Mizanur Rahman Azhari

Mizanur Rahman Azhari is a Bangladeshi Islamic preacher and scholar, born on 26 January 1990 in Demra, Dhaka¹², and raised in a conservative family in the Gazipur area¹. He studied tafsir and Qur'anic sciences at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and then at the International Islamic University Malaysia¹, and became famous for the mass preaching gatherings known in Bangladesh as waz mahfil, becoming one of the most followed preachers in his country; his YouTube channel had about 3.53 million subscribers in platform figures of November 2026¹.

Azhari's family comes from Paramatla village in Muradnagar, Comilla district². He passed the Dakhil examination in 2004 and the Alim examination in 2006 with a perfect grade point average at Darunnajat Siddiquia Kamil Madrasa in Demra¹. In 2007 he placed first in the Islamic Foundation's Al-Azhar scholarship examination, and he studied at the Faculty of Usuluddin in Cairo until graduating in 2012 in the department of Tafsir and Qur'anic Sciences¹. He completed master's, MPhil and doctoral studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia, with research on topics such as human embryology and the behavioural characteristics of human beings in the Qur'an¹².

Azhari began his career in 2010 as a ghazal singer and a participant in recitation programmes on ATN Bangla¹, then turned to waz preaching in 2015². His preaching addresses the everyday concerns of young people, such as drugs, parent-child relations and women's rights, as The Daily Star's analysis of his style records¹. He built his digital presence on YouTube and Facebook, and his recordings spread widely inside Bangladesh and among its diaspora¹.

His events in Bangladesh stopped in early 2020 amid political pressure and repeated cancellations of his programmes, and he left for Malaysia in February 2020¹. He returned to Bangladesh on 2 October 2024 to a large welcome, after years spent in Kuala Lumpur¹.

Azhari married on 29 January 2014 and has two daughters¹.

Azhari is among the leading faces of digital preaching in Bangladesh, and press sources describe him as one of the most popular preachers in the country¹. His YouTube channel is followed by about 3.53 million subscribers in platform figures of November 2026 — platform figures that change constantly and are not presented by the museum as fixed facts¹.

• ¹
• ²