Talal Al-Azem is a teacher and researcher, with interests especially in fiqh, education, and formations of the self in Islam. He studied the disciplines of Islamic learning in Syria and Turkey, before completing a doctorate. He is the translator of "Prayers of Occasions", a handbook of sunnah prayers, and author of "Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition", a study of how rules were determined in the madhhabs.