Mustafa Moslem and First Encyclopedia of Quran Interpretation
Sheikh Mustafa Moslem got a PhD from Al-Azhar University. He was an expert in Quranic sciences, especially interpretation. He served as the chief editor of the Encyclopedia of Thematic Interpretation of the Quran. He died of coronavirus in Turkey on April 17, 2021.
He was a pious and scholarly man who spent his life in teaching and Quranic training of the youth. After the Halabja massacre (March 1988) in Iraq where the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein dropped chemical bombs on the Kurdish city in Iraq, he started scholarly and cultural activities and established the Association of Kurdistan Scholars.
Sheikh Mustafa Moslem was born on Ain Al-Arab city near Aleppo in Syria in 1940. He studied religious sciences and got his BA in Shaira sciences in Damascus in 1965. Four years later, he received his MA in Quranic sciences and interpretation from Al-Azhar University. He went on to get his PhD in 1974 from the same university.
The scholar taught as universities in Saudi Arabia for 9 years before teaching at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
Moslem supervised many MA and PhD thesis and attended numerous Islamic conferences and scholarly gatherings. He also organized many courses on Quranic sciences and interpretation.
One of his major activities was supervising the compilation of the Encyclopedia of Thematic Interpretation of the Quran. It is the first scholarly encyclopedia about Quranic themes.
He also founded the Sharia University in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Al-Zahra University in Turkey’s Gaziantep.
Moslem wrote nearly 90 books and papers about themes like Quran’s miracles, methods used by Quran interpreters, and thematic interpretation of the Quran.
