Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and is Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge as well as holding teaching positions at Harvard, Princeton, and the U.S. Naval Academy. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam, he received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world'