Ahmed Deedat

Ahmed Husein Deedat (અહમદ હુસેન દીદત; ; أحمد حسين ديدات; 1 July 1918 – 8 August 2005), was a South African and Indian self-taught Muslim thinker, author, and orator on Comparative Religion.

He was best known as a Muslim missionary, who held numerous inter-religious public debates with evangelical Christians, as well as video lectures on Islam, Christianity, and the Bible.

Deedat established the IPCI, an international Islamic missionary organisation, and wrote several widely distributed booklets on Islam and Christianity.

Deedat was born to Gujarati Muslim parents in the town of Tadkeshwar, Surat, Bombay Presidency, British India in 1918.

His father had emigrated to South Africa shortly after his birth.

At the age of 9, Deedat left India to join his father in what is now known as Kwazulu-Natal.

His mother died only a few months after his departure.

Arriving in South Africa, Deedat applied himself with diligence to his studies, overcoming the language barrier and excelling in school, even getting promoted until he completed standard 6.

However, due to financial circumstances, he had to quit school and start working by the time he was at the age of 16.

In 1936, while working as a furniture salesman, he met a group of missionaries at a Christian seminary on the Natal South Coast who, during their efforts to convert people of Muslim faith, often accused the Islamic prophet Muhammad of having "used the sword" to bring people to Islam.

Such accusations offended Deedat and created his interest in comparative religion.

Deedat took a more active interest in religious debate after he came across the book Izhar ul-Haqq (Truth Revealed), written by Rahmatullah Kairanawi, while he was rummaging for reading material in his employer's basement.

This book chronicled the efforts of Christian missionaries in India a century earlier.

The book had a profound effect on Deedat, who bought a Bible and held debates and discussions with trainee missionaries, whose questions he had previously been unable to answer.

He started attending Islamic study classes held by a local Muslim convert named Mr. Fairfax.

Seeing the popularity of the classes, Mr. Fairfax offered to teach an extra session on the Bible and how to preach to Christians about Islam.

Shortly thereafter, Fairfax had to pull out and Deedat, by this point quite knowledgeable about the Bible, took over teaching the class, which he did for three years.

Deedat never formally trained as a Muslim scholar.

Deedat's first lecture, entitled "Muhammad: Messenger of Peace", was delivered in 1942 to an audience of fifteen people at a Durban cinema named Avalon Cinema.

A major vehicle of Deedat's early missionary activity was the 'Guided Tours' of the Jumma Mosque in Durban.

The vast ornamental Jumma Mosque was a landmark site in the tourist-friendly city of Durban.

A program of luncheons, speeches and free hand-outs was created to give an increasingly large number of international tourists what was often their first look at Islam.

Deedat himself was one of the guides, hosting tourists and giving introductions to Islam and its relationship with Christianity.

In 1949, Deedat moved to Pakistan with his family and lived in Karachi for three years near Pakistan Chowk.

According to an interview on Pakistan Television, he had been a strong proponent of the idea of an Islamic state.

Among Deedat's close friends were Gulam Husein Vanker and Tahir Rasul, whom many refer to as 'the unsung heroes of Deedat's career'.

In 1957, these three men founded the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) with the aim of printing a variety of books on Islam and offering classes to new Muslims converts.

The next year Deedat established an Islamic seminary called As-Salaam Educational Institute on a donated 75 acre piece of land located in Braemar in the south of Natal province.

The experiment was not a success, however, because of the IPC's lack of manpower and paucity of funds, and was taken over by the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa in 1973.

Deedat then returned to Durban and expanded the IPC's activities.

By the early 1980s Ahmed Deedat's work was beginning to be known outside his native South Africa.

He was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in 1986 for his fifty years of missionary work.

He wrote and lectured in English.

His international profile grew in 1986, when he received the King Faisal Award for his services to Islam in the field of Dawah (Islamic missionary activity).

As a result, aged 66, Deedat began a decade of international speaking tours around the world.

His tours included:

On the other hand, Deedat received heavy criticism from liberal Muslim groups in South Africa which felt he inaccurately represented Islam and was intolerant of people of other religions, including Christians, Hindus, Jews and Jains.

Several monthly editions of the Muslim Digest of South Africa (July, August, September, October) in 1986 were almost entirely devoted to criticising Deedat's stance and "his various dangerous activities".

Problems arose after the publication of From Hinduism to Islam (1987), a critique of Hindu beliefs and practices.

Among others, Deedat criticised South African Hindus for praying to their various deities and being easily moved to convert to Christianity.