About the Author
Dr. Badr Hashemi
Author, Islamic scholar and professional economist — on a lifelong mission to make the timeless teachings of the Qur'an accessible to everyone, everywhere.
Early life & learning
Badr Hashemi was born and raised in a religious family environment which inherited a legacy of the centuries-old tradition of dispensing values, virtues and education. He completed his elementary learning and had partly memorised the Qur'an while under ten, and continued with the study of the Arabic language, grammar and the exegesis of the Qur'an and Hadith — in parallel with a formal Western education in the social sciences and development studies.
Teachers & studies
He attended sandwich courses at al-Azhar in Qur'anic Arabic, and lectures in the interpretation of the Qur'an and Fiqh by Shaykh Ali al-Tantawi (Faqih) in Cairo and Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (Faqih) in Qatar. During the mid-1960s, while a student at the University of Cambridge (UK), he held periodic learning sessions with Professor Arthur J. Arberry, the celebrated translator of the Qur'an and the Ahadith; and later, in the late 1980s, with Muhammad Asad, the noted translator of the Qur'an, in Gibraltar.
A life in economics & public service
Dr. Hashemi is a professional economist and a Fellow of the World Bank Institute of Development Economics in Washington, D.C., and of the United Nations Asian Development Institute. He served as a civil servant in Pakistan and was part of the international civil service with the United Nations. A keynote speaker at international seminars and conferences across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Far East, he has travelled widely, with long periods of residence in the Arab Middle East and North Africa.
A scholar of scripture & civilisations
Well versed in Arabic and English, and well read in the Torah, the Psalms, the Bible, Islamic history and culture, ancient civilisations and comparative religions, Dr. Hashemi has held interactive discussions with Jewish Rabbis and Christian Priests in North America and Western Europe. He has visited many of the historic sites enumerated in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur'an — scattered from the Nile delta, through the Levant, to Babylon.
His written works
Dr. Hashemi began work on an English paraphrasing of the Qur'an in 1999. This grew into a monumental research project — a four-volume Tafseer with parallel citations from the Biblical literature. His further works include The Divine 99, Journeying Through The Qur'an, Introducing The Qur'an, Living with The Prophet Muhammad, Essence of Islam, Allah Speaks To You in The Qur'an, and An Anthology of the Highlights of the Qur'an. His books have been published by the International Islamic University, the National Book Foundation, the Holy Qur'an Research Foundation, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur and Bahauddin Zakariya University.
The Divine 99 also lives on as a mobile application — available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store — bringing the Asma ul Husna to readers on their phones. He is presently exploring the principal thematic issues in the Hadith literature that form the common heritage between the Shia and Sunni schools of thought in Islam. Dr. Hashemi lives between the USA and the UK.
His readers
All of Dr. Hashemi's books are offered here completely free — to read online in an interactive reader, or to download as PDF. There is no charge, no account and no barrier: only the invitation to read, reflect, and share what these books mean to you.
