Usmani ranked among world’s most influential Muslim leaders

Pakistani cleric Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who gave a religious lecture at Iceland’s largest Muslim congregation last week, is regarded as the world’s most influential Muslim religious leader, mbl.is reports, citing an annual ranking by Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.

Usmani is second on the centre’s 2026 list of 500 influential Muslims, behind the emir of Qatar, whose influence is described as primarily secular. Usmani has been among the list’s top 10 since 2017 and ranked first in 2020.

Only one woman appears among the top 50: Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, ranked 36th. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was ranked fourth. The list was published before he was killed by the United States and Israel, according to the article.

Usmani’s writings and statements have advocated the death penalty for apostasy, amputation and stoning, punishments for homosexuality, military jihad, and views on gender roles and equality that mbl.is says conflict with Icelandic law and customs and Western human rights standards.

His views and lecture at the Grand Mosque have prompted strong reactions following coverage by Morgunblaðið and mbl.is. Earlier this week, Social Democratic Alliance MP Ása Berglind Hjálmarsdóttir said that few Muslims had much in common with Usmani. The article also notes that similar views on religious punishments and homosexuality have had substantial support among Muslims in many parts of the world.

Usmani was born in 1943 in Deoband, a town in northern India. The Deobandi movement takes its name from the town and grew out of a religious school founded there in 1866. Usmani is a Sunni Muslim and one of the movement’s leading scholars.

He is president of Darul Uloom Karachi, a religious school founded by his father in 1951, and of Wifaq ul Madaris al-Arabia, which The Nation describes as Pakistan’s largest federation of Islamic schools. From 1982 to 2002, he served as a judge in the Sharia Appellate Bench of Pakistan’s Supreme Court.

In his book Takmilah Fath al-Mulhim, Usmani defends the death penalty for apostasy and rejects arguments against executing people for leaving Islam.