Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad - Academic Career

Academic Career

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.

Ahmad 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. His address on "Islam, Commerce and Business Ethics" was published in Nicholas Capaldi’s Business and Religion: A Clash of Civilizations? He has been published by Middle East Policy, American Muslim Magazine, Economic Affairs and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Ahmad has been a frequent guest lecturer at the Foreign Services Institute.

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is a Muslim chaplain at American University, the Islamic chaplain at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital, Imam of the Dar-adh-Dhikr Mosque and arbitrator for the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area. In 1998, in his role as the American Muslim Council Liaison to the Coalition for Free Exercise of Religion, he testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, supporting the need for federal protection of religious freedom after the City of Boerne v. Flores case decided by the United States Supreme Court]. Ahmad also is a spokesperson for the National Coalition for the Protection of Civil Liberties, a national coalition of over 20 Muslim and civil liberties organizations.