Da‘wah or Dawah () usually denotes the preaching of Islam. ''Da‘wah'' literally means "issuing a summons" or "making an invitation", being the active participle of a verb meaning variously "to summon" or "to invite" (whose triconsonantal root is ). A Muslim who practices da‘wah, either as a religious worker or in a volunteer community effort, is called a ''dā‘ī'', plural ''du‘āt''. A ''dā‘ī'' is thus a person who invites people to understand Islam through a dialogical process, and may be categorized in some cases as the Islamic equivalent of a missionary, as one who invites people to the faith, to the prayer, or to Islamic life.

Early Islam

In the Qur'ān, the term da'wah has other senses. In Sura 30:25 of the Qur'ān, it denotes the call to the dead to rise on the Day of Judgment. When used in the Qur'ān it generally refers to Allah's invitation to live according to His will. Thus, when used in the first centuries of Islam, it increasingly referred to the content of that message and was sometimes used interchangeably with ''sharī‘a'' and ''dīn''.

Da‘wah is also described as the duty to "actively encourage fellow Muslims in the pursuance of greater piety in all aspects of their lives," a definition which has become central to contemporary Islamic thought.

Purposes of Da‘wah

In Islamic theology, the purpose of Da‘wah is to invite people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, to understand the worship of Allah as expressed in the Qur'ān and the sunnah of the prophet, as well as to inform them about Muhammad. Da‘wah produces reverts to Islam, which in turn grows the strength of the Muslim ummah.

Da'wah or Call towards Allah, is the means by which the Islamic Prophet Muhammad spread the message of the Qur'ān to mankind. After Muhammad, his followers or Ummah assume the responsibility of the Dawah to the people of their times. They convey the message of the Qur'ān by providing information on why and how the Qur'ān preaches monotheism.

Footnotes

References

''Encyclopaedia of Islam'', Leiden, Netherlands: Brill,

To know more about the meaning and purpose of Dawah see the DawahCity.com

Hirschkind, Charles (2004). "Civic Virtue and Religious Reason: An Islamic Counter-Public" in Drobnick, Jim ''Aural Cultures''. ISBN 0-920397-80-8.

The Multiple Nature of the Islamic Da'wa, Egdūnas Račius, Academic Dissertation, October 2004. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Asian and African Studies.

Council on Dawah and Education Founded by Sheikh Ameen Aziz in Central CA area

Category:Islamic terms Category:Conversion to Islam Category:Religious occupations Category:Practical theology

de:Da'wa fr:Dawa ko:다와 id:Dakwah it:Da'wa he:דעוה ml:ഇസ്ലാമിക പ്രബോധനം ms:Dakwah nl:Dawah no:Da'wa uz:Daʼvat fi:Da’wa

Hamza Andreas Tzortzis is a public speaker on Islam, a researcher, a writer, and activist . Hamza has debated various academics and intellectuals and delivers presentations on topics ranging from ''Does God Exist?'' to ''Can we live better lives without religion?''.

Hamza is a regular proselytiser at university campuses and has also lectured around the world including the USA, Malaysia, Canada and Lebanon.

Background

Hamza, born Andreas Tzortzis, was born in London on 21 September 1980. His parents are Greek migrants who settled in the UK in the 1970s. Hamza was brought up in the London Borough of Hackney and attended school and college in the area. Hamza went on to study Psychology at the University of Westminster and he is currently studying western and Islamism philosophy. He is married with two children.

Profession

Hamza is a Project Manager and Programme Office Manager. He has worked in permanent roles, as well as a consultant for various organisations, including government departments. Hamza worked for the Police I.T. Organisation (now defunct) and the Department for Environmant, Food and Rural Affairs.

Conversion to Islam

Hamza converted to Islam in October 2002 after a process of philosophical enquiry. His story can be heard online.

Hamza regularly participates in debates and symposiums with other public speakers and academics on topics concerning Western and Islamist philosophy, politics and current affairs. He participated in a debate with the president of American Atheists, Dr. Ed Buckner on ''Islam or Atheism?'', he also debated the editor of the Philosophy Now magazine Rick Lewis, entitled ''God: Delusion or Truth?'' and he participated in a debate with the best selling author, philosophy lecturer and chair of the British Humanist Association's Philosophers Group Peter Cave on ''Can We Live Better Lives Without Religion?'' More recently Hamza debated the highly acclaimed professor, Simon Blackburn, who is one of the leading atheist and humanist academics in the world. The debate was held in the Cambridge University debating chambers.

