Dr. Hadi Raza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Shia Theology, Faculty of Theology, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India. With over twelve years of teaching and academic experience as an Assistant Professor at Aligarh Muslim University, his scholarship is rooted primarily in Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh) and Shia Theology (Kalām), while extending across the wider classical Islamic intellectual tradition and its engagement with contemporary knowledge.
He earned his PhD from Aligarh Muslim University for his research on “Protection of Environment in Islamic Law,” an interdisciplinary study that brought Islamic jurisprudence into sustained engagement with environmental ethics, legal reasoning, and contemporary ecological concerns.
In 1999, Dr. Hadi Raza travelled to the Islamic Republic of Iran to pursue advanced Islamic studies in the Hawza ʿIlmiyya. His principal areas of higher seminary training were Fiqh, Uṣūl al-Fiqh, and Islamic Theology (Kalām), complemented by extensive study of Qur’anic sciences, Arabic grammar and literature, logic, philosophy, mysticism, and ethics. He subsequently completed Bahth al-Kharij, the highest level of advanced Hawza scholarship in Fiqh and Uṣūl al-Fiqh, where scholars engage independently and critically with the Qur’an, Sunnah, juristic principles, classical authorities, and competing legal arguments. This advanced stage constitutes the traditional scholarly path towards Ijtihād and the higher ranks of Shia religious scholarship associated with the title Ayatollah.
A distinctive dimension of Dr. Hadi Raza’s scholarship is his endeavour to bring the classical Islamic disciplines, particularly Fiqh and Kalām, into serious intellectual engagement with modern knowledge. Alongside his traditional studies, his scholarly interests extend to medicine, anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, zoology, and environmental studies, especially where these fields intersect with Islamic jurisprudence, theology, ethics, human nature, and the philosophy of religion.
Fluent in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and English, Dr. Hadi Raza works across diverse textual, linguistic, and intellectual traditions. His principal areas of teaching and research include Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), Shia Theology (Kalām), Uṣūl al-Fiqh, Qur’anic Studies, Logic, Philosophy, Mysticism, Ethics, Environmental Thought, and the relationship between Islamic thought and modern science. He is also actively engaged in research, writing, translation, teaching, and scholarly and religious discourse at national and international forums.
At the heart of Dr. Hadi Raza’s intellectual endeavour is an effort to bring the profound legacy of Shia jurisprudential and theological scholarship into meaningful dialogue with the intellectual challenges of the contemporary world. His work seeks to connect revelation with reason, Fiqh with contemporary realities, Kalām with modern intellectual questions, and the classical Islamic tradition with modern scientific thought, while preserving the theological integrity, methodological rigour, and intellectual depth of the Islamic scholarly tradition.