By Alhaji Mohamed Wusha Conteh 4th September, 2013.
Yasir Qadhi was born in Houston, TX, to Pakistani parents, who came to the United States in the 1960s. He completed his primary education and high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating valedictorian of his class and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston. Yasir Qadhi was born in Houston, TX, to Pakistani parents, who came to the United States in the 1960s. He completed his primary education and high school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, graduating valedictorian of his class and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston.
After working for Dow Chemical for a short stint, he pursued an education for 10 years in Islamic studies at the prestigious and rather conservative Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia. There, he completed a second bachelor's degree in Arabic from the College of Hadith and Islamic Sciences, specializing in hadith studies, and then went on to complete an M.A. in Islamic Theology from the College of Dawah.
He returned to the United States in 2005. Presently, he is enrolled in a doctoral program in Islamic studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
For professional reasons, he changed his last name from "Kazi". Qadhi describes his views as very traditional, and compares some of the practices and social mores he endorses as close to those of conservative Christian groups and Orthodox Jews, particularly with regard to modest dress for women.
