Adam Anwar Sayid

Adam Sayid
Add a Photo
Born	1976 Sylhet Bangladesh
Nationality	British
Occupation	CEO of Quranology
Years active	1994 - current
Known for	Religious Guidance
Notable work	Quranology, In The Light Of The Qur'an

Adam Sayid is a British Bengali Muslim, who is an independent researcher in Islamic theology, philosophy, and Qur'anic hermeneutics. Many people consider him as one of the key figures in the modern Muslim reform movements in the UK and known for the criticism and rejection of 'Hadith|Hadith-centric' Islam. He gained much attention through the 'Q&A' that he regularly publishes on his Facebook. Adam Sayid was born in the great city of Sylhet, Bangladesh, in 1976 in a village known as Syed Mandaruka in the sub-district of Osmani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmani_Nagar_Upazila%7COsmani Nagar.

Early life and education

He is the fourth child of five children. His father migrated to the UK in the early '60s through the voucher migration system looking for work and soon established himself as a successful Restaurateur|Indian restaurateur. On Christmas day 1983, he reunited with his father along with his mother and siblings at his father's then residence in Aberdeen, Scotland. During this migration, he was seven years of age when he first arrived in the UK.

Adam Sayid studied in the state schools and struggled to find his space as a growing young man with multiple identity crises as to who he was. Bangladeshi, Muslim, or British? For a while, as a young deep thinking teenager, he was comfortable in himself as a closet atheist, which he later ditched in his search for true religion.

Around a year into college, he decided to pursue his desire to learn more about the religion of his birth, Islam, as his search directed a U-turn back to Islam as the truth. So he enrolled at an Boarding school|Islamic boarding school for boys in Bolton, Greater Manchester. He continued this line of education for the next ten years in three Islamic boarding institutes in the UK. During which he memorized the Qur'an, and got comfortably familiar with Sunni theology.

Also during this time, he joined and affiliated with many different Islamic movements, founded a Da'wah organization called 'Da'wah|Muttaqeen,' and established an Islamic school known as the 'Madrasa|Weekend Madrasah,' in which he taught with his own unique 'Easy Daily Lessons.'

Adult life

After briefly living a like a clergy-like figure, teaching basic Islamic studies to the Muslim children of his local area and deeply involving himself with the local mosque activities, in mid-2007 Adam Sayid had a paradigm shift in his theological worldview; from the Hadith-centric one to the Qur'an-centric view.

Therefore, after years of having been involved with Muslim advocacy groups, da’wah initiatives, theological academics, etc, he decided to evolve his perspective of Qur'anic hermeneutics and renounce his faith in the mainstream Hadith-centric position. On the 1st of January 2008, Adam Sayid officially announced and made the decision to convert from Hadith-centric to Qur'an-centric Islam. This upset a lot of people around him, and he decided to end his teaching path.

Family life

Adam Sayid married in 2002 and has currently 4 children. To support his family he has ventured into the Business|business world, as he no longer lives life like a clergy-like figure and therefore does not teach. Also, most mosques are too rigid in their religious views, where he resides, to accommodate the very Liberal|liberal views Adam Sayid now adheres to.

Extremism phase

Adam Sayid has recounted on his social media platforms that during his early 20's his altruistic nature nearly got him sucked into a twisted theology which sugar coats religious fascism as an Islamic utopian way of life, which seeks to subjugate all humans under an archaic form of authoritarian government. He says that their sole purpose is to hijack people's freedom and impose prayers, fasting, veil, and other rituals through institutionalized force.

He regards himself as one of the lucky ones, and that it was his personal reading of the Qur'an which helped him see through the sugar coating into the warped and dangerous ideology that it is. He now believes that there is no doubt that this type of extremism in all religions or ideologies threatens world peace.

From this brief close experience, he concludes that the menace of extremism that we are witnessing around the world is a necrophilic cult and further states that he believes it is critical that normal societies must come together to assess such psychopaths and marginalize these folks in every possible means, for the safety of everyone including themselves; and that it is also very important to tackle the political grievances that have been festering for so long, and turns anguish into an organized rage. As he strongly thinks that these unsolved grievances push the young towards Jihadism and Islamism.

Controversial Statements

Adam Sayid has made many public statements in regards to his Qur'an-centric theological position on certain issues in Islam, that blatantly opposes popular positions. Some of these statements are as follows;

- Adam is not the first man, he had parents and came to the world through the long process of evolution.

- Atheists and people of other faiths can also enter heaven.

- Hadith literature does not constitute a part of the Islamic authoritative sources.

- Questions the five pillars' as the basis of Islam, and proposes alternatives.

- Physical coverings such as the head or face cover by Muslim females are not a dictate of God.

- There is no such thing as an Islamic state.

- Jesus has died and will not return again. Also rejects the coming of Dajjal and Mahdi.

- Believes that prophets were not sent for a religious affair, but were socio-political reformers and revolutionaries.

- Has declared that Zakat is a welfare system and Muslims living in the west fulfill their obligation of Zakat when they pay their taxes.

- Vehemently opposes the common practice of circumcision, and states it is a satanic practice according to the Qur'an.

He regularly publishes many of these views on his Facebook page and other social media. These statements have made him a target by extremists.

Vegetarianism

As a new year's resolution and a permanent change of lifestyle, Adam Sayid announced in 2018 on various of the social media that he has adopted vegetarianism and encourages everyone to either cut down on meat or adopt vegetarianism.

However, this change wasn't triggered by moral or health reasons, but because Adam Sayid believes that an unprecedented amount of meat consumption is having a major ecological effect on all levels of the biodiversity of this world. And so, he believes the Qur'an and his internal moral compass commands him that the continuation of a meat-heavy diet would be a crime against the world and by extension against the future of humanity itself.

Therefore, his vegetarianism is not underpinned by the philosophy that killing an animal for food is evil or that eating meat is prohibited per se, but rather a self-appointed and voluntary deed responding accordingly in the light of the current ecological circumstances we as a species find ourselves in. Adam Sayid points out that chapter 102 was one of the key articulation of the Qur'an along with other references that pushed him to become vegetarian;

"You are endlessly preoccupied with your greedy consumption of this world; right up to your grave! Nevertheless, soon you will know; indeed, you will know! Besides, if you could foresee with certainty the results of your handiwork, you will see a world in flames. And also on that day, you will see with your own eyes the reality of your handiwork, and you will be indeed questioned concerning the use of life you had on earth."

Quranology App

Contrary to the claims of the Islamophobes that the Qur'an is the source of extremism and terrorism, Adam Sayid believes that the solution to those extremists who kill indiscriminately in the name of Islam, is intensifying and furthering the study of the Qur'an, as he strongly believes that they are ignorant and have not read the Qur'an in its entirety ever in their own volition, but only have been fed adulterated snippets, constructed to create a strategic result, by others; and thus since the Qur'an is readily available everywhere, these individuals are not able to grasp it's light for themselves because it is buried underneath layers and layers of extra-Qur'anic literature that directly assume, unwarrantedly, the authoritative position of the Qur'an.

So, in order to curb this ignorance, to re-educate the masses, and to give the Qur'an full autonomy to speak to the people directly, without clerical intervention and without bending its directives via extra-Qur'anic add-ons, Adam Sayid has created an interactive Qur'an app called Quranology.

The Quranology app is basically a unique social platform, with the Qur'an as the subject of discussion, and it is also a powerful interactive Qur'an application, where users are equipped with a whole range of study tools and materials, that will help them enhance their knowledge of the Qur'an..

References

This article "Adam Anwar Sayid" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.