A cum laude graduate of Harvard with a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Arizona, Imad-ed-Dean Ahmad is now President of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an Islamic free-market think tank in the Washington, DC area. An adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's school for Advanced International Studies and at the University of Maryland, he teaches an honors course on "Religion and Progress: Islamic Science, Politics, and Economics."
Since the mid-1980's, Dr. Ahmad has worked primarily in the area of Islamic studies, building on his lifetime interest in religion and politics.
An international lecturer on Islamic matters, Dr. Ahmad's first book, "Signs in the Heavens" A Muslim Astronomer's Perspective on Religion and Science was published in 1992. He presented a talk on this subject at the 1994 Vatican Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena on World Culture sponsored by the Vatican Observatory. He co-edited "Islam and the West: a Dialog," which was published in 1997.
