Dr Akbar Ahmad is a man of many parts. Civil servant, diplomat, author, filmmaker (creator of the biopic Jinnah) and teacher, he has also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. Currently Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, it is his extraordinary insight into Muslim societies around the world and contribution as a scholar of Islam that truly set him apart from his tribe.
Distinguished author of such groundbreaking books as Postmodernism and Islam, Predicament and Promise (1992), Living Islam — From Samarkand to Stornoway (1993), Discovering Islam, Making Sense of Muslim History and Society (2002), and Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World (2002) that came out in the tumultuous post-9/11 era to underscore the pacifist and humanist teachings of Islam, he is a living and walking encyclopedia on contemporary Muslim societies.
Given the unprecedented double-edged challenge of extremism and Islamophobia facing Islam and Muslims, it is only natural that Professor Ahmad has constantly written and spoken about it, analysing often for the benefit of western audiences the underlying causes and historical drivers of violence and radicalisation, as he most recently did in The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (2013).
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Journey into Europe 