Abdullah al-Qasemi (1907 – 9 January 1996; Arabic: عبدالله القصيمي) was a Saudi Arabian 20th-century writer. Once a prominent Salafist intellectual, he became critical of religion and was branded an atheist — pariah to much of the Arab world. His books were banned in some Arab countries and a death fatwa was issued against him for apostasy. He was subsequently targeted for assassination in Egypt and Lebanon.
Abdullah al-Qasemi was born in 1907 in Khubb al-Hulwah, located to the west of the city of Buraidah, al-Najdiya in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi of Egyptian heritage, his father was one of the remains of the Egyptians who came with the army of Muhammad Ali Pasha to the invasion of Najd, and he who attributed himself to al-Qassim was famous for it.
Abdullah al-Qasemi's father is Sheikh Ali al-Saidi, who came from Hail and settled in Khubb al-Hulwah, and was deeply religious. He did not stop what he received from religious teachings in the city of Buraidah to move to Sharjah to increase the legal sciences and trade. Abdullah al-Qasemi's mother is (according to his son, Dr. Faisal bin Abdullah al-Qasemi) the Mrs. Moudi al-Rumai Almost four years, to call her and her child a migrant to Sharjah, but she was soon associated with another man from the al-Husayni family residing in the village of al-Ap, near Khubb al-Hulwah.
Abdullah al-Qasemi is linked with a number of Najdi families, such as the family of al-Muzaini, al-Muslim, al-Husayni and al-Jamuji. The Saudi historian Abdul Rahman al-Ruwaished stated that Sheikh Ibn Kamalah, who worked for King Abdul Aziz, is the uncle of Abdullah al-Qasemi. The historian Ibrahim al-Muslim said, when asked about the extent of the link and kinship between the two families: “We gathered nearly a link and a link!” The information was published for the first time - because it was information that al-Qasemi was not disclosed about for everyone who met him from writers, journalists and researchers - as his friends say that he was not speaking with his own affairs at all, and that Sheikh Ali al-Saidi had married a woman from Sharjah and Amman and had children there, and Faisal al-Qasemi stated that he was in constant contact with his cousins in Sharjah and visited him in Riyadh constantly.
Al-Qasemi grew up between Khubb al-Hulwah and the apartment. In addition to losing the tenderness of his parents, the living conditions were poor, the combination of which may have been why he left his village at the age of ten. Dr. Faisal al-Qasemi instead believes that the uncles of Sheikh Abdullah are the ones who pushed him to leave. The livelihood, and they insisted on leaving in front of his mother's insistence, and their argument was to search for his father to feed him and apply him after they were narrowed in these bad living conditions. In Cairo, a journey of long-standing and then intellectual research, which has become one of the most prominent actors at the level of the Arab world.
In Riyadh, where al-Qasemi studied Sheikh "Saad bin Atiq", he got to know a delegation from Sharjah who came to the visit of Riyadh, and it was a coincidence that the head of the delegation is a friend of his father and knew him completely, so I walked on his horizon signs of hope in meeting his father, and this was what happened on the coast of the Gulf of Amman, but the amazement hit the boy who was looking not only to meet his father, but that the tender He used to work as a merchant in pearls and strictly in his interpretation of many teachings of the Islamic religion, which he met with some softening and cruelty and imposed on him a very cruel education method.
This dry meeting must have its subsequent impact on the life of al-Qasemi. Al-Qasemi says, describing that meeting in one of his messages that he sent to Professor Ahmed al-Sibai:
It was a cruel shock to more and further than an account, I found my father to be a religious fanatic without borders, he turned religion and religiosity into rudeness, or he turned religion and religiosity into rudeness. He came to be rude with the interpretations and reasons that religion came with and tried to appear so, and no sincere cleric and preacher sees him only as much as he finds in him frowning and rudeness ...
