Born in Egypt in 1894, Muhammad Abdullah Draz was a respected Islamic scholar and thinker raised in the deep-rooted Al-Azhar tradition. Beginning his education at Al-Azhar, the classical learning center of the East, Draz traveled to France in the 1930s to study philosophy and the history of religions at Sorbonne University. This allowed him to closely acquaint himself with both the rich heritage of the East and the modern intellectual methodologies of the West.
Draz’s primary objective was to present the universal message of the Quran in a contemporary, rational language understandable to modern audiences. In his work The Moral World of the Quran (La Morale du Koran), prepared at the Sorbonne and widely acclaimed in Western academia, he grounded the ethical principles offered by Islam on a systematic philosophical foundation. In another widely read study, The Great News (An-Naba’ al-‘Azim), he addressed doubts by demonstrating the divine origin and literary power of the Quran through logical arguments.
Passing away in 1958, Muhammad Abdullah Draz became one of the most reliable and insightful figures of modern Islamic thought through his sincere piety, scholarly objectivity, and the intellectual bridge he established between East and West.
