Ahmed Deedat

Ahmed Husein Deedat (1336 AH / 1 July 1918 – 3 Rajab 1426 AH / 8 August 2005) was a South African writer and orator of Indian origin, best known as a Muslim missionary who held numerous inter-religious public debates with evangelical Christians, and gave video lectures on Islam, Christianity and the Bible. ¹

He established the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI), wrote several widely distributed booklets on Islam and Christianity, and was awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam in 1406 AH (1986) for his fifty years of missionary work. He wrote and lectured in English. ^{1 2}

He was born to Gujarati Muslim parents in the town of Tadkeshwar, British India, in 1918; his father had emigrated to South Africa shortly after his birth. ¹

At the age of nine he left India to join his father in what is now KwaZulu-Natal; his mother died only a few months after his departure. ¹

He applied himself to his studies, overcame the language barrier and excelled at school until he completed standard 6, but financial circumstances forced him to leave school and start work at sixteen. ¹

Deedat never formally trained as a Muslim scholar. ¹

In 1936, while working as a furniture salesman, he met a group of missionaries at a Christian seminary on the Natal South Coast who, in their efforts to convert Muslims, often accused the Prophet ﷺ Muhammad of having "used the sword" to bring people to Islam. The accusations offended him and created his interest in comparative religion. ¹

He then came across Izhar ul-Haqq (Truth Revealed) by Rahmatullah Kairanawi in his employer's basement, a book chronicling the efforts of Christian missionaries in India a century earlier. It had a profound effect on him: he bought a Bible and began debating and discussing with trainee missionaries questions he had previously been unable to answer. ¹

He attended Islamic study classes held by a local Muslim convert named Mr Fairfax, who also taught the Bible and how to preach to Christians about Islam. When Fairfax had to pull out, Deedat took over teaching the class, which he did for three years. ¹

His first lecture, "Muhammad: Messenger of Peace", was delivered in 1942 to an audience of fifteen people at the Avalon Cinema in Durban. ¹

A major vehicle of his early activity was the "Guided Tours" of the Jumma Mosque in Durban, a landmark in the tourist-friendly city, where a programme of luncheons, speeches and free hand-outs gave international tourists often their first look at Islam; Deedat was one of the guides. ¹

In 1949 he moved to Pakistan with his family and lived in Karachi for three years, becoming a Pakistani citizen under the Pakistan Citizenship Act 1951. The article reports that he had been a strong proponent of the idea of an Islamic state. ¹

In 1957, with his close friends Gulam Husein Vanker and Tahir Rasul, he founded the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI), aiming to print a variety of books on Islam and offer classes to new Muslim converts. ¹

The next year he established an Islamic seminary, the As-Salaam Educational Institute, on a donated 75-acre piece of land at Braemar in southern Natal. The experiment failed for lack of manpower and funds and was taken over by the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa in 1973; Deedat then returned to Durban and expanded the IPCI's activities. ¹

By the early 1980s his work was becoming known outside South Africa, and his international profile grew in 1986 when he received the King Faisal Award for his services to Islam in the field of dawah. ¹

Aged sixty-six, he began a decade of international speaking tours: Saudi Arabia and Egypt on several occasions; the United Kingdom several times between 1985 and 1988, and Switzerland in 1987; Pakistan, where he met Zia al-Haq; the UAE and the Maldives in late 1987, where President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom honoured him; the United States in late 1986, with debates against Jimmy Swaggart and others; Sweden and Denmark in late 1991; the US and Canada in 1994; and Australia in early 1996, his last tour, just before his stroke. ¹

With funding from the Gulf states, he published and mass-produced over a dozen palm-sized booklets, around whose themes most of his lectures and debates also revolve, among them: Is the Bible God's Word?, What the Bible Says About Muhammad, Combat Kit Against Bible Thumpers, Crucifixion or Cruci-Fiction, Muhammad: The Natural Successor to Christ, Christ in Islam, Muhammad the Greatest and Al-Qur'an the Miracle of Miracles. ¹

