Instructor Biographies

Born and raised in New Zealand, and of Albanian descent, Ustadha Umm Sahl left with her family to live in Turkey in 1982, where she met her first sheikh in tasawwuf, Ihsan Effendi of Zeytinburnu, Istanbul, whose student she remained until his death in 1991.

In 1983, she traveled to Egypt to study Arabic, where she lived for three years. In 1986, she married her husband Nuh Ha Mim Keller and moved to Amman, Jordan.

She studied Hanafi Fiqh and hadith terminology with Sheikh Shuayb Arnaut; Hanafi Fiqh and ‘Aqida with Sheikh Ahmad al-Jammal; Tajwid with Sheikh Ibrahim Rumana; and for the last 10 years, she has been studying Tafsir, Arabic grammar, Balagha, and Islamic Inheritance with Sheikh ‘Ali Hani.

In 1992, she joined the Shadhili tariqa of Sheikh Abdur-Rahman ash-Shaghouri, and was his student until his death in 2004. At present, she studies and teaches, helps her husband in his translation projects, and the running of the Zawiya of Abul Hasan ash-Shadhili in Amman.

Born and raised in Chicago, Fareeha holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago in Middle Eastern Studies and a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan.

Fareeha studied under Dr. Sherman Abdul Hakim Jackson at Michigan, and her main academic research interests include Islamic law, women, and application and interpretation of the Islamic tradition in the modern period.

She is an affiliated scholar at Willamette University (where she has also served as assistant professor), and is an Advisory Editor for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Law.

Fareeha has been blessed to be able to study with Islamic religious scholars as well. Some of her teachers include: Sheikh Nuh Keller, Umm Sahl, Sheikh Faraz Rabbani, and Sheikh Ashraf Muneeb.

She lives with her husband Ibrahim Mansoor in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she continues to write and study privately and online. She also serves on the Sila Executive Board.