In August 1999, His Majesty King Abdullah II asked Prince Hamzah to oversee the affairs of the Aal al-Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought. (Aal al-Bayt is another name for the descendents of the Prophet Muhammad, pbuh.) The Aal al-Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought is an international, non-governmental charitable foundation based in Jordan but comprising a membership of 70-100 of the world's top Islamic scholars and clerics from almost every Islamic country and major community in the world. The aim of the Foundation is to:  "promote, propagate and preserve moderate,  orthodox Islamic thought  and intellectual heritage".  By  "orthodox"  the Foundation means the seven traditional Maddhabs (or Schools of Islamic Law) of Islam. These are:  the four Sunni Maddhabs (Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanafi  and Hanbali);  the "Twelver" (Ja'fari) Shi'i Maddhab;  the Zeidi Maddhab and the Ibadhi Maddhab.

Since becoming Higher Chairman of the Aal al-Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought, Prince Hamzah has worked to further its goals by refocusing its efforts on underscoring the treasures and contributions of Islamic thought to Muslims and to the world at large. He has done this in a number of ways: by having the Foundation undertake projects to preserve, index and publish Islamic manuscripts; by directing the Foundation to cooperate with other intellectual institutions such as universities and international thought forums; by commissioning translations of important Islamic manuscripts into English; by having the Foundation hold and participate in international inter-Maddhab conferences on important Islamic issues (and publish their findings); by commissioning and publishing new studies on critical Islamic issues; and, above all, by mobilizing the Foundation to make use of computers, the internet, satellite communications, and other modern technological tools to propagate  traditional,  moderate  Islamic  thought.

To this end, in April 2001, Prince Hamzah approved and launched the Foundation's Great Tafsir Project (which will be completed, God willing, by April 2004). This project, the first of its kind and scope anywhere in the world, aims to put the Holy Qur'an (whose text will be authenticated by Al-Azhar University, the preeminent authority on Sunni Islam, on a software program) on an entirely free website  along with a hundred of  Islam's greatest tafsirs (classical Qur'anic commentaries) of all seven traditional Maddhabs - many of which will be diacritically edited, published and made accessible to non-specialists for the first time. The website will also comprise translations of the Qur'an into all the world's major languages;  select translations of  the tafsirs themselves into various languages; and recordings of all seven Qur'anic recitations in Arabic,  in all the different tonal keys or maqams.

In summary, this multilingual website will make all of these resources available in the most user-friendly way, free  to every person in the world. It is therefore being built to handle well over 100 million "hits" per year.

Prince Hamzah hopes that making these texts widely available to people everywhere "will show the diversity of Islam, how moderate, broad-based and wonderfully peaceful it is … not extremist but flexible,  tolerant and understanding of human nature. " Equally,  as he stated in October 2000, Prince Hamzah hopes that the Aal al-Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought will "serve as a beacon of knowledge, a torch to guide people and a center for conducting research serving Jordan, the Arab and Islamic worlds,  as well as mankind ... by carrying forth the message of the Holy Qur'an and the Hashemite Prophet,  Muhammad (pbuh) to our current day, for present and future generations, alike…"