Hujjat al-Islam al-Sayyid Muhammad al-Tijani al-Samawi

Early Life

Born in Gafsa, Tunisia, on 2 February 1943, into a Sunni Muslim family of the Maliki school affiliated with the Tijani Sufi order; converted to Twelver Shia Islam after encounters with Shia scholars in Najaf.

Muhammad al-Tijani al-Samawi (born 2 February 1943 in Gafsa, Tunisia) is a Tunisian Islamic scholar, academic, and theologian, notable for converting from Sunni Islam (Maliki school) to Twelver Shia Islam. His family had adopted the name "al-Tijani" after embracing the Tijani Sufi order founded by Ahmad al-Tijani. At the age of eighteen, he was selected as one of six Tunisian representatives to the first conference for Islamic and Arab scouts in Mecca, where he performed Hajj and encountered several prominent Salafi scholars who initially drew him toward the Salafi movement. He pursued doctoral studies at al-Azhar University in Egypt, and for a time promoted Salafi teachings through classes and sermons, including at the Great Mosque of Kairouan. While travelling from Egypt back to Tunisia, al-Tijani met an Iraqi Shia lecturer who invited him to Iraq, where he visited Baghdad and Najaf and met leading Twelver Shia scholars, including Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, and Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i. Following extended debates and study with these scholars, he converted to Shia Islam. Al-Tijani is best known for his book Then I Was Guided, recounting his conversion journey, along with several other works defending Shia positions in Sunni-Shia polemics, including Ask Those Who Know, To Be with the Truthful, The Shi'ah are the Real Ahl al-Sunnah, All Solutions Are with the Prophet's Progeny, and Black Thursday. His books have been banned in several countries, including Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

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