Featured Courses
Parents and Adult Children: Navigating Principles, Values, and Duties
The course is designed for adult children, parents of adult children, educators and service-providers caring for Muslims and Muslim families, and anyone seeking grounded, Islamically sound guidance that recognizes the need to take contemporary realities seriously, without collapsing into guilt or estrangement from family members.
The course explores topics such as:
1. The rights and responsibilities of parents and adult children across life stages.
2. How Islamic values like birr, iḥsān, raḥma, and maʿrūf shape family relationships.
3. The importance of distinguishing classical ethical-legal terms like birr al-wālidayn, ʿuqūq, ṭāʿa, ṣilat al-raḥim and ḍarar.
4. Understanding obedience to parents in adulthood and how to approach difficult decisions.
5. Navigating personal choice, expectations, and disagreement.
6. Addressing harm while maintaining family ties.
7. Engaging common questions and public debates with clarity and nuance.
'Problematic' Hadith Explained: Navigating the Prophet’s Legacy With Confidence
Have you ever come across a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ that made you pause — even feel disturbed or confused? A narration that just didn’t sit right… about women, science, history, belief, or something else?
You’re not alone. In today’s online world, faith-shaking doubts often begin with a single hadith — quoted without context or assumed to represent a holistic picture of the legacy of our Prophet ﷺ.
In our Rabiʿ al-awwal course, Dr. Mariam Sheibani will tackle these questions head-on. We’ll look at how scholars dealt with “problematic hadiths” carefully, critically, and faithfully since the beginning of Islam. We’ll apply this framework to three detailed case studies to understand how problematic hadith should be interpreted when they appear to clash with science, our beliefs about God, and our moral sensibilities about gender. In the process, you’ll learn how to navigate the legacy of our Prophet ﷺ, paving a path to cultivating a deeper conviction and attachment to him.
About our instructor: Dr. Mariam Sheibani
I deliver accessible, relevant, and research-based educational programs that draw on two decades of training in the classical Islamic sciences and graduate training at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School.
My courses bring together the best of academic and historical approaches to contemporary challenges, combined with a nuanced and scholarly understanding of Islamic tradition, and delivered through an engaging, application-oriented, and discussion-based approach.
