from the University of Oxford will be featured here.
Supporting letters from scholars, academics and institutions who know Imran’s work will be featured here.
Words from members of the founding circle of supporters — why they chose to stand behind this work — will be featured here.
The Revival Circle
Moving from a stable professional income back into full-time study makes external funding necessary. But this is about far more than funding a doctorate. This work is so important, and this moment so central, that benefactors will be funding something truly incredible — a genuine revival of our intellectually stimulating tradition. And together, as a community, we will come together to learn from these very principles — through updates, teachings and gatherings over the coming years.
One of one hundred — together, fully funding a year of the DPhil.
Deeper patronage across the full three-year journey of the doctorate.
A one-off or annual gift anchoring the Circle — and the revival it funds.
Those who stand behind this work are not donors on the sidelines — they are companions on the path, and members of a community we are forming together. Every supporter, at every level, will be brought together to take part in regular discussions — a forum of supporters, for supporters, where these ideas and the classical texts are explored side by side. These gatherings belong to the community itself; Imran’s part is the research they circle around, and his time must remain protected for it. Supporting the revival is the beginning of the journey, not the end of it.
Above all, this is about supporting scholarship of real substance — work we hold in high regard. We would simply ask that it be spoken of in the same spirit: with the sincerity and weight it deserves, and never as a passing novelty.
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