Akbar Ahmed

Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University

“On Faith” panelist Akbar Ahmed holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University. He is a former High Commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain and has advised both Britain’s Prince Charles and U.S. President George W. Bush on Islam. Ahmed’s numerous books, films and documentaries have won awards and been translated into many languages including Chinese and Indonesian. Ahmed has worked to increase interfaith understanding, most prominently touring with Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to speak about the necessity of tolerance. Ahmed was the first Muslim to lecture at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is a senior fellow at The Case Foundation in Washington, D.C. He spoke at the Chairman’s Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series at the Pentagon and gave the inaugural lectures for the first Chair in Jewish-Muslim Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. In 2005 he was finalist—along with Judea Pearl--in a competition for “Most Inspiring Person of the Year” run by www.beliefnet.com. Close.