Shaykh Yasir Qadhi
Yasir Qadhi was born in Houston, USA but the family moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he attended local schools. By 15 he had memorized the Qur’an and graduated from high school two years early as class valedictorian. He returned to the United States, where he earned a B.Sc in Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston.
He was then accepted as a student at the Islamic University of Madinah. After completing a diploma in Arabic, he graduated with a B.A. from the College of Hadith and Islamic Sciences, and then completed a M.A. in Islamic Theology from the College of Dawah. He then returned to the United States, and completed a PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University.
At 17, Qadhi became influenced by his Salafi teacher Ali al-Tamimi and led a salafi based lifestyle.
Background: Pakistani
Resides: Dallas, US
Current Occupation: Islamic Scholar
Education: Hafiz, Islamic Studies, Phd in Religious Studies
Denomination: Sunni
Jurisprudence: Salafi
Aqeedah:
Preferred Subject: Contemporary issues, fiqh
Notable Teachers: Ali al-Tamimi
Since 2001, he has served as Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute, He also taught in the Religious Studies department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
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 an early militant movement in modern Saudi Arabia headed by Juhayman al-Otaibi. The movement had gained international attention when it held the Grand Mosque of Mecca hostage in 1979.
In September 2009, he presented a paper at an international conference at the University of Edinburgh on understanding jihad in the modern world. He discussed how the specific legal ruling (fatwā) of the 13–14th century theologian Ibn Taymiyya has been since used in the 20th and 21st centuries by both jihadist and pacifist groups to justify their positions.
In July 2010, Yasir Qadhi was selected to participate in an official delegation of eight U.S. imams and Jewish religious leaders to visit the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. The imams subsequently released a joint statement condemning anti-Semitism and labeling Holocaust denial as against the ethics of Islam.
Many people know Shaykh Yasir from his appearance on Peace TV. Later Yasir Qadhi denounced some of the salafi teachings he had been taught and now still remains a salafi but appreciates all other madhabs.
Yasir now is the resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Centre. He lectures on contemporary issues and is building a large YouTube following with regular detailed answers on contemporary fiqh issues.
Books
- Riyaa: Hidden Shirk
- An Introduction to the Sciences of the Quran
- An Explanation of the Four Principles of Shirk
- Du’a : The Weapon of the Believer
- 15 Ways to Increase Your Earnings from the Quran and Sunnah
- An explanation of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s Kashf al-Shubuhat