A Tribute to Professor Khurshid Ahmad (1932-2025)

There are extraordinary human beings whose demise leaves a vacuum behind and the world becomes poorer for their departure. Professor Kurshid Ahmad, a giant of a man, belonged to this category. He was perhaps the last of the great luminaries of the Islamic movement in the 20th century. With his death, a glorious chapter in the history of Islamic revivalism has come to a close. More than seventy years ago, a group of young visionaries, influenced and inspired by the revolution- ary message of Mawlānā Syed Abū’l Aʿlā Mawdūdī, dared to dream of building a better world–a just, peaceful and prosperous world–modelled on the teachings of the Qurʾān and Sunnah. They were not content with a mere and lazy subscription to abstract ideas but immediately embarked on acquiring the intellectual depth necessary to rewrite and represent the new narrative they had espoused and then tirelessly worked to implement it and put it into practice.

Born in Delhi, in the dying days of the empire, to a family deeply involved in anti-colonial activism, Khurshid Ahmad received his early education in Delhi and later in Lahore when his family migrated after the creation of Pakistan. As a gifted student, he excelled at every level of his education. He got involved in the work of the Islamic Movement in his early youth and was eventually elected in 1953 as President of Islami Jamiat-e Talaba (The Islamic Students Associa- tion). He was joined there by a group of young friends who charted a course that shaped both the intellectual narrative and political activism of the movement of Islamic reawakening in the South Asian subcontinent and beyond. These included, among others, Zafar Ishaq Ansari, Khurram Jah Murad and Umer Chapra who were ardent followers of the refreshingly modern approach of daʿwah spearheaded by Mawdūdī. They took up the responsibility of conveying it to the wider world in general, and the Muslim Youth in particular. In fact, even in his teen years, Khurshid Ahmad had committed himself to translating into English some of Mawdūdī’s books, something he enjoyed and continued to do ever since. A prolific writer himself, too, Professor Khurshid wrote about 70 titles in both in Urdu and English on a whole range themes and topics. His first article in English was published in the Muslim Economist when he was just 17. He went on to launch and edit many journals including the Student Voice, Ham Qadm, The New Era and The Voice of Islam, the Cherag-e-Rah and, finally, Tarju- man al-Qurʾān which was initially started by Mawdūdī himself. His outstanding contribution in this field was probably the launching of a successful, world class, Muslim current affairs journal, Impact International, in London along with his friend Hashir Farooqi.