In celebration of one of the most prominent figures of Algeria and Muslims in Europe, the French Islamic Council, the day before yesterday evening, honored the divine preacher Sheikh Dr. Al-Arabi Kashat, may God grant him good health and wellness, after a long preaching and scholarly journey in France, in the presence of an elite group of intellectual pioneers and members of the Muslim community.
Sheikh Al-Arabi Kashat, the descendant of a family that combined the honor of jihad and the nobility of knowledge, and one of the men who gave their lives to serve the religion, the homeland, the nation and humanity as a whole. He was the one who spent the flower of his youth and old age and the best part of his old age working for Islam. He is shaking the pulpits of Europe and awakening in its Muslims the feeling of belonging to this great religion, and is undertaking a cultivation that he began from the early seventies until the second decade of this millennium.
Professor Kashat was born in 1945 in the municipality of Zemora in the state of Bordj Bou Arreridj. He memorized the Book of God Almighty when he was not yet fifteen years old. He then continued his academic career until he obtained a bachelor’s degree, before joining the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1971, where he obtained a doctorate in sociology.
In 1979, along with a group of his brothers and friends, he founded the Al-Dawa Mosque in the Stalingrad neighborhood in central Paris, an edifice that turned into a beacon of knowledge, guidance, dialogue, and education, and the Sheikh became its dean and the beating heart of his message. He also established a weekly intellectual symposium; In the same mosque, it hosted major intellectual elites. Muslim and Western, the most prominent of whom is the German Muslim diplomat Wilfried Murad Hoffmann, and the scholar Sheikh Muhammad Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti, may God have mercy on them both.
The scholar Al-Arabi Kshat was known for his oratory, writing, poetry, and education. He was one of the first to deliver the Friday sermon in Arabic and French, and one of the pioneers who opened the doors of the French media to introduce Islam, its civilization, values, and symbols. He also had previous media contributions on Algerian radio.
Dr. Al-Arabi Kshat contributed to reviving the spirit of belonging to Islam among generations of young Muslims in France. He accompanied immigrants in preserving their identity and opened bridges of acquaintance and dialogue with French society. He was a preacher of wisdom, an educator in deed before words, and a builder of man before structure. He also had valuable contributions in Islamic thought forums in Algeria, as well as in the forums of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments and the Supreme Islamic Council, the last of which was in an intellectual forum at the Algeria International Book Fair two years ago.
