Muhammad al-Tijani

Sayyid Muhammad al-Tijani
محمد التيجاني

Personal
Born	(1943-02-02) 2 February 1943 (age 81) Gafsa, French protectorate of Tunisia
Religion	Islam
Era	Modern era
Region	North Africa
Denomination	Shia
Creed	Usuli Twelver Shi'a
Muslim leader
Influenced by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i

Muhammad al-Tijani (Arabic: محمد التيجاني, romanized: Muḥammad al-Tījānī; born 2 February 1943) is an ex-Sunni Tunisian Twelver Shi'a scholar, academic, and theologian.

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Personal life

Al-Tijani was born in a Tunisian Sunni Muslim family of the Maliki school. Previously, his family added “al-Tijani” to their name after adopting the Tijani sufi order of Ahmad al-Tijani. He was eighteen years of age when the Les Scouts Tunisiens agreed to send him as one of six Tunisian representatives to the first conference for Islamic and Arab scouts which took place in Mecca. He used the opportunity to perform the Hajj. He stayed twenty five days in Saudi Arabia, during which he met many prominent Salafi scholars, listened to their lectures and became heavily influenced by the Salafi movement.

Upon returning to Tunisia, al-Tijani started actively promoting and spreading Salafism during the religious classes and sermons that he gave, including in the Great Mosque of Kairouan. He then traveled to Egypt’s al-Azhar University. On the way back to Tunisia, al-Tijani met a Shi'i Iraqi lecturer from the University of Baghdad named Mun'im. He came to Cairo to submit his Ph.D. thesis at al-Azhar University and Mun'im invited him to Iraq. Al-Tijani spent several weeks with Mun'im; visited Baghdad and Najaf, and met with several leading Twelver Shi'i scholars, including Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai, who taught him about Shi'a Islam. After long debates with the Shi'i scholars, he became a Shi'a Muslim.^[1]