1. Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology Critique of modernity, postmodernism and since and cultural relations.
Ziauddin Sardar has written and edited more than 60 books Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper called him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
Ziauddin Sardar's family belonged to the Pashtun warrior clan of Durrani that founded the state that ultimately became Afghanistan after the break-up of Persia following the assassination of Nader Shah in 1747.
Ziauddin Sardar's grandfather served in the Indian Army under the Raj, was decorated for bravery during the Boxer Rebellion in China, and the family's surname was changed from Durrani to Sardar, Urdu for Leader, in recognition of his courage in leading men under fire.
Ziauddin Sardar, when growing up in 1960s London, was lectured by Lady Birdwood on his English.
Ziauddin Sardar recalled speaking with fury as he rejected her offer, causing her to storm out of his family's house, never to return.
Ziauddin Sardar was bullied as a teenager by "Paki-bashing" white youths, and he imagined Lady Birdwood as a churail, the seductive, but ferocious female demons of Urdu folklore.
Ziauddin Sardar argued that Lady Birdwood with her thesis that to be British was to be white was not "aberration" in British life, but rather was she was the "quintessence" of Britishness.
Ziauddin Sardar read physics and then information science at the City University, London.
In 1987, Ziauddin Sardar moved to Kuala Lumpur as an advisor to Anwar Ibrahim, the Education Minister.
Ziauddin Sardar came back to London in the late 1990s to work as Visiting Professor of Science Studies at Middlesex University, and write for the New Statesman, where he later became a columnist.
Ziauddin Sardar conceived and presented Encounters With Islam for the BBC in 1983, and two years later his 13-half-hour interview series Faces of Islam was broadcast on TV3 and other channels in Asia.
Ziauddin Sardar wrote and presented the highly acclaimed Battle for Islam, a 90-minute film for BBC2 in 2005.
Ziauddin Sardar has appeared on numerous television programmes, including the Andrew Marr Show and Hard Talk, and was a regular member of the 'Friday Panel' on Sky News World News Tonight during 2006 and 2007.
Ziauddin Sardar appears in various filmed philosophical debates at the Institute of Art and Ideas.
Ziauddin Sardar was amongst the first Commissioners of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission ; and served as a Member of the Interim National Security Forum at the Cabinet Office, London, during 2009 and 2010.
In 2009, Ziauddin Sardar re-launched the defunct Muslim Institute as a learned society that supports and promotes the growth of thought, knowledge, research, creativity and open debate; and became the Chair of the reorganized Muslim Institute Trust.
In 2014, Ziauddin Sardar established The Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, which focuses more acutely on his recent work on Postnormal Times.
Ziauddin Sardar has lived the life of a scholar-adventurer and has travelled extensively throughout the world.
Ziauddin Sardar has lived in Chicago and The Hague and for short periods in Cairo and Fez.
Ziauddin Sardar's thought is characterised by a strong accent on diversity, pluralism and dissenting perspectives.
Science journalist Ehsan Masood suggests that Ziauddin Sardar 'deliberately cultivates a carefully calculated ambiguity projecting several things at once, yet none of them on their own'.
The fundamental principle of Ziauddin Sardar's thought is that 'there is more than one way to be human'.
Ziauddin Sardar has produced some fifty books over a period of 30 years, some with his long-time co-author Merryl Wyn Davies.
Ziauddin Sardar has published two books on cities: The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur and Mecca: The Sacred City, which won the first prize at the Lahore Literature Festival in 2014 and the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for a non-fiction book.
Ziauddin Sardar was the editor of the journal Futures from 1999 to 2012.