Book Details

About the Author

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington, D.C. and the former Pakistani High Commissioner to the U.K. and Ireland. Named the ‘world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam’ by the BBC, Ahmed has served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) and Fellow of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge. He has also taught at Harvard and Princeton universities.Ahmed has produced a number of noteworthy films and plays and authored more than a dozen award-winning books. He conceived and completed the Jinnah Quartet, which includes the feature film Jinnah and a documentry on Mr Jinnah’s life. In the aftermath of 9/11, Ahmed conceived a quartet of studies published by Brookings Press examining relations between the West and the World of Islam, the latest of which is Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity. The book’s companion documentary, Journey into Europe, was featured on Maryland Public Television in November 2017. Ahmed consistently writes for a number of popular news publications around the globe, including a weekly column in the Daily Times.Ahmed is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Government of Pakistan’s Star of Excellence (Sitara-i-Imtiaz) for academic distinction and Medal of Excellence (Tamgha-i-Imtiaz), the first-ever Purpose Prize alongside Judea Pearl, and the inaugural Gandhi Memorial Center Peace Award. Ahmed has been consistently featured in The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims and was named a 2015 Global Thought Leader by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute and The Huffington Post’s WorldPost. He was awarded the 2017 Sir Syed Day Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Public Service by the Aligarh Muslim University Alumni Association of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.