Ahmed Deedat 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.
28 Facts About Ahmed Deedat
2.
Ahmed Deedat was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in 1986 for his fifty years of missionary work.
3.
Ahmed Deedat was born in the town of Tadkeshwar, Surat, Bombay Presidency, British India in 1918.
4.
Ahmed Deedat's father had emigrated to South Africa shortly after his birth.
5.
At the age of 9, Ahmed Deedat left India to join his father in what is known as Kwazulu-Natal.
6.
Ahmed Deedat's mother died only a few months after his departure.
7.
Such accusations offended Ahmed Deedat and created his interest in comparative religion.
8.
Ahmed Deedat took a more active interest in religious debate after he came across the book Izhar ul-Haqq, written by Rahmatullah Kairanawi, while he was rummaging for reading material in his employer's basement.
9.
The book had a profound effect on Ahmed Deedat, who bought a Bible and held debates and discussions with trainee missionaries, whose questions he had previously been unable to answer.
10.
Ahmed Deedat started attending Islamic study classes held by a local Muslim convert named Mr Fairfax.
11.
Ahmed Deedat himself was one of the guides, hosting tourists and giving introductions to Islam and its relationship with Christianity.
12.
In 1949, Ahmed Deedat moved to Pakistan with his family and lived in Karachi for three years near Pakistan Chowk.
13.
Ahmed Deedat then returned to Durban and expanded the IPC's activities.
14.
In 1988, following the publication of Salman Rushdie's fictional work The Satanic Verses, Ahmed Deedat supported the fatwa of the Ayatollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie's death.
15.
On 3 May 1996, Ahmed Deedat suffered a stroke which left him paralysed from the neck down because of a cerebral vascular accident affecting the brain stem, leaving him unable to speak or swallow.
16.
Ahmed Deedat was flown to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, where he was reported to be fully alert.
17.
Ahmed Deedat learned to communicate through a series of eye-movements via a chart whereby he would form words and sentences by acknowledging letters read to him.
18.
Ahmed Deedat spent the last nine years of his life in a bed in his home in South Africa, looked after by his wife, Hawa Deedat, encouraging people to engage in Da'wah.
19.
Ahmed Deedat received hundreds of letters of support from around the world, and local and international visitors continued to visit him and thank him for his work.
20.
On 8 August 2005, Ahmed Deedat died at his home on Trevennen Road in Verulam in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
21.
Hawa Ahmed Deedat died on Monday 28 August 2006 at the age of 85 at their home.
22.
Later, a second paperback volume entitled The Choice: Volume Two containing six more of Ahmed Deedat's booklets was published.
23.
Ahmed Deedat widely promoted a South African printing of The Holy Qur'an Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali with commentary and a detailed index.
24.
Ahmed Deedat produced a booklet entitled "Al-Qur'an: the Ultimate Miracle" featuring the theory of 'the Number 19' that was popularised by Arizona-based Egyptian computer analyst Dr Rashad Khalifa.
25.
Ahmed Deedat has little to say about the errancy of Sufism or Shi'ism, for instance, and makes no particular demand for establishing an Islamic state.
26.
Ahmed Deedat's fame is thus based not on the mastery of Islamic sciences but on his thoroughgoing knowledge of the Bible.
27.
Ahmed Deedat's source of authority, then, is an unusual one, drawing on the mastery of Christian rather than Muslim texts and his skill at English rather than Arabic.
28.
Muslim scholar Farid Esack has criticised Ahmed Deedat, comparing him to such fundamentalists as Rabbi Meir Kahane and Jerry Falwell, and writing:.