Timothy John Winter, or Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, is a university lecturer, a religious leader, and an influential speaker on Muslim affairs. Tim Winter has developed a neo-traditionalist understanding of Islam that values diversity and spirituality. His neo-traditionalism is grounded in his understanding of a balanced rationality and the pluralism of Islamic tradition. This understanding of Islam is also seen as a natural progression of British values. Thus, while Islam's origins may be foreign, its values are not. Winter also sees Wahhabism as being a threat to this understanding of Islam. A major focus of Winter's works is on describing the difference between this neo-traditionalist approach and the modern materialistic secular imaginary. His neo-traditionalist approach combines a traditional madhhab approach to Islamic law with spirituality in a way that has a deep respect for diversity.

Winter's multiple academic duties include being the Shaykh Zayed lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, the Director of Studies at Wolfson College, and the Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College. He is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge where he studied Arabic as an undergraduate in 1983. He subsequently moved to Cairo to study at al-Azhar for three years, and then moved to Jeddah to study for another three years. In 1989, after returning to England, he attended the University of London to learn Turkish and Persian.

Although Winter is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge he is more of a public intellectual than a traditional academic. His works are mostly reflections— some academic, some more general—about various issues about Islam and Muslim life in the modern world. Winter has written seven books; however, most of these books are printed editions of essays available online and not necessarily academic in nature. For example, his Understanding the Four Madhhabs: The Facts about Ijtihad and Taqlid is a printed version of his essay “Understanding the Four Madhhabs: The Problem with Anti-Madhhabism.” His book Bombing without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism is a reprint of an essay by the same name.

A part of Winter's project is to make Islam accessible to non-Muslim audiences. For example, he has co-authored an introductory book about Islam titled Understanding Islam and the Muslims: The Muslim Family, Islam and World Peace published in 2002.