Al-Qasemi enrolled in the Sheikh Ali al-Mahmoud School, then his father died in 1922, and he was released from those restrictions in which he was accompanied and he continued to teach him, so the merchant Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Rashid al-Hamid, who took him with Iraq, India and Syria, admired him. He stayed with two years learning in one of the schools there is the Arabic language and the prophetic hadiths and the foundations of Islamic law, then he returned to Iraq and enrolled in the Kadhimiya school, then he went out to Damascus and then to Cairo, which witnessed the true birth of al-Qassimi.
Al-Qasemi belongs to the al-Saidi family, which is a deeply struck in Najd and spread between the areas of Hail and al-Qassim, and the name came in al-Saidi; At a time when Professor Abdul Rahman al-Buthi - a historian residing in Unaizah in al-Qassim - sees that one of the grandparents of the family was working in the minds between Egypt and we find centuries ago, so he attributed to the region to which he was going traded, and this is a habit spread in many Najdi cities, and it is supported by the researcher Yaqoub al-Rashid and the historian Ibrahim al-Muslim, but he states that the family of al-Saidi in Hail and Braidah who meet in Its origins are due to the Juhayna tribe and the homeland of his father and grandparents in Yanbu al-Nakhl, but he continues, saying: "Sheikh Hamad al-Jasser discussed the issue and reached a result, which is that the origins of al-Qasemi from Najd and that one of his ancestors has traveled to Egypt and returned again to Najd, so he knew the title of al-Saidi!"
In response to a question by lawyer Abdel-Rahman, who accompanied al-Qasemi for fifty years, that al-Qasemi must have spoken to him on this issue during this long time period, he said: “Never happened that Sheikh Abdullah spoke to me on this issue and no other, because he always refused to talk about all his personal issues!”.
Al-Qasemi studied at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1927, but he was soon expelled because of his book The Najdi Lightning Sweeping al-Dajwi's Darkness (Arabic: البروق النجدية في اكتساح الظلمات الدجوية), which he had written in response to an article by Al-Azhar scholar Youssef al-Dajwi (Arabic: يوسف الدجوي), entitled "The litigiousness and ignorance of Wahhabists" published in the journal Nour Al-Islam in 1931. Subsequently Abdullah al-Qasemi wrote several books attacking the scholars of Al-Azhar.
After his expulsion from al-Azhar, al-Qasemi changed his way of thinking, defending secularism and skepticism and criticizing religion to the point where his opponents labelled him "atheist". His most important books written after his rejection of Salafi ideology are These are the Cuffs, They Lie to See God Beautiful, and Arabs are a Sonorous Phenomenon. He survived two assassination attempts in Egypt and Lebanon and suffered imprisonment in Egypt under instigation from the Yemeni government, because of his great influence on Yemeni students who, because of their frequent meetings with him, were deeply influenced by his thoughts. Such influence was perceived by the Yemeni government as negative and not suitable to Islam.
Attempted Assassination and Death
The first attempt to assassinate al-Qasemi occurred in 1947, the year that followed the release of his controversial book These are the Cuffs. Al-Qasemi says about the assassination attempt:
“It was within my diary in the evening to hesitate to a café near my house, and once I saw a young man in the Arab Najdi costume sitting in a corner of it. He drew my attention, so I called and sat together and started talking to him. I asked him from your Arab body and your dialect. So I asked him again, did you come in a trade, he said: No, I said: Did you come to study, and he answered the negative. He was a young man from his body and his conversation seemed to have a legal knowledge and an educated style .. I dared him, and I told him why are you in Cairo? He hesitated somewhat, but he might have begun to trust his interlocutor, and he said: I came looking for a person named Abdullah al-Qasemi and I learned that he lives close to here. I asked him and what do you want from him? He answered: He wrote a book that brings it out of Islam, and we have been fascinated by a heretic that is permissible to kill him, and whoever does, he will receive the great reward. I asked him, did you know him? He said: No, did you sit to him? Do they influence themselves on themselves?