References

Category:1980 births Category:Living people Category:British Muslims Category:British converts to Islamism Category:People from Hackney (district)

Coordinates	42°56′14″N114°42′49″N
name	Yasir Qadhi
residence	Memphis, TN
birth place	Houston, Texas
nationality	American
education	Associate's degree in ArabicB.A. in Islamic SciencesMaster of Arts in Islamic Theology(Islamic University of Madinah)B.Sc in Chemical Engineering(University of Houston)
alma mater	Islamic University of MadinahUniversity of Houston
occupation	Instructor
title	Dean of Academic Affairs, AlMaghrib Institute
religion	Islam
website	MuslimMatters.org
footnotes	}}

Yasir Qadhi (ياسر قاضي) is an American Muslim writer and Islamic instructor for the Al-Maghrib Institute. He has written a number of books and spoken in lectures about Islam and contemporary issues on Muslims.

Biography

Qadhi was born in Houston, TX, to parents of Pakistani origin,however; he completed his primary secondary education in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating as a valedictorian of his class. Afterwards, he returned to Houston to complete a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Houston. When asked why he chose a secular degree instead of an Islamic one first, he remarked:

:"As a Muslim child growing up in America, you are expected to become an engineer or a doctor. It is just understood."

Shortly after working for Dow Chemical for a short stint, he went to the Islamic University of Madinah in Madinah, Saudi Arabia to attain both a bachelor's and master's degree in specific disciplines within Islamic studies.. Initially, he completed a second bachelor's degree in Arabic from the university's College of Hadith and Islamic Sciences, and went on to complete an master's degree in Islamic Theology from the College of Dawah.

He returned to the United States in 2005, after nearly 10 years in Saudi Arabia. At the present time, he is teaching in the Religious Studies Department of Rhodes College, in Memphis, TN. Additionally, he is completing a doctoral in theology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Qadhi describes himself as a revivalist in the Islamic sense, and likens some of the practices he endorses similar to those practiced by conservative Christian groups and Orthodox Jews in America, particularly with regard to dietary laws, family values, and modest dress for women.

Activities

Qadhi was recently featured in a front-page NY Times Magazine article by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott shedding light on Qadhi's activities and biography.

He is the Dean of Academic Affairs and instructor for the AlMaghrib Institute, a double-weekend based seminar that he and other American Muslims instructors run, where instructors travel to designated locations in the U.S., UK and Canada (and more recently, Malaysia) to teach Islamic studies in English. He gives regular sermons and lectures, and also appears on a number of Islamic satellite channels: (Islam Channel in England; Huda TV in Egypt; Al-Fajr Channel in Egypt; and Peace TV in India, the U.K., and the U.S), where he teaches theology, ''Seerah'', ''Tajweed'', and other topics. He is also one of the founding members and Islamic specialists at MuslimMatters.org, a blogzine for American Muslims.

Holocaust Remarks and Subsequent Revisionism

''The Daily Telegraph'' reported that, in 2001, Qadhi (whom the newspaper characterized as a "hard-line conservative preacher") described the Holocaust as a hoax, and claimed that "Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews", and "All this [the Holocaust] is false propaganda". The telegraph also reported that Qadhi later retracted his statements, stating that he had been misled. Qadhi, acknowledging that he made negative remarks about Jews and that he had reformed since then, said that even in the 2001 lecture he never denied "the actual occurrence of the Holocaust, or express any support or admiration for Hitler, or claim that all Jews were worthy of being despised or hated", directly disputing the Telegraph's assertion of Qadhi believing the holocaust to be a hoax. He called it a "one-time mistake", stating that "I firmly believe that the Holocaust was one of the worst crimes against humanity that the 20th century has witnessed."

In July 2010, he was selected to participate in an official delegation of US Imams and religious leaders to visit the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. The Imams subsequently released a joint statement condemning anti-Semitism and labelling Holocaust denial as against the ethics of Islam.

Views on Jihad

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 one of the first militant movements of modern Saudi Arabia, headed by Juhayman al-Otaibi, which gained international attention when it held the Grand Mosque of Mecca hostage in 1979. In another paper, presented in September 2009 at an international conference at University of Edinburgh on understanding ''jihad'' in the modern world, he discussed how a specific legal ruling (''fatwā'') of the medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyya was used both by ''jihadist'' and pacifist groups to justify their positions. The paper has been critiqued however by Salafi commentators. Qadhi has been involved in de-radicalization efforts in the U.S., and was a participant in the U.S. Counter-Radicalization Strategy conference organized by the National Counterterrorism Center in the summer of 2008.

Umar Abdulmutallab, the al-Qaeda member who attempted to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009, was a student at "Ilm Summit", a 16-day AlMaghrib Institute Islamic education conference in August 2008 at which Qadhi was an instructor. Qadhi said of Abdulmutallab, who attended some of the classes that he taught, "He was a very quiet individual, tight-lipped and shy, and he did not ask a single question during the discussions. He barely interacted with the other students at the conference." Qadhi recalled speaking to Abdulmutallab, and remembered that he was "very reserved in his responses." Abdulmutallab also attended two seminars organized by the AlMaghrib Institute in London in the months before the event in Houston, Qadhi said.

