Yasir Qadhi (formerly known by his kunya Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi) (born January 30, 1975) is a Pakistani American Muslim scholar and theologian.^[5] He is dean of The Islamic Seminary of America and resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas.^[6] He was formerly the dean of AlMaghrib Institute and taught in the religious studies department at Rhodes College.^[7] He currently serves as chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America.^[8]

Quick Facts Personal, Born ...

Yasir Qadhi
Personal
Born	(1975-01-30) January 30, 1975 (age 49)[1] Houston, Texas
Religion	Islam
Denomination	Sunni[2]
Jurisprudence	Hanbali[3]
Creed	Athari[2]
Education	Yale University (MA, MPhil, PhD) Islamic University of Madinah (BA, MA) University of Houston (BS)
YouTube information
Channel	Yasir Qadhi
Years active	May 23, 2012–present
Genre	Islamic
Subscribers	616 thousand[4]
Total views	99.0 million[4]
Associated acts	Epic Masjid Memphis Islamic Center
Creator Awards 100,000 subscribers

Close

Born in Texas to Pakistani Muhajir parents, Qadhi studied chemical engineering at the University of Houston, before studying hadith and Islamic theology at the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia.^[5] He earned his PhD from Yale University where his dissertation focused on the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah.^[9] Qadhi has written books and lectured widely on Islam and contemporary Muslim issues, and is considered one of the most influential Muslim scholars in the United States.^[9] He has also consistently been listed in the annual listicle The 500 Most Influential Muslims.^[10]

Qadhi was born in Houston, Texas to Pakistani, Muhajir parents.^[11] His father, a doctor by profession, founded the first mosque in the area, while his mother is a microbiologist, both from Karachi in Pakistan and whose ancestral homeland is Uttar Pradesh in India.^[11] When he was five, 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.^[12] He returned to the United States, where he earned a B.Sc in Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston.^[13]

After a short stint working in engineering at Dow Chemical, in 1996 Qadhi enrolled at the Islamic University of Medinah in Medina, Saudi Arabia. There, he earned a bachelor's degree in Arabic from the university's College of Hadith and Islamic Sciences and a master's degree in Islamic Theology from its College of Dawah.^[13][14][15] Qadhi returned to the United States after working and studying for nine years in Saudi Arabia.^[15] He completed a doctorate in theology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.^[13][14]

Qadhi taught in the Religious Studies Department of Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee. He previously was the Dean of Academic Affairs and an instructor for the AlMaghrib Institute,^[14] a seminar-based Islamic education institution founded in 2001. The instructors travel to teach Islamic studies in English. He moved to the Dallas metropolitan area in early 2019, becoming the resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center. He is the Dean of Academic Affairs at The Islamic Seminary of America.^[16]

Qadhi was a guest on an episode of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates's television genealogy series Finding Your Roots on PBS.^[17]

In the April 2016 issue of Dabiq Magazine, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared Qadhi, along with Hamza Yusuf, Bilal Philips, Suhaib Webb and numerous other Western Islamic speakers, as murtads (or apostates). He was threatened to be killed for denouncing ISIS.^[25]

Some of his statements have been controversial, including comments in a speech in 2001 questioning Hitler's motives in the Holocaust. He later stated that he regretted those comments and visited the Auschwitz concentration camp with a delegation of Muslim leaders.^[11]

In January 2010, the British The Daily Telegraph reported that in 2001 Qadhi had described the Holocaust as a hoax and false propaganda, and had said that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews."^[26][27] The following year The New York Times reported he said that most Islamic studies professors in the United States are Jews who "want to destroy us."^[12]

Qadhi denied stating that the Holocaust was a hoax or that it was false propaganda, but in 2008 admitted that he had briefly held mistaken beliefs about the Holocaust, and had said "that Hitler never actually intended to massacre the Jews, he actually wanted to expel them to neighboring lands." Qadhi said that his views were wrong and said "I admit it was an error".^[28] Qadhi added that he firmly believes "that the Holocaust was one of the worst crimes against humanity that the 20th century has witnessed" and that "the systematic dehumanization of the Jews in the public eye of the Germans was a necessary precursor" for that tragedy.^[28] More generally, he said that he "fell down a slippery slope", expressing anger at actions of the Israeli government in the form of anti-Semitic remarks he later recognized as wrong.^[12]

In July 2010, 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.^[29]

The Times newspaper reported that British Charity Commission regulators contacted three Islamic charities about Qadhi's 2015 tour, where he allegedly made controversial comments and told students that "killing homosexuals and stoning adulterers was part of their religion." He also clarified to them that these punishments were only applicable in an Islamic society and were not to be applied in the West.^[30][31]

• Dawah
• Islam in the United States
• Islam in Dallas