| Abdullah al-Qasemi | |
| Birth Place: | Buraydah, Emirate of Nejd and Hasa, now Al-Qassim province |
| Death Place: | Cairo, Egypt |
| Nationality: | Saudi Arabian |
| Alma Mater: | Al-Azhar University |
| Genre: | Skepticism |
| Notableworks: | They Lie to See God Beautiful[1] |
Abdullah al-Qasemi (1907 – 9 January 1996; Arabic: عبدالله القصيمي) was a Saudi Arabian 20th-century writer and intellectual. He was one of the most controversial intellectuals in the Arab world because of his radical change from defending Salafism to defending atheism and rejecting organized religion. He questioned the existence of God and criticized religions, which resulted in the allegations of him becoming an atheist, therefore his books were banned all over the Arab world.[2]
After surviving assassination attempts in Egypt and Lebanon while suffering imprisonment under instigation from the Yemeni government,[3] he was hospitalized at the Ain-Shams hospital in Cairo on 12 December 1995 and died of cancer on 9 January 1996.[4]
Al-Qasemi was born in Buraydah in the Emirate of Nejd and Hasa (present-day Saudi Arabia). Al-Qasemi first joined the Sheikh Ali Mahmoud school, his father died in 1922, and al-Qasemi was then freed from the constraints imposed on him by his father, he then continued his studies. The merchant Abdulaziz Al-Rashed Al-Humaid was impressed by al-Qasemi, so he took him to Iraq, India and Syria, finally, Al-Qasemi resumed his studies at the Sheikh Amin Shanqeeti school in Zubair in Iraq after then he traveled to India where he spent two years learning in school, he learned Arabic, hadiths, and the foundations of the Islamic Sharia, he then returned to Iraq where he joined al-Kazimiyah school, he returned to Damascus, finally, he decided to live in Cairo.
Al-Qasemi has studied at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1927, but he was soon expelled because of his book "The Najdi Lightning Sweeping al-Degwy's Darnkess" Arabic: البروق النجدية في اكتساح الظلمات الدجوية, which he had written in response to an article by Al-Azhar scholar Yusuf al-Degwy 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 scepticism and criticizing religion to the point where his opponents labelled him "atheist". His most important books - written after he turned against the Salafi ideology - are: "These are the Cuffs " and "They Lie to See God as Beautiful" and his book "Arabs are a sonorous phenomenon" (sic). 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.
He was hospitalized at the Ain-Shams hospital in Cairo on 12 December 1995 and died of cancer on 9 January 1996, and according to his will, he was buried along with his wife in the "Bab Al-Wazir" cemetery in Egypt.
Abdullah Al-Qasemi's works have rarely been translated. Here is a non-exhaustive list: