AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, DC

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies School of International Service

BRIEF BIO: Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He has served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and was the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Ahmed belonged to the senior Civil Service of Pakistan and was the Pakistan High Commissioner to the U.K. and Ireland. Previously, Ahmed was the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) and Fellow of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge. Ahmed was the Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow of Jesus College for the Fall term of 2012 at Cambridge University. He has also taught at Harvard and Princeton Universities. He holds a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (where he is placed in the “notable alumnus” category) and a Diploma in Education (“double distinctions”) and M.A. from the University of Cambridge. In addition, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Liverpool (2007) and an Honorary Doctorate from Forman Christian College University in Lahore, Pakistan (2013), where he has a gold medal for standing first in English and History. Ahmed was declared The Professor of the Year for the DC area in 2004 by the Carnegie Foundation. He has also been involved with interfaith efforts in Washington, DC. The Bishop of Washington hosted an unprecedented Evensong dedicated to Ahmed at the National Cathedral and he gave a sermon as part of the memorial service commemorating the decade since 9/11 at St. Alban’s Church at the National Cathedral. With Professor Judea Pearl, the father of Danny Pearl, Ahmed conducted a series of high-profile dialogues to promote better Jewish-Muslim understanding. The two received the first ever prestigious Purpose Prize. The Gandhi Center in Washington, D.C., gave him the inaugural Peace Award. He was given the Medal of Excellence and the Star of Excellence in Pakistan and was invited to address the Senate of Pakistan on relations between the West and the Muslim world in a special session in 2014.

BOOKS/MEDIA: Ahmed is the author of over a dozen award-winning books, including Discovering Islam, which was the basis of a six-part BBC TV series called Living Islam, and Islam Under Siege. Ahmed conceived and completed The Jinnah Quartet based on the life of M.A. Jinnah to illustrate the compatibility of Islam and democracy within the context of a modern state —Jinnah, a feature film starring Sir Christopher Lee (with Lee stating in 2002 of his role in the film, “I know it's the best thing I've ever done by a long, long way. My best performance. It's a very good movie. It's had wonderful reviews.”); the documentary film Mr. Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan; the academic study Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin; and a graphic novel, The Quaid: Jinnah and the Story of Pakistan. He is the author of a quartet of books with Brookings Institution Press examining relations between the West and the world of Islam after 9/11—Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (2007); Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam (2010; winner of the 2011 American Book Award and the subject of a documentary film Journey into America); The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (2013); and the forthcoming Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Empire (the subject of a documentary film Journey Into Europe). Two of his books were re- published in 2011 as part of the Routledge Revivals—“restoring to print books by some of the most influential academic scholars of the last 120 years.” He is also a published poet and playwright—Suspended 2

Somewhere Between, a book of verse (Busboys and Poets 2011); and Two Plays (Saqi Books 2009). His play Noor has been performed at Theater J in Washington, D.C., the American University of Sulaimani, Iraq, and the Katzen Arts Center of American University. He is regularly interviewed by CNN, NPR, BBC, and Al-Jazeera and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Nickelodeon, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has also appeared on a number of Pakistan chat shows including a two-part interview with Saleem Safi on GeoTV, Moeed Pirazada on Waqt TV, and Shumaisa Rehman on Pakistan TV. His numerous articles have appeared in, among many others the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Washington Post, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, LA Times, National Geographic, and Christian Science Monitor.

