Abdallah bin Bayyah

Abdallah bin Mahfudh ibn Bayyah (Arabic: عبد الله بن المحفوظ بن بيّه, born 1935) is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar, politician and professor of Islamic studies at the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, who serves as the chairman of the UAE Council for Fatwa.

He is a specialist in all four traditional Sunni schools, with an emphasis on the Maliki Madh'hab. Currently he is the president of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. Bin Bayyah is involved in a number of scholarly councils including the Islamic Fiqh Council, a Saudi-based Institute. He was also the vice-president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. from which he resigned in 2014. He was also a member of the Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research, a council of Muslim clerics that aims to explain Islamic law in a way that is sensitive to the realities of European Muslims. For over two decades, in relation to the latter two institutions, he worked closely with the Egyptian scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi. However, after the Arab Springs, Bin Bayyah distanced himself from Qaradawi and the International Union of Muslim scholars, instead founding the UAE-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The Forum has attracted huge controversy for its close ties to the UAE government as well as Bin Bayyahs personal support for authoritarian leaders.