International Institute of Islamic Thought

The institute was founded in 1981 by Palestinian-American scholar Ismail al-Faruqi and Malaysian politician and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The institute is a non-profit 501(c)(3) non-denominational organization located in Herndon, Virginia.

In a 2016 essay published by the American Academy of Religion's Religious Studies News, the then IIIT director Ermin Sinanović explained that IIIT had been intended to resolve an "intellectual crisis" which afflicted the global Muslim community. Sinanović explained that the founders of the institute believed the crisis could only be resolved by “reading the two Books” – in other words, a critical examination of Muslim heritage coupled with a critique of modern secular thought. To that end, IIIT has advocated for reform of education in Muslim societies grounded in this integrated approach to knowledge.

Operation Green Quest

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, IIIT found itself targeted by the U.S. federal authorities as part of Operation Green Quest. Formed in October 2001, the operation involved an interagency task force set up to investigate the financing of Al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups. In March 2002, the unit raided the offices of 19 Muslim charities and educational institutions. Though it confiscated a significant amount of documents and computer files, the investigation did not find any incriminating evidence – but it drew strong protests from American Muslim and civil-rights groups for the message it sent out to the American Muslim community.

Targeting by far-right groups

In 2019, investigative journalist and academic Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reported that far-right Islamophobic think tanks and politicians had been agitating against American Muslim civil society groups, particularly IIIT. According to Ahmed, groups like the Center for Security Policy, Jihad Watch, and The Investigative Project on Terrorism were nodes in a network of far-right anti-Muslim organizations who were accusing Western Muslim groups of supporting terrorism and extremism.

The institute hosts scholars from across the Muslim world to examine knowledge from each academic field in the context of Islam. Ismail al-Faruqi, IIIT's co-founder, named this process “the Islamization of knowledge” (it was later renamed “the integration of knowledge” and then “unity of knowledge”). This process involved “testing every truth claim by internal coherence, correspondence with reality, and enhancement of human life and morality”, rather than the “subordination of knowledge to dogmatic principles”.