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Dr. Ahmed Afzaal Ahmed Afzaal was born and raised in Pakistan. His fascination with Iqbal was kindled at the age of 11, partly as a result of the excitement generated by Iqbal Centenary celebrations in 1977. It continued to simmer quietly, and was fueled two years later when he won a collection of Iqbal’s Urdu poetry in a quiz competition. It was fired up even more during his teenage years as a result of his discovery of and growing interest in the Qur’an, surviving even the icy cold logic of science that he later experienced in medical school. Finding his temperament and passion unsuited to the medical profession, he turned his attention to the study of religion. He completed his doctorate in the area of “Religion and Society” in 2006, and is currently assistant professor of comparative religion at Concordia College in Minnesota, United States. |
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Dr. Basit Koshul Dr Basit Koshul is an Associate Professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his PhD in 2003 from Drew University, USA, specializing in the sociology of religion. His areas of research include the interaction between modernity and religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, the sociology of culture and the contemporary Islam-West encounter. He is especially interested in exploring and integrating the insights of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Charles Sanders Peirce and Max Weber, with reference to the aforementioned issues. Dr Basit has a number of books to his credit, including The Postmodern Significance of Max Weber’s Legacy: Disenchanting Disenchantment (Palgrave, 2005). He has co-edited a collection of essays entitled Scripture, Reason and Contemporary Islam-West Encounter: Studying the Other, Understanding the Self (Palgrave, 2007). |
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Dr. Ejaz Akram
Dr Akram’s research and teaching focuses on Islam and the Muslim world, and also the religio-political issues and political philosophies of Christianity and Hinduism. Dr Akram has published several books, scholarly articles, reviews and editorials, and appeared on several radio and television programs in North America, the Middle East and South Asia. Some of his recent books include; Ideals and Realities of Regional Integration in the Muslim World: The Case of the ECO, with Oxford University Press; Islam-Christian Relations: Impact of Western Missionary Activity on Coptic-Islamic Relations in Egypt (forthcoming); Crisis of Parliamentary Governance in Pakistan: An argument for Presidential Federalism (forthcoming); and “Globalization and the Muslim World: Modernity and the Roots of Conflict” in Islam, Fundamentalism and the Betrayal of Tradition. |
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Dr. Javid Iqbal Dr. Javid Iqbal was born in Lahore, where he received his early education. He studied in Government College, Lahore for his Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and Masters in English and Philosophy. He gained his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, England, and his Bar-at-Law, from the Lincoln’s Inn, London. He holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, from Villanova University, USA and an honorary Doctorate of Islamic Literature & Science from the Seljuk University, Turkey. From 1956 to 1970 he practiced law at the High Court while teaching at the Law College, Punjab University, Lahore as a Visiting Lecturer. He was the Visiting Professor for Islamic Culture at the University of Mexico in 1962. He became a Judge at the Lahore High Court in 1971 where he was elevated to the eminent position of the Chief Justice in 1982 and headed the institution till 1986. From 1986 to 1989 he served as Judge for the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He holds the distinction of being the Vice-President, Governing Body, Iqbal Academy Pakistan, Member/Vice-Chairman Governing Council of OIC Centre for Preservation of Islamic Cultural Heritage, Istanbul, Permanent Member of the Royal Academy for Islamic Civilization Research, Amman, Jordan and Member International Committee Qaddafi Human Rights Award, Libya. He has also been Pakistan’s Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and has represented Pakistan on various other forums. Dr. Javid has lectured in America, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Iran. He is the author of a large number of articles in Urdu, English, Persian and Punjabi on Islamic Political Thought, Ideology of Pakistan and Philosophy of Iqbal. His works include Ideology of Pakistan & Its Implementation, Stray Reflections: A Note-Book of Iqbal, Legacy of Quaid-e-Azam, Mai Lala Faam (Urdu Collection of Papers on Iqbal), Zinda Rood (Urdu Biography of Iqbal), Afkar i Iqbal and the Concept of State in Islam– A Reassessment. |
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Dr. Michael James Nazir Ali Michael James Nazir-Ali (born 19 August 1949) is the Pakistani-born 106th and current Bishop of Rochester in the Church of England. He holds dual Pakistani and British citizenship. Bishop Nazir-Ali attended Saint Patrick’s High School, Karachi, read economics, Islamic history, and sociology at the University of Karachi (BA 1970) and studied in preparation for ordination at Ridley Hall, Cambridge (1970). He undertook further postgraduate studies in theology at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (BLitt 1974, MLitt 1981), Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (MLitt 1976), and the Australian College of Theology (ThD 1983). He has also studied at the Centre for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and in 2005 he was awarded the Lambeth DD. He has a number of other doctorates. His particular academic interests include comparative literature and comparative philosophy of religion. In addition to teaching appointments in colleges and universities in many parts of the world, he has been a tutor in the University of Cambridge, Senior Tutor of Karachi Theological College, and Visiting Professor of Theology and Religious Studies in the University of Greenwich. He