->Mosesheron at 16:27, 10 July 2021

2021-07-10T16:27:47Z

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{{Short description|Egyptian Islamic scholar, activist and author}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Abdal-Hamid Kishk<br />{{lang|ar|عبد الحميد كشك}}
| image = Image-ksh.jpg
| caption =
| residence =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1933|3|10}}
| birth_place = [[Shubra Khit]], [[Kingdom of Egypt|Egypt]]
| death_date = {{death date and age|1996|12|6|1933|3|10}}
| death_place = [[Cairo]], [[Egypt]]
| nationality = Egyptian
| alma_mater = [[Al-Azhar University]]
| occupation =
| employer =
| title = [[Sheikh]]
| children =
| website =
| footnotes =
}}
'''Abdal-Hamid Kishk''' ({{lang-ar|عبد الحميد كشك}}; March 10, 1933 – December 6, 1996) was an [[Egyptians|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.<ref name="Short Biography of Sheik Kishk">{{Cite web|url=http://www.jannah.com/akishk/biography.html|title=Kishk Biography قصة حياة الشيخ كشك|date=1999-08-28|access-date=2017-11-30|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/19990828160409/http://www.jannah.com/akishk/biography.html|archivedate=1999-08-28}} </ref>

==Biography==
Abdal-Hamid Kishk was born in 1933 in [[Shubra Khit]], 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''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.islamway.com/?iw_s=Scholar&iw_a=lessons&scholar_id=39|title=عبد الحميد كشك - الدروس - طريق الإسلام|work=islamway.com}}</ref> throughout [[Egypt]].<ref name="Short Biography of Sheik Kishk"/>

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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fadfadation.blogspot.com/2007/05/sheikh-abdul-hamid-kishk.html|title=Fadfadation|author=Fadfadation|work=fadfadation.blogspot.com}}</ref> A French scholar noted:

<blockquote>In the last years of the [[Anwar Sadat|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 [[Camp David Accords|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.<ref>Kepel, Gilles, ''Le Prophete et Pharaon, '' English translation published in 1986, University of California Press. Original French edition published in 1984, Le Prophete et Pharaon, Editions Le Decouverte, p.172, 175</ref></blockquote>

Kishk's audience grew across the Arab world with the distribution of over 2,000 of his sermons in audio cassettes.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.aljazeera.net/encyclopedia/icons/2017/11/16/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%AE-%D9%83%D8%B4%D9%83-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B1-%D9%88%D9%86%D8%B2%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%88%D9%86|title=الشيخ كشك.. فارس المنابر ونزيل السجون|access-date=2018-01-23}}</ref>

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.<ref>John Esposito, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Islam'', Oxford University Press 2003</ref>

==Beliefs and political activities==
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 [[Gamal Abdel Nasser|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.<ref name="Short Biography of Sheik Kishk"/>

===Marriage law===
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 maturity. 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".<ref name="Kepel, 1986 p.181">Kepel, ''Le Prophete et Pharaon'' (1986), p.181</ref>

===Greater jihad===
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."<ref>‘Abd al-Hamid Kishk, ''Dealing With Lust and Greed According to Islam'' (London: Dar Al Taqwa, 1995) pp.2-9</ref>

===Naguib Mahfouz===
Kishk wrote "Our Response to Children of the Alley", attacking the controversial novel of Egyptian author [[Naguib Mahfouz]] for "violating Muslim sacred belief" and "supplanting monotheism with communism and scientific materialism".<ref name="Shoair-2019">{{cite web |last1=Shoair |first1=Mohamed |last2=Selim (trans.) |first2=Samah |title=A Look Back: Naguib Mahfouz on October 14, 1994 |url=https://arablit.org/2019/10/14/a-look-back-naguib-mahfouz-on-october-14-1994/ |website=Arab Lit |access-date=29 December 2020 |page=(note 30) |date=14 October 2019}}</ref>
Mahfouz had won the 1988 [[Nobel Prize for Literature]],<ref>{{cite book|author=Ed. Mohit K. Ray|title=The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A_YatfLrgnMC&pg=PA336|date=September 2007|publisher=Atlantic Publishers & Dist|isbn=978-81-269-0832-5|pages=336}}</ref> (the only Arab ever to be awarded that Prize)<ref name="SMITH-2006"/> but was widely reviled by many revivalist preachers (such as [[Omar Abdul-Rahman]]),<ref name="SMITH-2006">{{cite web |last1=SMITH |first1=Lee |title=Naguib Mahfouz Remembering one of Egypt’s first great novelists. |url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/08/the-importance-of-naguib-mahfouz.html |website=Slate |access-date=29 December 2020 |date=30 August 2006}}</ref> for one of his "best known works", (''[[Children of Gebelawi]]'').

==Books==
Outside his popularity due to his oratory skills he was also the author of nearly 30 books.<ref>Ellen Anne McLarney, ''Soft Force: Women in Egypt's Islamic Awakening'', Princeton University Press (2015), p. 76 </ref>

==Notes==

{{Reflist}}

==External links==
{{commonscatinline}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090723044148/http://www.kishk.fr/ kishk.fr]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120405034332/http://funcova.com/showDiv.php?id=15 funcova.com]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kishk, Abd Al-Hamid}}
[[Category:1933 births]]
[[Category:1996 deaths]]
[[Category:Egyptian Muslim scholars of Islam]]
[[Category:Scholars of Sufism]]
[[Category:Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members]]
[[Category:Al-Azhar University alumni]]
[[Category:People from Beheira Governorate]]

Abd al-Hamid Kishk - Revision history

->Mosesheron at 16:27, 10 July 2021