Ahmed Deedat Biography

Sheikh Ahmed Hoosen Deedat was a South African Muslim author, public speaker, and one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Muslim-Christian comparative religion. Born on 1 July 1918 in the Surat district of British India, he migrated to South Africa as a child to join his father in Durban, arriving in 1927. Forced to leave school at sixteen due to poverty, he became a self-taught scholar — fluent in the Bible as well as the Qur'an — through decades of independent study, public debate, and engagement with Christian missionary literature.

In 1957 Deedat co-founded the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) in Durban, which became the platform for his lectures, books, and televised debates with Christian evangelists. His debates with figures such as Jimmy Swaggart (1986) and Josh McDowell drew large international audiences, and his pocket-sized booklets — including The Choice: Islam and Christianity, What the Bible Says About Muhammad, and Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction? — were distributed by the millions in many languages. In 1986 he received the King Faisal International Prize for his service to Islam.

A stroke in 1996 left Deedat paralyzed and unable to speak, though he continued to communicate and oversee IPCI's work until his death in Verulam, South Africa, on 8 August 2005. His debates and lectures remain widely circulated and continue to shape contemporary Muslim engagement with comparative religion, even as his polemical style has drawn both admiration and criticism.