Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is a Palestinian American scholar and the president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a Muslim think-tank. He also is president of the Islamic-American Zakat Foundation, a religious and charitable organization which primarily serves poor and needy Muslims in the United States. Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad was born in August 11, 1948. He was raised in Pennsylvania and graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1970 and a doctoral degree in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Arizona in 1975. Ahmad teaches an introductory course on Islam at Wesley Theological Seminary. He also has taught courses religion, science and freedom at the University of Maryland, College Park and courses relating to Islam and development at Georgetown University, the Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies, and the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding. He has written and spoken on Islam and legal and religious freedom, democracy in the Muslim world, Islamic civil society, property rights in Islam, women in Islam and female circumcision, Middle East conflicts in Palestine and Iraq, Palestinian human and property rights, terrorism and jihad, and American civil liberties. Ahmad is the author of Signs in the Heavens: A Muslim Astronomer’s Perspective on Religion and Science and Islamic Rules of Order, co-editor of Islam and the West: A Dialog, and co-author of Islam and the Discovery of Freedom.
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