Abdullah Rushdy

Abdullah Muhammad Rushdy Muhammad al-Saadawi is an Egyptian preacher, and imam and preacher at the Sayyida Nafisa Mosque for the Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf, born in Cairo on 3 February 1984; he works in comparative religion and religious schools and has presented television programmes. ¹

Rushdy took a bachelor's degree in Islamic dawah from the Faculty of Islamic Dawah and a bachelor's in Islamic sharia from the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Al-Azhar University, followed by a master's in religions and schools. In 2011 he presented Al-Qawl al-Fasl (The Decisive Word) on the Fajr satellite channel, a programme of debates and dialogues among sheikhs and preachers, and other religious programmes on Egyptian channels; he took part in many televised debates that drew wide controversy, among them his debate with Islam El-Beheiry, in which the presenter described him as Al-Azhar's official representative in the debate. ^{1 2}

Rushdy was barred from preaching by a Ministry of Awqaf decision after statements of his on the unbelief of non-Muslims which the ministry's leadership considered provocative to Egypt's Christians; before that he had been the ministry's media spokesman and imam and preacher of the Sayyida Nafisa Mosque. The ministry reversed the decision in August 2019 and restored him to his preaching duties in implementation of an administrative court ruling. He then joined the Al-Mehwar channel to present the programme Sharyan al-Khayr from November 2019, after which the channel stopped the programme. ¹

His YouTube channel is "the official channel of Sheikh Abdullah Rushdy", as its own description states; it began on 12 March 2012, and platform statistics recorded 2,470,000 subscribers, 301,553,596 views and 1,285 videos for it on 23 October 2026 — dated platform figures that change constantly. Among his series on it are Fi Kalimatayn (In Two Words) and Abathiyyat. ³

His books include Husun al-Tawhid fi Muwajahat al-Ilhad (Fortresses of Tawhid Against Atheism), Qadaya Sha'ika fi al-Fikr al-Islami (Thorny Questions in Islamic Thought) and Al-Kalima al-Fasila fi al-Radd ala al-Shubuhat (The Decisive Word in Answering Doubts). ¹

Rushdy has drawn criticism for his views on the hijab, harassment, secularism and slavery, as the Wikipedia article records from press reports, among them a BBC Arabic report of 2020 on the controversy over his statements on sexual harassment in Egypt. This section is reported as the sources give it; it is not a verdict by the museum. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.