13 Facts About Salman Ahmad

Salman Ahmad is a Pakistani born-American musician, rock guitarist, physician, activist, occasional actor and professor at the City University of New York.

Salman Ahmad earned nationwide popularity in 1998 for his unique style of neoclassical playing in rock.

Salman Ahmad started his activism in the mid-1990s and has been involved in two BBC documentaries concerning the issues in Pakistan such as society, education, religion and science.

Salman Ahmad spent his childhood in Pakistan and was educated at Aitchison College, before moving to New York when his father got a job in the airline industry.

Salman Ahmad then attended middle and high school in the United States, where he was first exposed to rock music at a Led Zeppelin concert at Madison Square Garden and later to Van Halen band.

However, due to vast changes in the political climate and the advent of extremism, Salman Ahmad's guitar playing was repressed.

Salman Ahmad took action by playing at covert talent shows, unfazed by criticism and even death threats from extremists.

Salman Ahmad has been teaching a class on music titled "Islamic Music and Culture of South Asia", as a guest faculty at Queens College.

On 1 March 2008, Salman Ahmad performed with Yale Strom at Temple Beth Sholom in Roslyn Heights as part of another "Common Chords II" concert celebrating Muslim and Jewish Music.

Together with Strom, Salman Ahmad leads the multi-faith ensemble Common Chords, whose members include Chatterjee, dhol player Sunny Jain, bassist Mark Dresser, vocalist Elizabeth Schwartz and others.

Salman Ahmad played at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony on 9 December 2007, where he was joined by tabla virtuoso Pandit Samir Chatterjee.

In October 2016, Salman Ahmad was taken into custody by Islamabad police along with various other PTI's workers after the activists clashed with the law enforcement officers in Rawalpindi.

In December 2024, his basic membership from PTI was cancelled following a notification arguing that Salman Ahmad had written "unwarranted and scurrilous posts" about the relatives of Imran Khan, and that he was "sowing division and discontent" among PTI members and sympathizers, the party eventually asking him to dissociate from the party in media appearances.