Shaykh Samer Al-Nass, a renowned scholar of Qur’an, Tafsir, and Hadith, delivered a retreat at MCC from January 14-15, 2023 at MCC giving spiritual insights about a collection of short spiritual sayings containing profound meaning driven from the Qur’an and Sunnah. The book he used is called “The Book of Wisdom.”

Shaykh Samer was born in Damascus, Syria, where he studied at the College of Medicine of the University of Damascus. He went on to study in the United States where he qualified in internal medicine.

The Shaykh has studied under some of the great ‘ulama of the Levant (Shaam) and the Arabian peninsula. He has a traditional licenses to teach (ijazah) in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of the Shatibiyyah and the Durra from the world-renowned Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. He received an ijazah in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of Tayyibah from the Egyptian Shaykh Ahmad Mustafa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, himself a student of Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Zayyat of Egypt. Shaykh Samer has a traditional license to teach (ijazah) in Islamic law (fiqh) and theology and creed (‘aqida) from Shaykh Lutfi al-Fayumi and the late Hanafi Mufti, Shaykh Adib al-Kallas. He also studied with the previous Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Abu Yusr Ibn `Abidin. Shaykh Samer was honoured to study hadith in Mecca with the great Indonesian-Meccan Shaykh Yasin al-Fadani, and with Shaykh Nur ud-din `Itr of Syria. He also has an ijazah in Prophetic traditions (hadith) from the late Shaykh `Abd Allah Siraj al-Din of Aleppo, Syria.

Shaykh Samer is presently a teacher at Ma’had al-Fatih al-Islami in Damascus, teaching the Hanafi fiqh manual Al-Hidayah in the department of Islamic Law (Shariah), and lecturer on the ten recitations of the Qur’an in the MA program. The Shaykh teaches Qur’anic recitation (tajwid) after fajr prayers daily in the blessed mosque of Shaykh Ibn `Arabi, a post given to him by his Shaykh and father-in-law, one of the illustrious Shaykhs of Quran in the Levant (Sham), the late Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. Shaykh Samer has been teaching at various Islamic studies intensive courses in England and North America since 2000.