Abu al-Fadl Abdullah bin Muhammad bin al-Siddiq al-Ghumari was a Muslim preacher, jurist and theologian from Morocco.
Background
Ghumari's bloodline is traced through his father Muhammad, son of Muhammad, son of Ahmad, son of Muhammad, son of Qasim, son of Muhammad, son of Muhammad, son of Abd al-Mu'min, son of Muhammad, son of Abd al-Mu'min, son of Ali, son of al-Hasan, son of Muhammad, son of Abdullah, son of Ahmad, son of Abdullah, son of Isa, son of Mas'ud, son of al-Fudayl, son of Ali ibn Umar, son of Umar, son of al-Arabi Alal, son of Musa, son of Ahmad, son of Dawud, son of Idris II of Fes, son of Idris I of Morocco, son of Abdullah, son of al-Hasan al-Muthana, son of Hasan ibn Ali, son of Ali and Fatimah. Ghumari was born in the Moroccan city of Tangier in 1910, and died in the same city in 1993.
Career
The Ghumari family are all descendants of Ahl al-Bayt, or the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As a child, he was primarily educated by his father Muhammad bin al-Siddiq al-Ghumari, also an Islamic scholar. The younger Ghumari memorized the entirety of the Qur'an at an early age, in addition to the Hadith book Bulugh al-Maram along with Alfiya and Ajārūmīya in Arabic grammar.
Ghumari later travelled to Fas for his higher education, but then enrolled in the University of al-Karaouine. Eventually, Ghumari switched from Karaouine to Al-Azhar University in 1930 and graduating the next year. During his education, Ghumari was a student of Al-Kawthari, of whom Ghumari would later hold extremely negative views.
Due to fears in the wider Arab world regarding the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the mid-twentieth century, Ghumari was accused of having ties to a foreign group. In 1961, he was sentenced to ten years in prison, likely due to his time spent in Egypt where the Brotherhood had formed. Like most of the Ghumari family, Abdullah al-Ghumari was a prolific writer.
Ghumari was famous not only for the number of teachers which he had, but also the number of students. Salâh Ud Dîn At Tijânî and Muhammad bin Yahya al-Ninowy is counted as one of Ghumari's more prominent students, as is Hassan al-Kattani.
Views
The religious and sectarian views of Ghumari were, like most members of the Ghumari family, difficult to pinpoint. Ghumari was a practitoner of Sufism, yet also a harsh critic of Sufis. He was described as a Salafist at times, yet was a harsh critic of that movement as well.
He viewed the dogma Ash'arites, usually holding favor among Moroccan Sufis, as heretical and outside of Sunni Islam. Ghumari was a Sunni Muslim and was detested by contemporary Shi'ites, yet was described by other Sunnis as having Shi'ite tendencies of his own.
Membership
The religious and sectarian views of Ghumari were, like most members of the Ghumari family, difficult to pinpoint.