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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Ahmed Deedat - Life Line

                                                                                             
Ahmed Hoosen Deedat (Arabic: احمد حسين ديدات‎ )July 1918 – 8 August 2005 was a South African writer and public speaker of Indian descent. He was best known as a Muslim missionary who held numerous inter-religious public debates with evangelical Christians, as well as video lectures, most of which centred around Islam, Christianity and the Bible. He also established the IPCI, an international Islamic missionary organisation, and wrote several booklets on Islam and Christianity which were widely distributed by the organisation. He was awarded the prestigious King Faisal International Prize in 1986 for his 50 years of missionary work. One focus of his work was providing Muslims with theological tools for defending themselves against active proselytising by Christian missionaries. He used English to get his message across to Muslims and non-Muslims in the western world.

Deedat was born in the town of Tadkeshwar, Surat, Bombay Presidency, British India in 1918. His father had emigrated to South Africa shortly after the birth of Ahmed Deedat. At the age of 9, Deedat left India to join his father in what is now known as Kwazulu-Natal. Arriving in South Africa, Deedat applied himself with diligence to his studies, overcoming the language barrier and excelling in school, even getting promoted until he completed standard 6. However, due to financial circumstances, he had to quit school and start working by the time he was the age of 16.
In 1936, while working as a furniture salesman, he met a group of missionaries at a Christian seminary on the Natal South Coast who, during their efforts to convert people of Muslim faith, often accused the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) of having "used the sword" to bring people to Islam. Such accusations offended Deedat and created his interest in comparative religion.
Deedat took a more active interest in religious debate after he came across a book entitled "Izhar ul-Huqq" (Truth Revealed), written by Rahmatullah Kairanawi, while Deedat was rummaging for reading material in his employer's basement. This book chronicled the efforts of Christian missionaries in India a century earlier. The book had a profound effect on Deedat, who bought a Bible and held debates and discussions with trainee missionaries, whose questions he had previously been unable to answer.
He started attending Islamic study classes held by a local Muslim convert named Mr. Fairfax. Seeing the popularity of the classes, Mr. Fairfax offered to teach an extra session on the Bible and how to preach to Christians about Islam. Deedat and a few others were delighted at the opportunity. Shortly thereafter, Fairfax had to pull out and Deedat, by this point quite knowledgeable about the Bible, took over teaching the class, which he did for three years. He later credited this experience for expanding his horizons significantly towards missionary work.Deedat's first lecture, entitled "Muhammad: Messenger of Peace", was delivered in 1942 to an audience of fifteen people at a Durban cinema named Avalon Cinema.Over time Deedat's popularity as a public speaker grew in Durban, to the point that he was invited to speak in other cities in South Africa. A decade later he was filling City halls with audiences numbering in the thousands in cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Deedat published and mass-produced over one dozen palm-sized booklets focusing on the following major themes. Most of Deedat's numerous lectures, as well as most of his debates in fact, focus on and around these same themes. Often the same theme has several video lectures to its credit, having been delivered at different times and different places.
  • Is the Bible God's Word?
  • What The Bible Says About Muhammad
  • Crucifixion or Cruci-Fiction?
    • several smaller spin-off titles on specific aspects of Crucifixion
  • Muhammad: The Natural Successor to Christ
  • Christ in Islam
  • Muhammad The Greatest
  • Al-Qur'an the Miracle of Miracles
Deedat's first well-known debate took place in August 1981, when he debated well-known Christian preacher Josh McDowell in Durban, South Africa. Many of his debates have later been broadcast online on Youtube, among other sites.

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. He was flown to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, where he was reported to be fully alert. He 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.
He 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 (Islam propagation). He 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.
On  8 August 2005, Ahmed Deedat died at his home on Trevennen Road in Verulam in the province of  KwaZulu-Natal. He is buried at the Verulam cemetery. Hawa Deedat died on Monday 28 August 2006 at the age of 85, one year after her husband, at Deedat’s home.

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