Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shahbaz Manj is the Founding Chairperson of the Department of Islamic Studies, Division of Islamic and Oriental Learning, at the University of Education Lahore, Pakistan. He is currently serving as a Visiting Professor at Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany.

Prof. Manj has more than thirty years of experience in teaching, research, academic leadership, and higher education administration in universities and within the Higher Education Department, Government of Pakistan. Throughout his academic career, he has made significant contributions to institutional development, curriculum design, postgraduate education, and research culture in the field of Islamic Studies.

During his current academic stay in Europe (2026), he has been actively engaged in teaching, lectures, and scholarly exchange at leading European institutions, including Georg-August University of Göttingen, Heidelberg University, and University of Bonn. At Göttingen, he teaches the officially accredited M.A.-level module seminar:

“Islam, Law and Society in South Asia: Tradition, Modernity and Contemporary Debates”

offered within the module M.Ara.10 – Islamic Culture, Past and Present at the Seminar for Arabic and Islamic Studies. His seminar contributes directly to the formal graduate curriculum of the university and focuses on the historical development and contemporary transformation of Islamic law, religious authority, and social thought in South Asia.

Prof. Manj is the author of fifteen books and more than one hundred research articles published in national and international peer-reviewed journals. His scholarly work has contributed significantly to contemporary debates in Islamic Studies, Islamic intellectual history, Qur’anic interpretation, and modern Muslim thought.

Over the past sixteen years, he has supervised a large number of MPhil and PhD scholars, with more than one hundred postgraduate research theses completed under his supervision. He has actively participated in and presented research at numerous national and international conferences, seminars, and academic forums.

In addition to his academic responsibilities, Prof. Manj serves as the founding editor of several academic journals and is a member of advisory and editorial boards of various national and international research publications. He has also served as an evaluator of postgraduate theses, faculty appointments, and academic promotions at universities across different regions.

His research interests include:

• Qur’anic studies and modern interpretation
• Islamic intellectual history
• Orientalism and Western scholarship on Islam
• Islamic modernism in the Arab world and South Asia
• Muslim and Western approaches to modernity
• Interfaith and intra-faith dialogue
• Mysticism and Islamic spirituality
• Jihad, extremism, and religious discourse
• Contemporary legal and social debates, including blasphemy laws in Pakistan
• Religion, society, and ideological transformation in the modern Muslim world

Prof. Manj is also the founder of several academic, research, educational, and outreach initiatives dedicated to scholarship, peacebuilding, and intellectual engagement. These include the International Federation for World Peace and Harmony, Global Center for Research and Study, Al-Qamar Islamic Research Institute, Al-Nasr Research Institute, Horizon Research Technologies, and Al-Kindus International Schools.

Through these platforms, he has promoted academic research, educational development, interfaith understanding, intellectual exchange, and initiatives related to peace, coexistence, and contemporary Muslim societies.

Prof. Manj’s academic work is dedicated to promoting interfaith harmony, global peace, and constructive intellectual engagement across religious and cultural traditions. His scholarship emphasizes a balanced, contextual, and historically grounded understanding of Islam in the modern world, with particular attention to religious interpretation, social transformation, coexistence, and ideological diversity.

He has lectured internationally and continues to contribute to global academic discussions on religion, modernity, law, and coexistence. His work is widely recognized for fostering scholarly dialogue and strengthening academic collaboration between Pakistan, Europe, and the broader international scholarly community.