Akbar Ahmed

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat.

He currently is a professor of International Relations and holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University, School of International Service in Washington, D.C. Akbar Ahmed served as the Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland.

He currently is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Immediately prior, he taught at Princeton University and served as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

He also taught at Harvard University and was a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology.

Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Burn Hall was founded in 1943 by members of Saint Joseph's Missionary Society of Mill Hill (MHM) in British India as a missionary school for boys.

He studied at Burn Hall School (now Army Burn Hall College) in Abbottabad from 1954 to 1959.

Ahmed entered the Pakistani civil service in 1966.

He graduated from University of the Punjab and University of Birmingham and later attended Cambridge University doing an MA.

Among his works on Pashtuns are: Millennium and Charisma Among Pathans (1976), Pukhtun Economy and Society (1980), and his wide-ranging study The Thistle and the Drone (2013) that focuses on Muslim hill peoples in Pakistan, Yemen, North Africa and afar as the Philippines which examines US drone operations in the Muslim world, its subsequent consequences and reputation of the USA being considered synonymous with the drone.

Ahmed has criticized some anthropologists for studying "Muslim groups without reference to the Islamic framework".

Other areas of research interest include Modernity and Muslims along with Islam and the concept of postmodernism in relation to Muslim societies, cultures, media and the West.

Ahmed has co-edited several books with other academics.

It was ceded to Pakistan Army Education Corps in 1977 and was renamed Army Burn Hall College.

In 1978, Ahmed graduated with a PhD in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

At certain points in his life Ahmed held important government positions such as Political Agent for the South Waziristan Agency/North West Frontier Province (1978-1980) and in Baluchistan was Commissioner for the three districts (1982-1988) and Commissioner of the Sibi Division (1989).

Ahmed was the founder and served as Director of the National Centre for Rural Development in Islamabad and also a Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, University Grants Commission in Pakistan.

In 1988 Ahmed became the Allama Iqbal Fellow at Selywn College, Cambridge for five years and by 1993 he was appointed as the first Muslim Fellow.

He also was the first Pakistani to serve on the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

Akbar Ahmed has held professorships at several North American educational institutions.

At Princeton University he taught courses and served as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

He also taught at Harvard University and was a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology.

Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Ahmed presented and narrated the six-part BBC TV series Living Islam (1993) and authored the accompanying book of the same name.

The Jinnah Quartet comprised a feature film Jinnah (1998), with Christopher Lee in the title role; a documentary, Mr. Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan (1997); a graphic novel, The Quaid: Jinnah and the Story of Pakistan (1997); and a biographical study, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin (1997).

Later, Ahmed served as Pakistani High Commissioner (ambassador) to the United Kingdom and Ireland from 1999 to 2000.

Ahmed's research interests focus on Pashtuns and others including tribal groups, Muslim society and development anthropology.

He has conducted anthropological fieldwork with Pashtuns in Afghanistan, undertaken comparative studies of Islamic social customs in Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and researching global Islam alongside its impacts on contemporary society.

In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan.

He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge.

An anthropologist and scholar of Islam.

He completed his MA at Cambridge University and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.

Ahmed received the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (Medal of Excellence) and Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence) from the Pakistani government for academic distinction and the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs in London.

In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

He also taught at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan.

Prior to the Brookings quartet of studies, Ahmed's projects included the Jinnah Quartet and Living Islam.

He was also awarded the inaugural Purpose Prize in 2006 alongside Judea Pearl and is frequently named in the annual book, The Muslim 500: The World's 500 Most Influential Muslims, and was named a 2015 Global Thought Leader by The World Post and the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.