In 2006 Qadhi, noting that Muslims are routinely detained and questioned at airports and other ports of entry, said that the main problem the Muslim community has "is the presumption of guilt. It is the singling out of people just because of their looks or their identity." Qadhi said he himself was on a secret watch list, but had no idea how he got on the list. His name has since been cleared from that list.

Works

Books authored or co-authored

''Riyaa: Hidden Shirk'', 103 pages, Abu Ammaar Yasir Al-Qathi, Dar-al-Fatah, 1996, ISBN 8172317530

''An introduction to the sciences of the Qura̓an'', Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, Al-Hidaayah Pub., 1999, ISBN 1-898649-32-4

''An Explanation of the Four Principles of Shirk'', 60 pages, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb, Yasir Qadhi, Al-Hidaayah, 2000, ISBN 1-898649-52-9

''Du’a : The Weapon of the Believer'', Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, Al Hidaayah Publishing & Distribution, 2001, ISBN 1-898649-51-0

''15 Ways to Increase Your Earnings from the Quran and Sunnah'', Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, Al Hidaayah Publishing & Distribution, 2002, ISBN 1-898649-56-1

''An explanation of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab's Kashf al-Shubuhat: a critical analysis of shirk'', Abū Ammaar Yasir Qadhi, Muḥammad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb, Al-Hidaayah, 2003, ISBN 1-898649-62-6

See also

Islam in the United States

List of Da'ees

Dawah

References

External links

MuslimMatters bio (where Qadhi blogs)

Qadhi Audio and Books

Qadhi Video and Audio Lectures from Halal Tube

Qadhi on the Deen Show

Qadhi on the Doha Debates

Doha Debates participant

Video of Qadhi's talk "Perfect Justice: Debunking the Male Bias Myth", April 22, 2006

Video of Qadhi's talk at Global Peace and Unity Conference, 2006

Video of Qadhi's talk at Global Peace and Unity Conference, 2008

Kilday, Anne Marie, "'For the benefit of all mankind'; Local conference highlights Quran's teachings about the importance of honoring animals", ''Houston Chronicle'', December 23, 2006

Category:1975 births Category:Living people Category:Islamic studies scholars Category:American Muslims Category:University of Houston alumni Category:Islamic University of Madinah alumni Category:Yale University alumni Category:American people of Pakistani descent Category:American people of Indian descent Category:Muslim theologians

ar:ياسر قاضي

Coordinates	42°56′14″N114°42′49″N
Region	Islamic Preacher
Color	lightsteelblue
Name	Shabir Ally
School tradition	Islam
Main interests	Islamic Dawah
website	}}

Immam Shabir Ally is the president of the Islamic Information & Dawah Centre International in Toronto, Canada. He is a Muslim activist, preacher and speaker on Islam and Muslims. He is also a debater engaging in regular debates in different parts of the world. He holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, with a specialization in Biblical Literature, and an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto with a specialization in Quranic Exegesis. He is now in his fourth year of PhD studies in Quranic Exegesis at the University of Toronto. He is also teaching arabic at the University of Toronto. He has 3 sons who are also known as Imam in the mosque,Shohaib, Iliyas, and Idris.

Debates / Lectures

Ally is known for accepting literal interpretation of the Quran verses, but seeks to find their justification in similar expressions within the Christian Bible. To this end he has participated in a number of debates and lectures that presents an apologist view of Islam. Some of the more notable debates include:

Shabir Ally vs. Sir Anthony Buzzard, 3rd Baronet

Shabir Ally vs. John Gilchrist

Shabir Ally vs. David Seccombe

Shabir Ally vs. Bob Benjamin & Glen Schenkte

Shabir Ally vs. Jay Smith

Shabir Ally vs. Mike Licona

Shabir Ally vs. James White

Shabir Ally vs. William Lane Craig

Shabir Ally vs. Dave Hunt

Publications

''Is Jesus God? The Bible Says No'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960914887

''What God Said About Eating Pork?'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960777022

''Science in the Qur'an'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960914879

''101 Clear Contradictions in the Bible'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 1894264126

''Yahweh, Jehovah Or Allah'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 894264185

''101 Questions to Ask Visiting Jehovah's Witnesses'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 189426410X

''Reply to Robert Morey's Source of Islam Theories'' (Al-Attique Publications, Canada) ISBN 9960777057

External links

Shabir Ally's Official Website

References

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:Canadian anthropologists Category:Canadian Muslims Category:Laurentian University alumni Category:University of Toronto alumni Category:Muslim apologists