Abdul Razzaq al-Mahdi

When al-Mahdi graduated from the Islamic shar’i college, he started working in verifying religious books (tahqiq). He was appointed as an imam and preacher for several mosques in Damascus and its rural areas. He was coerced to pause preaching and studying more than once due to security reasons.

In an article published in the 19th edition of the Turkistan Islamic Party's magazine "Islamic Turkistan", Abdurazak al Mahdi praised Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan's conversion to Islam and Qutayba bin Muslim's conquest.

Muhaysini, Abu Taher Al Hamawi, and Abdelrazzak Mehdi worked on the formation of the group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. They are members of the group and appeared in its founding declaration. However some months later on 8 March 2017 Abdul Razzaq al-Mahdi announced his split from the group in his official Telegram channel as he had not been able to hinder some injustices and did thus not wish to take share in the responsibility. This came in the wake of the Rebel infighting in South Idlib and Northern Hama between Tahrir al-Sham and Liwa al-Aqsa, an ISIS affiliate left over from the late Jund al-Aqsa movement after its fusion. Liwa al-Aqsa had been accused of harassing other groups and kidnapping people as they considered most groups to be apostates, which emanated from their extreme views in takfir. Since his split from the group al-Mahdi continues his Islamic preaching activities independently and hosts some programs along with answering jurisprudential (relating fiqh - the permissibility or prohibition of actions) questions of his followers online through Telegram.

A fatwa allowing abandoned homes to be seized was withdrawn by Abdulrazzaq al Mahdi. A video was posted of Abdul Razzaq al Mahdi pleading for Muslims to intervene against what he called were "cursed Shiite rafidha" in December 2016 during the Battle of Aleppo.

He started pursuing Islamic Sciences in 1977 in the al-Fathu’l Islami institution in Damascus, from great scholars of Damascus, most famous among them Abdur Razzaq al-Halabi, the mufti of Hanafis and one who collected mutawatir recitations. He read to him the whole Quran in the narration of Hafs and received an ijazah reaching to Muhammad. He also studied under Shaykh Adeeb al-Kallas and many other scholars.

Abdul Razzaq al-Mahdi (Arabic: عبد الزراق المهدي ‎) is a Syrian Islamist cleric who is actively involved fighting in the Syrian Civil War against the Syrian government. He originates from Damascus's Al-Salihiyah district and was born in 1961.