LOTUSVILLE (South Africa), Aug 8: Renowned religious scholar Sheikh Ahmed Deedat passed away here on Monday after a protracted illness. He was 87. Sheikh Deedat had been ill since suffering a severe stroke that left him paralysed more than nine years ago. Despite the illness he continued to “inspire, educate, challenge and inform people about the universal message of Islam,” according to a statement posted on the Islamic Propagation Centre International website.

Sheikh Deedat was born on July 1, 1918, in Surat, India. His family migrated to South Africa in 1927. He established the first Islamic religious institution in South Africa to train preachers at the Assalaam Institute in Braemar. He is also the founder of world’s largest Islamic Dawah organization, the IPCI.

He published over 20 books and distributed millions of copies of pamphlets and literature the world over. Many of Sheikh Deedat’s publications have been translated into Russian, Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, French, Amharic, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Indonesian, Zulu, Afrikaans, Dutch, Norwegian and other languages.

He delivered thousands of lectures all over the world and successfully encountered some of the biggest names in Christian evangelists in public debates.