Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

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Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi
Born Houston, Texas
Residence Memphis, TN
Nationality American
Education M.Phil in Islamic Studies Yale University
Associate's degree in Arabic
B.A. in Islamic Sciences
Master of Arts in Islamic Theology
(Islamic University of Madinah)

B.Sc in Chemical Engineering
(University of Houston)[1]
Alma mater Islamic University of Madinah
University of Houston[1]
Yale University
Occupation Instructor
Title Dean of Academic Affairs, AlMaghrib Institute
Religion Islam
Website
MuslimMatters.org

Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi (ياسر قاضي), formerly named Yasir Kazi, is an American Muslim writer and Islamic instructor for the Al-Maghrib Institute. He has written a number of books and spoken in lectures about Islam and contemporary issues on Muslims.[1][2]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Qadhi was born in Houston, TX, to parents of Pakistani origin,[1][3] however; Qadhi has also stated that he hails from Lucknow, India. He completed his primary secondary education in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating as a valedictorian of his class. Afterwards, he returned to Houston to complete a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Houston. When asked why he chose a secular degree instead of an Islamic one first, he remarked:

"As a Muslim child growing up in America, you are expected to become an engineer or a doctor. It is just understood."[3]

Shortly after working for Dow Chemical for a short stint, he went to the Islamic University of Madinah in Madinah, Saudi Arabia to attain both a bachelor's and master's degree in specific disciplines within Islamic studies.[3] Initially, he completed a second bachelor's degree in Arabic from the university's College of Hadith and Islamic Sciences, and went on to complete an master's degree in Islamic Theology from the College of Dawah.[2][1]

He returned to the United States in 2005, after nearly 10 years in Saudi Arabia.[3] At the present time, he is teaching in the Religious Studies Department of Rhodes College, in Memphis, TN. Additionally, he is completing a doctoral in theology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.[1][2]

Qadhi describes himself as a revivalist in the Islamic sense, and likens some of the practices he endorses similar to those practiced by conservative Christian groups and Orthodox Jews in America, particularly with regard to dietary laws, family values, and modest dress for women.[3]

[edit] Activities

Qadhi was recently featured in a front-page NY Times Magazine article by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott[4] shedding light on Qadhi's activities and biography.

He is the Dean of Academic Affairs and instructor for the AlMaghrib Institute,[2] a double-weekend based seminar that he and other American Muslims instructors run, where instructors travel to designated locations in the US, UK and Canada (and more recently, Malaysia) to teach Islamic studies in English.[3] He gives regular sermons and lectures, and also appears on a number of Islamic satellite channels: (Islam Channel in England; Huda TV in Egypt; Al-Fajr Channel in Egypt; and Peace TV in India, the UK, and the U.S), where he teaches theology, Seerah, Tajweed, and other topics. He is also one of the founding members and Islamic specialists at MuslimMatters.org, a blogzine for American Muslims.

[edit] Holocaust Remarks and Subsequent Revisionism

The Daily Telegraph reported that, in 2001, Qadhi (whom the newspaper characterized as a "hard-line conservative preacher") described the Holocaust as a hoax, and claimed that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews", and "All this [the Holocaust] is false propaganda".[5] The telegraph also reported that Qadhi later retracted his statements, stating that he had been misled.[5] Faced with the charges, Qadhi, acknowledging that he had briefly held mistaken beliefs about the Holocaust, wrote that even in the 2001 lecture he did not deny "the actual occurrence of the Holocaust, or express any support or admiration for Hitler, or claim that all Jews were worthy of being despised or hated". He called it a "one-time mistake", stating that "I firmly believe that the Holocaust was one of the worst crimes against humanity that the 20th century has witnessed."[6]

In July 2010, he was selected to participate in an official delegation of US imams and religious leaders to visit the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. The Imams subsequently released a joint statement condemning anti-Semitism and labelling Holocaust denial as against the ethics of Islam.[7]

