Abed Awad is a New Jersey/New York attorney. Awad is AV rated by Martindale and is a fellow of the International Academy of Family Lawyers. Awad is an adjunct law professor at Rutgers Law School, Newark, and has taught at Pace Law School and Seton Hall Law School. Courses taught include Matrimonial Litigation, Islamic Banking & Finance, and Islamic Jurisprudence. Awad has native fluency in Arabic and is an international expert in Islamic law and the laws of Muslim countries. Awad has testified, consulted or provided expert reports in more than 100 matters throughout the United States, Canada, and England concerning the interpretation and application of Shari'a (Islamic law) and/or the laws of specific Muslim countries. Awad is a contributor and the U.S. Editor at ShariaSource.com, a Harvard Law School Islamic Legal Studies’ project. Awad has published extensively in various publications, among them The Star Ledger, Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, New Jersey Law Journal, ShariaSource.blog, CNN.com, National Law Journal, North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, The Nation and the Bergen Record. Awad is a regular continuing legal education lecturer nationally, a public speaker at bar associations, universities and conferences. Awad has more than 200 television and radio appearances and has been frequently quoted by national and international media outlets as a political and/or legal commentator, including The New York Times, ABC, CNN, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, French 24 (Arabic), Al-Arabia, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, and Chicago Lawyer.  In 2002, Awad was selected as one of ten "Lawyers of the Year" by the Lawyers Weekly (USA) for his groundbreaking decision enforcing the mahr provision in a Muslim Marriage Contract.  Awad was a member of the New Jersey Electoral College (2004) and has been the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Community Activism Award, Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) (2007); the Vision & Achievement Award, Mental Health Association in Passaic County (2010); Avenue Magazine’s Legal Elite (2010), and Corporate International’s Islamic Law Firm of the Year (2017), Scholar of the Year, New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association (2018), Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year, Unchained (2018) among others. Awad earned a juris doctorate from Pace Law School and an MA in Islamic Studies from the University of London (School of Oriental & African Studies) with a focus on al-Muʻtazilah’s methodology to authenticate hadith. Prior to entering private practice, Awad clerked for Hon. George E. Sabbath, NJ Superior Court.

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