After the prize he secured a grant to print a collated volume of four popular booklets, The Choice: Islam and Christianity. Ten thousand copies were printed in April 1993, and within two years another 250,000 copies had been printed across the Middle East; a second volume containing six more booklets followed. ¹

He also produced a booklet, "Al-Qur'an: the Ultimate Miracle", featuring Rashad Khalifa's "Number 19" theory, but withdrew it after Khalifa disclosed controversial beliefs, including his rejection of the entire Hadith literature. ¹

The article quotes the scholar Brian Larkin: Deedat's authority was of an unusual kind, drawn from his mastery of Christian rather than Muslim texts, his skill at debating, and his mastery of English rather than Arabic; his entire effort was directed at undermining and refuting Christian evangelism and arming Muslims against Christian attacks, and he "opened the eyes of millions of Muslims in the fine art of inter-religious dialogue". ¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Criticism from liberal Muslim groups in South Africa: The article reports that they felt he inaccurately represented Islam and was intolerant of people of other religions, and that several monthly editions of the Muslim Digest of South Africa in 1986 were almost entirely devoted to criticising his stance and "his various dangerous activities". ¹

Criticism from Hindu, Christian and Jewish organisations: After From Hinduism to Islam (1987), Hindus and Christians, joined by other South African Muslim organisations, denounced his attacks on other religions; Jews joined the criticism after Arab and Israel – Conflict or Conciliation? (1989). In Australia, New South Wales Legislative Council member Franca Arena condemned his Good Friday speech at Sydney Town Hall as inciting racial hatred, while affirming freedom of speech. ¹

His position on the Rushdie fatwa: The article reports that in 1988, following the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Deedat supported Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, saying Rushdie "is a hypocrite and has blasphemed holy personalities. He should not be pardoned." ¹

Harsher assessments: The Muslim scholar Farid Esack criticised Deedat, comparing him to such fundamentalists as Rabbi Meir Kahane and Jerry Falwell, and describing his anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and anti-Hindu tapes as telling audiences "all that there is to be told about the other". The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism called him "anti-Jewish" without providing an explanation, according to the article. The article also reports that the sale and distribution of his books have been forbidden in France since 1994, on the stated grounds that they are violently anti-Western, antisemitic and inciting to racial hatred. ¹

His supporters' reply: The article reports that his supporters, among them his son, maintain that he was "a promoter of free speech and dialogue", and quotes Abdulkader Tayob of the University of Cape Town that he was responding to Christian proselytisation in a manner "not good or bad – but worth reflecting on". ¹

The IPCI building and the Bin Laden connection: The building housing the IPCI was originally named the Bin Laden Centre, after Sheikh Muhammad bin Laden made a substantial donation towards its construction; a family member told South Africa's Sunday Times that the Bin Ladens had contributed around five million dollars to the IPCI over the years. In interviews after the September 11 attacks, Deedat and his son Yusuf said he had met Osama bin Laden in the 1980s through this family connection, describing him at the time as a "freedom fighter" recently returned from fighting in Afghanistan. The article also records that Deedat consistently argued against the use of force in religious propagation, and restricted his own activity to public debate and written argument. ¹

On 3 May 1996 he suffered a stroke — a cerebral vascular accident affecting the brain stem — which left him paralysed from the neck down and unable to speak or swallow. He was flown to the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, where he was reported to be fully alert, and he learned to communicate through eye movements over a letter chart. ¹

He spent the last nine years of his life in bed at his home in South Africa, cared for by his wife Hawa, encouraging people to engage in dawah, and receiving hundreds of letters of support and local and international visitors who came to thank him for his work. ¹

He died on 8 August 2005 at his home on Trevennen Road in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal, and is buried at the Verulam cemetery. His funeral prayer was led by Ismail ibn Musa Menk. ¹

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