Belgian Muslim Historian Yahya Michot Passes Away

The Muslim world lost a major polyglot this month with the death of Belgian thinker and historian, Yahya Michot. A prolific authority on medieval Islamic thought and Muslim relations with non-Muslims, Michot passed away in the American city of Hartford, at whose University for Religion and Peace he taught. He was particularly renowned for his historical analyses of social and political issues in Islamic history as well as his expertise on the medieval thinkers Taqiuddin Ahmad bin Taymiyya and Husain bin Sina.

Doctor Yahya Michot was born in 1952 and converted from Belgium’s predominant Catholicism to Islam, taking up the widest-used Muslim translation of his birth name Jean. A prodigious multilinguist, he taught Islamic thought, philosophy, and literature at Leuven from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, before moving to Britain where he taught at Oxford for a decade, before teaching for another decade at Hartford.

By all accounts erudite yet approachable, Michot was especially renowned as an authority on two major historical thinkers of contemporary significance: Husain bin Sina, known internationally as Avicenna as an important influence on medicine and philosophy; and the renowned medieval scholar Taqiuddin bin Taymiyya, whose works have attracted considerable attention amid sociopolitical scrutiny on Islam. His works on these figures had a profound impact on the wider field.

Michot also studied sociopolitical dynamics in Muslim history and wrote on other issues of continued relevance, ranging from Muslim minorities in non-Muslim populations to Muslim attitudes towards smoking. Ovamir Anjum, another expert on medieval Islamic thought, described him as epitomizing “the best of the old European tradition of deep learning and wide interest in a bewildering variety of fields.” Anjum noted his “belligerently independent spirit,” for despite his reputation, he avoided large university presses in favor of upcoming Muslim presses because he saw scholarship as speaking for itself.

Innalillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oun.

 – by Ibrahim Moiz

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