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A pure breed in that field, having studied Arabic and Islamic Studies in Damascus, Syria, and acquired a Postgraduate Diploma, Master’s degree, and PhD, Sheikh Adelabu is the founder and first president of Awqaf Africa and Awqaf Africa Muslim Open College in London where he lectures on Arabic and Islamic studies. Sheikh Adelabu is also known as Al-Afriqi or Shaykh Al-Afriqi.
Career and Global Impact
Adelabu has served and researched as an Arabic and Islamic Scholar, a linguist, jurist and lecturer in Oxford, Cambridge and London in the late 1990s. He has made a great impact in the UK through his educational and community contributions. He has had appointments as a school governor in several boards, schools and academies in London where he was school parent governors’ ambassador and representative at Westminster City Council sitting 2013 on the Children and Community Services Policy and Scrutiny (P&S) Committee as well as serving as (Vice) Chair of Tri-Borough School Forums for Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea RBKC, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham LBHF and Westminster City. In addition to that, Adelabu founded the African Muslim portal EsinIslam.com and IslamAfrica.com, both of which are administered and directed by his wife as the director and editor-in-chief, with management by volunteers from the students and followers of Adelabu, especially at Awqaf Africa and its Islamic College in London. Beyond the UK and on to Syria where Adelabu was a postgraduate in Damascus in the early 1990s, He was a delegate of the African Students Union and general secretary of the West African Students’ Union in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. While in that office Adelabu visited prisons and hospitals during the time when over 10,000 African migrants had been killed, jailed, or wounded in their adventures to reach the Middle East, many for sanctuary and others to get to Europe for what they had expected to be a better life.Sign up to the Connect Nigeria daily newsletter
Horrified at the number of unknown or unclaimed dead among the immigrant prisoners and their wounded countrymen, women, and children in the hospitals, Adelabu formed a group of volunteer African students to help. He received huge support from the President of the Syrian Scientific Academy and Chancellor of the University of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Abdullatif Salih Al Farfour, and from the Dean of Postgraduate School at the university, Shawkiy Abu Khalil, the Dean of the Faculty of Literature – both signatories to the fellowship at the Syrian Scientific Academy.
Other Notable Engagements
Other gigs carried out by Adelabu include Da’wah activities of the African academic that include serving as an Imam Khatib previously as Kuwaiti Cultural Attaché London, working as Islamic columnist for the Libyan Arabic daily newspaper Al-Arab International in London, and serving as the first Chief Imam and Chief Missioner for the Islamic Youth League of Nigeria, Abuja. His academic works and publications include an Arabic English Dictionary, an encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Quran and Sunnah, Islam in Africa – West African in Particular, and Missionary and ColoniSation in Africa. He also founded and published in the United Kingdom 1998 Delab International – an African-Asian Middle East magazine and journal covering religion, politics, sociology, and literature. Adelabu has called for wider adoption of Islamic values which he claimed would bring about lasting and positive changes while learning from the effects of colonisation, slavery, and power struggles. It is reported that influential people met with him in mid-1995 to discuss his ideas. Source: EsinIslam Wikipedia Featured Image Source:Got a suggestion? Contact us: editor@connectnigeria.com