Dallas imam

His Eminence, the Grand Mufti of Zahle and Bekaa, Sheikh Khalil Al-Mays, may he rest in peace.

Name and Lineage: Sheikh Khalil bin Muhiyy al-Din bin Hasan Al-Mays.

Birth and Upbringing: Born in 1941 in the town of Mekseh in Bekaa, Zahle district. He grew up in a rural environment, received his elementary education in his village's school, then moved to the official school in Qabb Elias. He obtained his fifth-grade certificate in 1955. Even after his religious studies, he would assist his family in the fields during summer vacations.

Pursuit of Knowledge: After completing his elementary studies and obtaining a certification, his father registered him at the religious college, currently Al-Azhar in Beirut. He stayed in the college's internal department for five years, acquiring knowledge until his graduation in 1961. This led him to study at Al-Azhar University in Egypt after obtaining his religious high school diploma.

Motivations for Seeking Religious Knowledge:

1. His rural environment: Sheikh Khalil emphasized the religious nature of the old rural environment and the direct
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   Shah Khalil Allah III

   45th Imam of the Nizari Isma'ili community

   Shah Khalil Allah III (Persian: شاه خليل الله سوم‎; 1740–1817) was the 45th Imam of the NizariIsmailiShia Islam community. Khalilullah Ali III was born in 1740 in the city of Kerman. His upbringing in Mahallat, Iran began under the care of his uncle, Mirza Muhammad Bakir at the age of two years, and got rudiments of his formal education at home. In 1792, he succeeded his father Abū-l-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Qāsim ‘Alī as Imam, as his eldest son. He moved the seat of the Imamate from Kirman to Kahak, from where he led for 20 years. His name of Shah Khalil Allah was a Ni'matullāhīSufi name, which reflected the close relationship between the Nizaris and Ni'matullāhīs. In 1815, Shāh Khalīlullāh moved to Yazd in order to be closer to his Indian followers.^[1]

   Death and succession

   Shāh Khalīlullāh died at the age of 77 in 1817 (along with several followers) as a result of a fanatical Twelver Shia cleric called Mulla Husayn Yazdi inciting a Twelver mob to attack the Imam's house as a follow-up to a dis

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   Mohammad Hassan Khalil is Professor of Religious Studies, Director of the Muslim Studies Program, and Adjunct Professor in the College of Law at Michigan State University. His specialty is Islamic thought, and much of his research revolves around Muslim conceptions of and interactions with non-Muslims.

   Khalil is the author of Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and the editor of Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment (Harvard University Press and ILEX, 2019). He has published peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on various topics — from bioethics to early Islamic historiography to salvation discourse to jihad.

   Latest Research

   Muslims in the Midwest is conceived as a multifaceted oral and visual history project with a substantial research component. The primary goal of the project is to establish and build a digital a