Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (Urdu: محمد طاہر القادری‎; born 19 February 1951) is a Pakistani–Canadian Islamic scholar and former politician who founded Minhaj-ul-Quran International and Pakistan Awami Tehreek.

Born in West Punjab, Pakistan, Qadri has served as a professor of international constitutional law at the University of the Punjab. He also served as a jurist consult (legal advisor) on Islamic law for the Supreme Court and the Federal Shariah Court of Pakistan. Additionally, he has worked as a specialist adviser on Islamic curricula for the Federal Ministry of Education of Pakistan and is the founding chairman of several sub-organizations of Minhaj-ul-Quran International. Qadri has delivered over 6,000 lectures and authored more than 1,000 books in Urdu, English, and Arabic, with over 450 of them published. He has been featured in every edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims since its first edition in 2009. In 2012, it was reported that Qadri was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri was born on 19 February 1951 in Jhang, a city in Punjab, Pakistan, into a Punjabi Muslim family with a strong scholarly and spiritual heritage. His father, Dr. Farid-ud-Din Qadri, was a respected physician, Sufi poet, and religious scholar who emphasized both secular and Islamic education for his son.

Qadri’s early education blended religious and secular instruction. He attended the Sacred Heart School, a Catholic mission school in Jhang, where he learned English and gained exposure to Christianity.

Concurrently, he began formal Islamic studies under his father at age 10, focusing on classical texts and Sufi practices. At 12, he traveled to Medina, Saudi Arabia, to enroll at Madrasa al-‘Ulum ash-Shar‘iyya, situated in the historic residence of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. This institution provided rigorous training in Quranic exegesis (tafsir), Hadith, jurisprudence (fiqh), and Arabic language.

He also studied classical Islamic sciences under eminent scholars around the world, including in Makkah, Madinah, Syria, Baghdad, Lebanon, Morocco, India, and Pakistan, receiving around 500 authorities and chains of transmission in various branches of Islamic knowledge. He learned under Mawlana Ziauddin Madani (d. 1981, aged 107) and studied Hadith from Muhaddith al-Hijaz al-Sayyid ‘Alawi ibn ‘Abbas al-Maliki al-Makki (d. 1971). Additionally, al-Shaykh al-Sayyid ‘Alawi's son, the late muhaddith of al-Hijaz, al-Sayyid Muhammad 'Alawi al-Maliki (d. 2004), gave Qadri all of his father's ijazas and isnads in written form, which had been previously received verbally, as well as his own chains of transmission.

Returning to Pakistan, Qadri pursued higher education at the University of the Punjab in Lahore. He earned a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) in 1974, followed by a Master of Arts (MA) in Islamic Studies in 1972, where he received the university’s Gold Medal for academic excellence. He later completed a PhD in Islamic Law in 1986, focusing on constitutional and jurisprudential frameworks within Islamic tradition.

During his academic tenure, Qadri became the youngest professor in the university’s history, teaching British, American, and Islamic constitutional law. He also served on the university’s Syndicate, Senate, and Academic Council, its highest governing bodies.