Dr. Anis Ahmad

Professor Anis Ahmad is a social scientist, an educationist, advocate of moderation, plurality of cultures and human rights. He was born into an educated and religiously oriented family on 23 March 1944. His mother and father both had a literary taste and he was encouraged to study poetry and memorize couplets from Iqbal, Ghalib, Hali and other classical poets. Initially his mother tutored him in English and Urdu and his father taught him Persian.

Initially, Anis Ahmad studied at Sindh Madrasatul Islam, in Karachi, where the founding father of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah also studied. He later joined Sindh Muslim College at Karachi and got his Bachelors in Philosophy and Psychology. He represented his college in inter university debates and was editor of Urdu section of college magazine.

He pursued his masters in department of Islamic History at the University of Karachi and secured first class in his exams. He was elected in the student’s union of the university. He also served as general secretary of Islamic History Society and organized intellectual activities. He actively participated in literary activities.

As soon as he completed his masters in 1963 he was appointed as lecturer in the department of Islamic history. He contributed articles in Urdu and English journals. He taught at Karachi University till 1969.

In 1969 he was offered scholarship by the Temple University Pennsylvania. He did his MA and PhD from Temple University in Islamic and Comparative Religion. He also taught at Appalachian State University and Temple University till 1981when he was invited by the International Islamic University, Islamabad to establish faculty of Islamic Learning (Kulliyah Usul al-Din). He joined the university in 1981 as Directory of Department of Da’wah and Qir’at which was re-designated as Kulliyah Usul al-Din in 1983. He was appointed as the first dean of the faculty. He also initiated idea of a continuing education and training centre of the university under the name Da’wah Academy and was appointed its founding Director General in 1984. He also served as first Vice President of the International Islamic University Islamabad.

He was later sent to assist the International Islamic University Malaysia, at Kuala Lampur in development of a new faculty i.e. Faculty of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Heritage. As Dean of the faculty he guided his faculty members in realization of the concept of Islamization of knowledge. His involvement in the movement started in 1972 when the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) was founded in Illinois Institute of Technology and he was elected as its secretary general and later became its president. During his involvement with AMSS, the concept of islamization of knowledge was developed by Prof. Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi, the founding president of AMSS.

Dr Anis Ahmad organized yearly seminars, conferences, workshops for economists, politicians, sociologists, psychologists, historians, religionists, anthropologists and linguists during his stay of over a decade in the US With a rich background in Islamization of Social Sciences he tried to translate this concept into the curriculum of Human Sciences at International Islamic University Malaysia. With the graduation of first batch of fifteen hundred students in the Kulliyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, he returned to International Islamic University in 1994.

He is recipient of award, by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, as best teacher, awarded fellowship by the University Science Malaysia, also earned meritorious professorship at the International Islamic University, Islamabad. He is revered as an institution builder. As first Vice-President of International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI), he visualized and founded the Da’wah Academy of the IIUI. He was first Dean of the Faculty of Usul al-din and Faculty of Social Sciences of the IIU at Islamabad.