Yasir Qadhi is an American Muslim scholar and theologian born on January 30, 1975, in New York City, New York, United States, to Pakistani immigrant parents. He spent his childhood and received his early education in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after his family relocated there. Qadhi pursued advanced Islamic studies at the Islamic University of Madinah, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Hadith in 1996 and a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies in 1999. He later obtained a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University in 2012. Throughout his career, he has been active in Islamic education and scholarship in the United States, previously serving as dean of AlMaghrib Institute and an adjunct professor in the religious studies department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He has been involved in various da'wah and educational initiatives and is currently the resident scholar at the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas, serving as chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, and Dean of The Islamic Seminary of America. Qadhi is known for his lectures and writings on Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and contemporary issues. He is fluent in English and Arabic, with proficiency in Urdu due to his Pakistani heritage. Though he has faced controversies, including past statements criticized as inflammatory toward non-Muslims (e.g., referring to them as 'filthy' in a 2007 lecture, for which he later apologized) and debates over his views on topics like apostasy, Sharia, and Israel-Palestine, drawing criticism from figures like David Wood, supporters view him as a moderate voice bridging traditional Islam and Western society. He has been accused by critics of promoting Islamist ideologies and soft-pedaling extremism.