Abd al-Hamid Kishk
| Abdal-Hamid Kishk | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | March 10, 1933 Shibrakheet, Egypt |
| Died | December 6, 1996 (aged 62-63) |
| Alma mater | Al-Azhar University |
| Title | Sheikh |
Abdal-Hamid Kishk (March 10, 1933 – December 6, 1996) was an Egyptian preacher, scholar of Islam, activist, and author. He was a graduate of the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo and was known for his humour, popular sermons, and for his outspoken stance against music, restrictions on polygamy, and injustice and oppression in the Muslim world.
Abdal-Hamid Kishk was born in 1933 in Shibrakheet, a small village near Alexandria, Egypt. His father died before Abd al-Hamid reached schooling age. He joined one of the schools of Azhar and by the age of 8 he had memorized the Quran. It was at this time that he was inflicted by an illness which took his sight. However, rather than demoralize him, the loss of his sight encouraged him to learn more and persevere further. He graduated as a scholar from the faculty of Usoul al Din in Azhar and was appointed as an Imam, giving khutbas throughout Egypt.
Around 1964 he took up the minbar of 'Ain al-Hayat mosque in Cairo as his platform. A vocal critic of the Egyptian government, he was imprisoned in 1965 for two and half years. "The peak of his fame" is said to have been "between 1967 and early 1980s," when crowds of 10,000 would regularly attend his often "hilarious" Friday sermons at a mosque in the Kobry Al Koba district in Cairo. A French scholar noted:
In the last years of the Sadat's presidency, it was impossible to walk the streets of Cairo without hearing [Kishk's] stentorian voice. Climb into a collective service-taxi and the driver is listening to one of Sheikh Kishk's recorded sermons... They listen to Kishk in Cairo, in Casablanca, and in the North African district of Marseilles. A Saudi-funded magazine has dubbed him `the star of Islamic preaching`... none commands his incomparable vocal cords, his panoramic Muslim culture, his phenomenal capacity for improvisation, and his acerbic humour in criticizing infidel regimes, military dictatorship, the peace treaty with Israel, or the complicity of al-Azhar... So great was his fame that the Ministry of Waqf had to build several annexes to the mosque to accommodate the Friday crowds. In 1981, however, even these were insufficient to shelter the approximately 10,000 people who regularly attended.
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