Welcome to Ask the Sheikh.com!
Ask the Sheikh (ATS) is a Question and Answer website on Islam, designed for both Muslims and non-Muslims around the world, with particular emphasis on people living in the West.
About the Aim:
To educate, inform and hence enlighten all people about the True Islam, according to the teachings of the Holy Quran, and the traditions (Sunnah) of the Holy Prophet (s) and his purified progeny, the Ahlul-Bayt (a.s).
About the Objectives:
– to provide Muslims and non-Muslims with a deeper insight into the various aspects of Islam
– to provide solutions to the personal/social problems of people, within an Islamic context
– to counter the false information and propaganda being spread on Islam
– to promote an accurate understanding of Islam
About the Questions:
We warmly invite and encourage you to send in your questions on all matters related to Islam. Before sending in your questions, please do a quick search using the search engine on our home page (or manually by briefly exploring our Question Categories) lest your question has already been answered.
Also, please keep in mind that your questions will pass an administrator before reaching one of the Sheikhs. The administrators mainly check for spam mail, but also whether an answer already exists on the ATS database for the question sent. The privacy of all questioners’ personal details (and questions that won’t be published) is taken very seriously. However, we kindly suggest that you try to refrain from including any specific details (e.g. names, places), if you wish to further protect your confidentiality.
About the Answers:
In short, all answers provided on ATS are provided by highly-qualified and prominent religious scholars who come from various communities from around the world. The questions that are answered by more junior scholars, will definitely be reviewed and edited by a senior scholar before the answer is sent back to the questioner and/or published onto the website. The name of the more junior scholar aswell as the senior scholar who undertook the review will both appear below the answer during publication.
We will endeavour to provide you with the biographies, and the intellectual qualifications and background of every scholar who partakes in answering questions on the website (please refer to ‘Meet the Sheikh’ page).
Jurisprudential (Fiqh) Answers:
Please note that only the opinions of the currently living, most famous Maraaje’ will be provided by the scholars at this point in time. That is, the opinions of:
– Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei (h.a.)
– Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani (h.a.)
– Grand Ayatollah Makaarem Shirazi (h.a.)
However, please also note that we will only publish the opinions of Ayatollah Khamenei (h.a.) and Ayatollah Sistani (h.a.) on our website, because of technical limitations and the overwhelming numbers of Muslims who do Taqleed (religious emulation) to them. As for Ayatollah Makaarem Shirazi’s opinions, they will be provided to questioners privately, but the Q&As will not be published on our website.
Finally, it must be said that while ATS endeavours to provide the best answers to your questioners, it is not responsible that all the answers will be 100% correct. Ultimately, every scholar is responsible for his own answers.