Muhammad Eeqbal Farouque Hassim

Eeqbal is a Research Fellow at the Asian Law Centre, Melbourne Law School, and a Lecturer and Subject Coordinator at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies Australia (NCEIS), Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts. Eeqbal started teaching Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2006, and has been much involved in course development at the NCEIS since the start of 2007. He lectures on the Qur’an and Hadith, their associated texts, Islamic law and Islamic education, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

Eeqbal received a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Arabic/Islamic Studies and Indonesian Studies from the University of Melbourne, obtaining a Dean’s Award in the process. He is close to completing his PhD entitled 'Continuity and Resistance to Change: Muslim Educational Thought on Children's Motivation (750-1400 CE)'.

Eeqbal's current research interests include: the history, theory and practice of Islamic education; Islamic law in Southeast Asia; Islamic legal theory; the history of Islam in Southeast Asia; interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith; Qur'anic linguistics; Islamic literature; and Islamic theological thought. He has presented papers and published on Islamic education and religious education in the Asia pacific, with publications on the origins of Salafism in Indonesia, the styles of circumstantial adverbials in the Qur'an and the Islamic literature of Ali Ahmad Bakathir forthcoming. He has also appeared on ABC Radio, commenting on religion and extremism. Eeqbal is a native speaker of Malay and English, is fluent in Indonesian and Arabic, and reads French as well.