Yasir Qadhi has recently become one of America's most influential Muslim public figures. He has brought new life to Salafism in America by reforming the movement away from its conservative core, arguing that it offers no solutions for the modern age. His defence of same-sex marriage laws in America, approach to liberal citizenship, and his views about Islamic law are alien to many mainstream Salafis. Yasir Qadhi, it is argued here, has developed a new Reasonable Salafism whereby greater emphasis is placed on the lived realities of modern Muslims. This move towards reasonable Salafism was prompted by his own dissatisfaction with mainstream Salafism. He uses various conservative historical fatwās, such as the ban on the printing press, to highlight the negative effect that such rulings can have on Muslim life. Ultimately, his position on the necessity of incorporating modern context serves as a foundation for his position on Muslim citizenship in liberal societies. It is a type of citizenship that echoes Rawls’ position on “reasonable citizenship”: Muslims should consider other citizens as free and equal and endorse liberal laws that grant freedoms for other minorities even if these laws go against moral Islamic principles.

Born in Houston, Texas, Yasir Qadhi, who is of Pakistani origin, spent his early years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where his parents had temporarily relocated. He returned to the United States to attain his B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering though only to later travel back to Saudi Arabia to study at the Islamic University of Medina (IUM), where he received multiple degrees. He has a diploma in Arabic, a B.A. from the Faculty of Hadith and Islamic Sciences and an M.A. in Islamic Theology from the Faculty of Da‘wah and Islamic Belief. He then returned to the United States in 2005 to pursue a Ph.D. degree in Religious Studies at Yale University. His dissertation was on Ibn Taymīyah and it was submitted in 2013. It is difficult to know exactly what Yasir Qadhi studied during his time at IUM given that there are no historical records of the curriculum; moreover, it is common practice for IUM students to augment their university studies by studying with teachers outside of the university.