Ahmad Al Shugairi

Ahmad Mazin Ahmad Asaad Al Shugairi is a Saudi media presenter, writer and television host, born in Jeddah on 6 June 1973. He became famous in Saudi Arabia and across the Arab world with the series Khawater (Reflections), whose wide success the Arabic article attributes to the simplicity of its style and its treatment of young people's questions; every episode opened with his line: "I am not a scholar, not a mufti and not a jurist — only a student of knowledge." ¹

He is the grandson of the politician Ahmad Asaad al-Shugairi, founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who served in Saudi Arabia as a minister of state for United Nations affairs under King Saud from 1957 to 1962. ¹

He was born to a Jeddah family, finished his secondary schooling at the Manarat schools in Jeddah, and at seventeen travelled to the United States, to Long Beach, California, where he took a bachelor's degree in management systems and then a master's in business administration from the University of California, in order to run his father's business. ¹ His Wikidata item names the university as the University of California, Berkeley, while the Arabic article's text gives Long Beach and the University of California without naming a campus; reconciling the two accounts needs a further source. ²

The article describes the first turning point of his life as the start of his commitment to prayer in 1994, while he was in America, followed by his giving up cigarettes and shisha from March 2000 — a process that took two full years of setbacks. ¹

His media career began in 2002 with Yalla Shabab (Come On, Youth) on MBC, a talk programme devised by Hani Khoja to improve society with a focus on young people; Al Shugairi joined as a producer and became one of its presenters as well. ¹

In the following years he took part in A Journey with Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, in which a group of young men accompanied the American preacher Hamza Yusuf in several locations including the United States, and Yusuf set out his view of the relationship between Islam and the West. ¹

Before media, he worked in trade in his own company, and he entered television by chance when a friend who produced the programme offered him a part in it. ¹

• Khawater (Reflections): his best-known work, the continuation of a project he began as weekly articles in the Saudi newspaper Al-Madinah under the title Khawater Shab (A Young Man's Reflections). Each episode took one youth issue in no more than five minutes, in the form of advice addressed to young men and women; he presented it alone because MBC's schedule had no larger slot. ¹
• Khawater began on MBC, drew millions of Arab viewers, and ran for eleven Ramadan seasons until 2015, the last season being a summary of those before it. Its episodes treated such questions as the hijab, work, young people's reluctance to read, and the Muslim nation's capacity for revival. ¹
• Law Kana Baynana (Had He Been Among Us): a programme asking how the Prophet ﷺ Muhammad would have acted in the situations of daily life in the twenty-first century, comparing people's practices today with what the biography (sira) records; it consists of two parts of fifteen episodes each. ¹
• Qomrah: a programme he presented after Khawater, listed in the article among his notable works. ¹
• Seen: its first season aired on MBC1 in 2021 and its second on the same channel in 2023. ¹
• The films Ihsan from Madinah and Ihsan from the Haram: the first treated the landmarks of Medina, its people's customs and its development; the second the administration of the sanctuary, from the Zamzam water service to cleaning, perfuming and assistance for people with special needs. ¹

Alongside the programmes, Al Shugairi adopted cultural and volunteering projects whose stated aim was "to bring the nation of 'Read' back to reading". In 2005 he began several endowment and non-profit projects, among them the Andalusiya cultural café in Jeddah and the Thaqafa website; these were later transferred to Aram Al-Ihsan Holding, a non-profit company, to spread the concept of ihsan (excellence) through purposeful television production and by developing the café and the site. ¹

The Andalusiya café was the first cultural café in Jeddah: it did not serve only food and drink, but hosted seminars and held a library of books from many fields of knowledge; it was later closed. ¹

He founded the Ihsan website, which the article describes as the first interactive social network for spreading the culture of volunteering in the Arab world, linking volunteers, volunteering clubs and supporters, with a stated goal of attracting one hundred thousand volunteers in 2012. ¹

He also supported the expenses of some foreign students at universities, provided a place for young people interested in volunteering and writing to exchange ideas and experience, and was among those who answered the film offensive to the Prophet Muhammad by publishing an English-language video online. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Al Shugairi presents himself at the head of his programmes as a student of knowledge, not a scholar, mufti or jurist, and made that self-description the basis of his address to young people. ¹

Khawater drew much criticism over its seasons for a boldness the Arab viewer was not used to, according to the article, alongside the great popularity it enjoyed especially among young men and women, as its presenter spoke in colloquial dialect and dressed as young people dress. ¹

The article's infobox names two sons, Yousof and Ibrahim. The museum does not publish family details beyond what is needed to understand his work. ¹

The article attributes the success of Khawater to its presenter's simple style and his treatment of the questions of young people and the nation, until within a few years the programme rose to the first rank of successful programmes with an added renewing value in cultural media. ¹

According to the article, he speaks Arabic, English and Japanese. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Social-media follower figures and awards attributed to him in older profiles were not carried into this article, because they do not appear in the sources registered for this record; they will be added when documented by a registered source.