[edit] Views on Jihad

Yasir Qadhi has presented papers on jihad movements. In 2006, at a conference at Harvard Law School, Qadhi presented a 15-minute analysis of the theological underpinnings of one of the first militant movements of modern Saudi Arabia, headed by Juhayman al-Otaibi, which gained international attention when it held the Grand Mosque of Mecca hostage in 1979.[8] In another paper, presented in September 2009 at an international conference at University of Edinburgh on understanding jihad in the modern world, he discussed how a specific legal ruling (fatwā) of the medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyya was used both by jihadist and pacifist groups to justify their positions.[9] The paper has been critiqued however by Salafi commentators.[10] Qadhi has been involved in de-radicalization efforts in the US, and was a participant in the US. Counter-Radicalization Strategy conference organized by the National Counterterrorism Center in the summer of 2008.[11]

Umar Abdulmutallab, the al-Qaeda member who attempted to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009, was a student at "Ilm Summit", a 16-day AlMaghrib Institute Islamic education conference in August 2008 at which Qadhi was an instructor.[12] Qadhi said of Abdulmutallab, who attended some of the classes that he taught, "He was a very quiet individual, tight-lipped and shy, and he did not ask a single question during the discussions. He barely interacted with the other students at the conference.".[11] Qadhi recalled speaking to Abdulmutallab, and remembered that he was "very reserved in his responses."[11] Abdulmutallab also attended two seminars organized by the AlMaghrib Institute in London in the months before the event in Houston. After the Houston event, Qadhi added, AbdulMutallab did not sign up for further Al Maghrib events, perhaps an indication that extremist ideas were beginning to influence him.[11]

In 2006 Qadhi, noting that Muslims are routinely detained and questioned at airports and other ports of entry, said that the main problem the Muslim community has "is the presumption of guilt. It is the singling out of people just because of their looks or their identity." Qadhi said he himself was on a secret watch list, but had no idea how he got on the list.[13] His name has since been cleared from that list.


[edit] Works

[edit] Books authored or co-authored

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Dooley, Tara (October 8, 2005). "A Changing World; American and Muslim; Islamic scholar, a Houston native, brings cultural insight to lectures on his religion". Houston Chronicle. http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2005_3909962. Retrieved February 2, 2010. 
  2. ^ a b c d Murphy, Caryle (September 5, 2006). "For Conservative Muslims, Goal of Isolation a Challenge". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090401107.html. Retrieved February 2, 2010. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f O’Leary, Mary E. (January 4, 2009). "An American Muslim envisions a new kind of learning". New Haven Register. http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/01/04/news/ctyasir.txt. Retrieved February 2, 2010. 
  4. ^ Andrea Elliott (2011-03-17). "Why Yasir Qadhi Wants to Talk About Jihad". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/magazine/mag-20Salafis-t.html/. 
  5. ^ a b Sawer, Patrick, "Detroit bomber's mentor continues to influence British mosques and universities," The Daily Telegraph, January 2, 2010, accessed February 1, 2010
  6. ^ Yasir Qadhi (2008-11-10). "GPU ‘08 with Yasir Qadhi: When Islamophobia Meets Perceived Anti-Semitism". http://muslimmatters.org/2008/11/10/gpu-08-with-yasir-qadhi-when-islamophobia-meets-perceived-anti-semitism/. 
  7. ^ "U.S. Muslim group denounces 'historic injustice of the Holocaust'". CNN. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/19/u-s-muslim-group-denounces-historic-injustice-of-the-holocaust/. 
  8. ^ "V International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies; “Lawful and Unlawful Violence in Islamic Law and History”, Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School, September 8–10, 2006, accessed February 2, 2010
  9. ^ "Rethinking Jihad: Ideas, Politics and Conflict in the Arab World & Beyond; Programme", University of Edinburgh, September 7, 2009, accessed February 2, 2010
  10. ^ Did Modern Salafi Scholars Invent the Notion of 'Istihlal'? A Critique of Yasir Qadhi's Paper
  11. ^ a b c d "Terror suspect attended 2008 Islamic 'knowledge fest' in Houston - CNN.com". CNN. December 31, 2009. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/12/30/terror.suspect.seminar/index.html?iref=24hours. Retrieved April 23, 2010. 
  12. ^ "Terror suspect attended 2008 Islamic 'knowledge summit' in Houston", CNN, December 30, 2009, accessed February 2, 2010
  13. ^ Staff, Richard Vara, "Muslims vent frustrations at forum / They share tales of being detained at airports, other points of entry", Houston Chronicle, August 8, 2006, accessed February 2, 2010

[edit] External links

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