has been elected an Honorary Fellow of his colleges at Oxford (St Edmund Hall) and Cambridge (Fitzwilliam). From 1986 until 1989, while he was Assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Co-ordinator of Studies and Education for the Lambeth Conference, he was Honorary Curate of Oxford St Giles and St Philip and St James with St Margaret. Bishop Nazir-Ali’s published writings include the following: Islam: A Christian Perspective (1983); Frontiers in Christian-Muslim Encounters (1987); From Everywhere to Everywhere: A World View of Christian Mission (1990); Thinking globally, acting locally (1992); Mission and Dialogue: Proclaiming the Gospel Afresh in Every Age (1995); The Mystery of Faith (1995); Citizens and Exiles: Christian Faith in a Plural World (2000); Shapes of the Church to Come (2001); Understanding My Muslim Neighbour (2003); Conviction And Conflict: Islam, Christianity And World Order (2005). |
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Muhammad Suheyl Umar Muhammad Suheyl Umar is the Director Iqbal Academy Pakistan and his area of specialty and interests include Sufism as well as the thought of Muhammad Iqbal and the intellectual history of the Indian subcontinent from Shah Waliullah to Iqbal. He is the Founder-Editor of Riwayat, a scholarly Urdu journal; Editor, Iqbal Review, a quarterly journal, published alternately in Urdu and English (as well as in Persian, Arabic and Turkish) focusing on Iqbal studies in addition to Islamic Studies, Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Literature, History, Arts and Sociology. |
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Dr. Nicholas Adams Nicholas Adams studied music at Cambridge before switching to theology. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on Jurgen Habermas under the supervision of Nicholas Lash, after which he was a research fellow in Theology and Social Theory at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Since 1998 he has taught philosophy and theology at the University of Edinburgh. From August 2008 he will take up a two-year post as the Academic Director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. He has written articles on the relation of philosophy to theology, on scriptural reasoning, and is the author of Habermas and Theology (CUP, 2006. |
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Dr. Peter W. Ochs Dr Peter W. Ochs is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought at the University of Virginia. He is the co-founder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning and is the founding editor of The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning. His interests include Jewish philosophy and theology, modern and postmodern philosophic theology, pragmatism, and semiotics. His extensive corpus includes books such as Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge, 1998) and Reasoning After Revelation: Dialogues in Postmodern Jewish Philosophy, with Steven Kepnes and Robert Gibbs (Westview Press/Perseus, 1998). His current area of research delves into topics such as Muslim-Jewish-Christian dialogues on scripture and reason, philosophy and Jewish prayer, and (in progress) quantum theory and theology. These topics are part of the broader subject matter on relations between contemporary Jewish thought and classical biblical and rabbinic sources; Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions of scriptural interpretation; and relations among contemporary religious, philosophic, and scientific reasoning. |
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Dr. Reza Shah Kazemi Dr Reza Shah- Kazemi received his PhD in Comparative Religion from Kent University in England in 1994. He is a Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, and is the Managing Editor of Encyclopedia Islamica, an abridged English translation of the Persian Great Islamic Encyclopedia. His publications include My Mercy Encompasses All–The Koran’s Teachings on Compassion, Peace and Love (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2007); Paths to Transcendence– According to Shankara, Ibn ‘Arabi and Meister Eckhart (World Wisdom Books, 2005) and The Other in the light of the One: The Universality of the Qur’an and Interfaith Dialogue (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2006). |
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Dr. Robert Gibbs Robert Gibbs is Professor of Philosophy and the Inaugural Director of the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on Jewish and Continental Philosophy. His main work is Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibilities (Princeton, 2000). He is one of the original members of Scriptural Reasoning and is engaged in intensive conversation in the relations among the Abrahmic traditions. His current research is on Law and Ethics. |
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Dr. Saeed A. Durrani Dr Durrani was Educated at the Government College, Lahore, Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, gaining a PhD in nuclear Physics. He did his postdoctoral research in the UK, Germany and Canada. He has been the Director of the Atomic Energy Centre, Lahore, and has taught at the Department of Physics, University of Birmingham. Dr Durrani was the Founder and Editor- in- Chief of the international research journal, Nuclear Tracks, published by Paragon Press, Oxford. He was the leader of one of 8 British teams to work on Moon Samples retrieved by NASA and the unmanned Russian missions to the moon. He has contributed over 300 research articles on the subject of thermal history of the moon and meteorites. Dr Durrani has also made many creative contributions to literature, poetry, and literary biography– especially on the life and thought of Allama Muhammad Iqbal. He is the author of several seminal books on Iqbal in Urdu and English, including Iqbal Europe mein (1985); NavŌdir-i Iqbal Europe mein (1995); Facsimile Reproduction of Nicholson’s Translation of AsrŌr-i Khudí with extensive amendments in Iqbal’s own hand (2001); and Arberry’s MS Translation of Iqbal’s Gulshan-i RŌz-i Jadid. |
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