RECENT ACTIVITY: Ahmed’s most recent publication is The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Brookings 2013). Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, endorsed the book on the cover, “This is an unusual and groundbreaking book, which should be compulsory reading for Western governments.” The Thistle and the Drone was named one of the “Books of the Year” in The Times Literary Supplement (November 29, 2013) and, at the 2014 Karachi Literature Festival, it was awarded the German Peace Prize and was shortlisted for the Coca-Cola Prize for Best Non-Fiction Book. In Washington, Ahmed has spoken on the themes of The Thistle and the Drone at the Brookings Institution, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the National Cathedral in dialogue with the Bishop of Washington, the Pentagon at the Fed Forum, the U.S. State Department, and the Treasury Executive Institute of the U.S. Department of Treasury. Based upon the publication of The Thistle and the Drone, Prospect Magazine of the UK named Brookings Institution Runner-Up as Best Think Tank in North America for 2013. He has held book launches at the University of Edinburgh, the Pakistan High Commission in London hosted by the High Commissioner, the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House chaired by Lord Giddens, the House of Lords hosted by Lord Sheikh, the School of Oriental and African Studies where he delivered the keynote address to the Annual Alumni Conference, the International Strategic Studies Institute of Islamabad chaired by Sartaj Aziz, the National Security and Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister, and the National Defense University of Pakistan. At New York University in May 2013, he gave the Inaugural Annual Lecture to the American Friends of SOAS Alumni Association. In June 2013, Ahmed gave a public lecture sponsored by the British Council titled “Fostering Peace: Bridging the Gap Between the West and the Muslim World” at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece. He also addressed a joint session of the Parliament of Pakistan in the Senate on US-Pakistan Relations in January 2014 as well as having a dinner hosted in his honor by the Governor of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Peshawar with senators and MNAs from the Tribal Areas. He also helped launch the Center for Dialogue and Action of Forman Christian College, headed by Dr. Amineh Hoti. An event at the House of Lords in London in May 2014 saw the launch of his latest project, Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Empire. On May 29, 2014, Ahmed delivered the 2nd Annual Harri Holkeri Lecture at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, hosted by the Institute of the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice. In August 2014, Ahmed returned to London following fieldwork for his study Journey into Europe to present preliminary findings at SOAS, University of London. In Washington, DC, Ahmed served as the co-chair of the Global Peace Foundation’s 2014 Global Peace Leadership Conference held in September and participated in the School of International Service Special Forum “Fighting ISIS: The Future of American Foreign Policy in the Middle East” with David Gregory, David Ignatius, and Susan Glasser in October 2014. He was also nominated in Fall 2014 as the new President of the American University of Beirut from which he withdrew his name to continue his research and teaching at American University in Washington, DC. Ahmed served as Chair of the March 2015 Ditchley Foundation conference “Global ambitions and local grievances: Understanding political Islam” in Oxfordshire, UK. In April 2015, Ahmed gave a public lecture titled “Islam & The West: A Clash of Civilizations?” for the Clarke 3

Forum for Contemporary Issues at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and was selected as a Class of 1930 Fellow by the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy at Dartmouth College, which involved a campus visit and public lecture.

CITATIONS: Ahmed has been called “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” by the BBC. “The BBC did say he is the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam,” stated Gavin Esler, presenter of BBC’s Newsnight and Hard Talk (while introducing Ahmed at SOAS in June 2013). “As I can testify, the BBC rarely gets things wrong,” he added. The renowned American historian Professor Stanley Wolpert described Ahmed as “the greatest scholar of Islam in America and the world...nobody else stands so high...he is the Dara Shikoh of modern Islamic leaders” (Pakistan Link, 30 December issue, 2011). Lord Jonathon Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the U.K., wrote that Ahmed was, “one of the great religious sages of our time.”He was featured in The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 most influential Muslims edited by Professor John Esposito et al. In October 2012, Ambassador Ahmed gave the keynote address at the last public Christian- Muslim conference at Lambeth Palace hosted by Dr. Rowan Williams and addressed the House of Lords in November, where he was introduced by Baroness Ashfar, as “one of my great heroes.” During the same month, the U.S. Embassy in London hosted a screening of Journey into America and Ambassador Barbara Stephenson described him as “quite simply—one of the greatest scholars of Islam in the world today.” “Akbar Ahmed has been called ‘the world’s leading authority on Islam.’ Thank you so much as ever again, Akbar. It’s a joy to hear from you,” said Sir David Frost introducing Ahmed on Frost Over the World, Al Jazeera, January 20, 2012. Tony Buckby, the Director of the British Council in Athens, wrote “[Ahmed’s] invaluable comments and profound belief in fundamental human rights contributed so much to all the discussions about what constitutes an ideal and discrimination-free culture in European society.” “It is because of Dr. Akbar Ahmed that the world is a safer place for all of us. I treasure every moment with him,” declared Arif Mansuri, President and Managing Editor, Pakistan Link Publications, in his welcome address at lunch honoring Ahmed, Pakistan Link, December 30, 2011. Dr. James Shera, MBE, Sitara-e-Pakistan (Star of Pakistan), former Mayor of Rugby and prominent Christian Pakistani leader in the UK, talked of Ambassador Ahmed’s contributions to interfaith at the Pakistani High Commission in June 2013, “My whole life I have been inspired by Professor Akbar S. Ahmed...I think history has produced, to my knowledge, two Akbars— Akbar the Great, and he actually like [Akbar Ahmed] pursued interfaith harmony in the subcontinent, and Akbar Ahmed...If there is any living saint, he is a saintly figure.” Bishop John Chane, former Bishop of Washington, wrote of Ambassador Ahmed’s interfaith and scholarly work, “I am so proud of you....you are ‘a hope for the flowers’. Your passion for making the world a better place is contagious. Spread the good news.” In his Foreward to Ahmed’s book of poetry Daniel Futterman, Oscar-nominated screen writer and actor (Danny Pearl in A Mighty Heart), writes:

“When he asks what the soul of a great man looks like, When he asks how deep is the ocean floor, Show him this collection of poems, And say: Like this.”

September 2015 Washington, DC