Sheikh Ahmad Deedat's Books

Born in India on July 1, 1918.

From working in a shop in a remote area of KwaZulu Natal, to debating the famous American reverend, Jimmy Swaggart in the USA — the story of Ahmed Deedat is truly amazing.

Sheikh Ahmed Deedat was born in India on July 1, 1918. Shortly after his birth, his father, Hoosen, moved to South Africa, leaving the infant Ahmed and his mother behind. Hoosen didn’t see Ahmed again until he sent for him nine years later.

As a little boy, Ahmed made his way to Durban, South Africa, on a long and difficult ship voyage. He arrived in the country in August 1927. “I nearly never disembarked,” he remembers. “The ship was one day late, and the authorities wanted to send us all back, but my father insisted on taking me off the ship. When I got off and rode on a tram, I thought my father owned the tram. I saw my father pay the fare — I thought he was paying the wages of one of his employees.”

Ahmed was enrolled at the Anjuman School in central Durban. Not having been exposed to the English language and alphabet before, he learned it within six months, and finished top of his class. However, financial considerations meant that his father soon pulled him out of school, shortly after he completed standard six.

“I wasn’t sad when I had to leave college,” he says. “It was a matter of survival. My father told me to go and work, and I went to work.” And so began the great mission of Ahmed Deedat.

He found himself working in a country store, which was positioned opposite Adam’s Mission, a structure where young missionaries learned to convert others to Christianity. These students would frequent the shop, and preach to Ahmed, using him as a “guinea pig.”

Knowing little more than the Shah’dah, he found it difficult to defend his beliefs: “They would say, ‘You know Muhammad (Sallallahu alayhi wassallam) had so many wives,’ and I would think, ‘I know nothing about that’ and they would say, ‘You know Muhammad (Sallallahu alayhi wassallam) spread his religion at the point of the sword,’ and I would think, ‘I know nothing about that,’” he once related in an interview.

It was while cleaning the shop in which he worked, that he found a book that would change his life forever.

“Izhaar-ul-Haqq,” a religious dialogue between a Muslim imam and a Christian priest, remains in Sheikh Deedat’s personal library today. It was, for him, the first of many books that he would read. After that, he began filling his mind with facts and quotes, compiling his own notebooks, wherein he would record his research.

In 1940, having acquired extensive knowledge of both the Bible, and the Qur’an, he took to the stage for the first time, to deliver a lecture which he called, “Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wassallam: Messenger of Peace.” He spoke to an audience of under fifteen people at Durban’s Avalon Cinema. His message was clear: There were many contradictions in the Christian Bible and Doctrine, and Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wassallam was indeed the final Messenger of God. Within a short space of time, the venue became Durban’s City Hall, with audiences of up to 2000, crossing the then rampant, legally enforced racial divides, to listen to him. His talks were usually followed by question and answer sessions, wherein Christians would line up with their Bibles, attempting to refute him. No question was too difficult for him, and he usually silenced them by quoting the Bible from memory.

Some Christians and Hindus felt that he was disrespectful, but many others converted to Islam at his talks, silencing his many Muslim critics, who had previously told him that he was “making enemies.”

Dawah began to dominate his life, and he was soon invited to Cape Town, where he lectured in huge halls, attracting crowds of thirty to forty thousand people. He raised the morale of the Malay people in the Cape, who had been feeling disillusioned and downtrodden by White supremacy.