Abd al-Hamid Kishk
Abdal-Hamid Kishk (
Arabic:
عبد الحميد كشك) (1933 – December 6, 1996) was a blind
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.
[1][dead link]
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 [2] throughout
Egypt.
[1]
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.
[3] 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.[4]
He was arrested again in 1981 shortly before Sadat's assassination, but was released by Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak
in 1982 under the condition that he end his career as a public
activist. His cassette tapes continued to be widely available
thereafter, but the
mosque in
Cairo where he preached was converted into a public health center.
[5]
As a preacher at 'Ain al-Hayat
mosque
he condemned the social conditions in Egypt and the suppression of the
Islamic Movement. This did not stop him from having distinctly spiritual
approach to life, something which his speeches reflect. He was a
dissident under the
Nasser regime, refusing to sanction the government's execution of
Sayyid Qutb or assert compatibility between
Islam and
socialism. He was boycotted by the official media under the
Anwar Sadat regime (1970–1981), but cassette tapes of his sermons were widely distributed all over
Egypt and the
Arab
world. Kishk held political views opposed to the modern bureaucratic
state, and emphasized personal and private piety in his speeches.
[1]
Kishk opposed singing and music. In a 10 April 1981 sermon he
preached that ayah 17:61-5 in the Qur'an, where God tells the devil
"Rouse with your voice whomever you are able", refers to the dangers of
singing. He stated: "Song is the devil's pipe, the courier of
fornication!"
[6]
Kishk attacked Egyptian secularists for the "abolition" of "personal statute" (
al-ahwal al-shakhsiyya).
This referred to the passing of a law (44/1979) on spousal relations
which required men to inform their wives if they had married another
woman. "Under the new law, if the first wife objected, she could
immediately obtain a divorce and would preserve the right to live in the
husband's home until their children attained the age of majority. This
law was drafted by the office of the Ministry of Social Affairs and a
commission of Al-Azhar scholars, and aroused the fury" of Kishk and
other sheikhs, who held that it "contravened the shari'a".
[6]
According to Kishk, the greater
jihad is a continuous struggle aimed at subduing one’s baser nature and attuning oneself to
Allah’s
moral standards. It is the basis for personal moral development,
creating pious and philanthropic activism, promoting justice and
prosperity in society, while combating ignorance, injustice and
oppression. As a result of this greater jihad, says Kishk, Islam "heals
those societies which follows its guidance and are built on consciences
which have been awakened and hearts which have been illuminated by the
light of belief."
[7]
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