Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi (ياسر قاضي), formerly known as Yasir Kazi, is an American Muslim writer and Islamic instructor for the Al-Maghrib Institute. He has written a number of books and has lectured on Islam and contemporary Muslim issues.
Qadhi was born in Houston, Texas, to parents of Pakistani origin, but Qadhi has also stated that he hails from Lucknow, India.[citation needed] He completed his primary and secondary education in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating as valedictorian of his class. 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:
After a short stint at Dow Chemical, he went to the Islamic University of Madinah in Madinah, Saudi Arabia to attain 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 the College of Dawah.
He returned to the United States in 2005 after nearly ten years in Saudi Arabia. As of April 2012, he teaches 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.