Ziauddin Sardar (born 1951) is a London-based scholar who specializes in the future of Islam, science and cultural relations. He often writes columns in The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper and New Statesman, a weekly magazine.

Currently he is a visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies, Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University, London and has published over 40 books on various aspects of Islam, science policy, cultural studies and related subjects. He received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of East London in 2005

Sardar is a writer, broadcaster and critic. He lived in Saudi Arabia from 1975 to 1980 and often comments on current and future trends in Islam. He is keenly interested in the interchange and dialog between Islam and the modern world and has published widely on scientific and technological topics.

In his work, Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals, Sardar states that "Muslim people have been on the verge of physical, cultural and intellectual extinction simply because they have allowed parochialism and petty traditionalism to rule their minds. We must break free from the ghetto mentality."

On the subject of Hadith and Qur'an, Sardar is sometimes compared with Rudolf Bultmann in stating that each generation must "reinterpret the textual sources in the light of its own experience". Although identifying himself as a moderate, Sardar embraces a willingness to look at scripture as a product of its time which must be periodically reexamined, lest it lose its relevance for those who love it. This point of view is considered anathema by conservative Muslim scholars who insist that the Qur'an was and continues to be whole and perfect.

Sardar suggests that decades of European dominance and colonialism have contributed to the decline and constriction of Islamic science into a narrow defense of the religion. See Nature, vol 448, 12 July 2007, "Beyond the Troubled Relationship" (of science and Islam).

Sardar is the editor of Futures, the monthly journal of policy, planning and future studies and co-editor of Third Text, the critical journal of visual art and culture. In 2006 he was appointed a Commissioner of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights [1].

Futures

Sardar is unique amongst Muslim scholars to work on the future of Islam. He has explored what a viable future for Muslim civilisation will look like in his two classic studies, The Future of Muslim Civilisation and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come. In the former he argued that Muslim societies are too obsessed with looking backwards and have become fragmented to an appalling degree; the way forward is to reconstruct the Muslim civilisation, intellectually and culturally, brick by brick. Sardar offers a plan and a vision of a dynamic, thriving Muslim civilisation of the future. In the later, he offers a divesting critique of dominant Muslim ideas such as the notion of "Islamic state", "Islamic economics" and the conventional approach to the study of the life of Prophet Muhammad and produces a host of new, future orientated ideas.

Later, he tried to develop the discipline of Islamic futures based on five principles: (1) Islam must engage with the contemporary world as a worldview whose conceptual matrix serves as a methodology for tackling problems and generating future choices and possibilities for Muslim societies.; (2) Muslims must perceive themselves as civilisation, rather than parochial and fragmenting nation-state to avoid stagnation and marginalisation; (3) plurality and diversity must become the cornerstones of Islam; (4) shaping viable and desirable futures for Muslim civilization must involve active participation of communities and conscious effort at consultation (shura) at all levels of society with the aim of achieving a broad consensus (Ijma); and to shape desirable alternative futures Muslims must engage constructively with the contemporary world in all its dimensions ^[1].

Sardar argues that the future has already been colonised to a very large extent. Forecasting, prediction and other methods of studying the future serve as tools of colonising the future. To keep the future open to all potentials, alternatives and dissenting possibilities, it is necessary to envisage alternative futures from different cilivisational and cultural perspectives^[2].

Life and Thought

Sardar has lived a life of scholar adventurer and has travelled extensively throughout the world. From 1974 to 1979, he lived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he worked for the Hajj Research Centre at the King Abdul Aziz University. During this period he travelled throughout the Islamic world researching his first book, Science, Technology and Development in the Muslim World. In the early 1980s, he edited the pioneering Muslim magazine Inquiry, before establishing the Centre for Policy and Futures Studies at East-West University in Chicago. During the 1990, he lived in Kuala Lumpur, where he was an advisor to Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister and now the Leader of the Opposition. He has also lived in Chicago and Dan Haag and for short periods in Cairo and Fez.

Sardar describes himself as a ‘critical polymath’ [2]. His thought is characterised by a strong accent on diversity, pluralism and dissenting perspectives. Science journalist Ehsan Masood suggests that Sardar ‘deliberately cultivates a carefully calculated ambiguity projecting several things at once, yet none of them on their own’ [3]. Futurist Tony Stevenson points out that his ‘intellectual aggression’ hides a ‘sincerely and deep humanity’: ‘while his cultural analysis is surgically incisive, it is largely free of the theoretical correctness of academic thought’, while he ‘draws on a depth of academic thought’, he ‘always remains accessible’ [4]. The fundamental principle of Sardar’s thought is that ‘there is more than one way to be human’. ‘I do not regard “the human” either as “the” or as a priori given’, he has said. ‘The western way of being human is one amongst many. Similarly, the Islamic way of being human is also one amongst many. The Australian aboriginal way of being human is also another way of being human. I see each culture as a complete universe with its own way of knowing, being and doing - and hence, its own way of being human’ [5]. The corollary is that there are also different ways of knowing. The question that Sardar has always asked is: ‘how do you know? The answer depends a great deal on who ‘you’ are: ‘how you look at the world, how you shape your inquiry, the period and culture that shapes your outlook and the values that frame how you think’ [6].

Sardar’s contribution to critical scholarship ranges far and wide, but is particularly relevant in five areas: Islam, Islamic Science, Futures, Postmodernism and Transmodnerity, and identity.

Islam

While a believing Muslim, Sardar is also one of the strongest internal critics of Islam. He believes that the tendency to fall back comfortably on age-old interpretations is now dangerously obsolete. Islam’s relationship and attitude to women, minorities, and notions of exclusivity and exclusive truth need to change fundamentally.

In his work, Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals, Sardar states that "Muslim people have been on the verge of physical, cultural and intellectual extinction simply because they have allowed parochialism and petty traditionalism to rule their minds. We must break free from the ghetto mentality." [7] On the subject of Hadith and Qur'an, Sardar is sometimes compared with Rudolf Bultmann in stating that each generation must "reinterpret the textual sources in the light of its own experience". Although identifying himself as a moderate, Sardar embraces a willingness to look at scripture as a product of its time which must be periodically reexamined, lest it lose its relevance for those who love it. This point of view is considered anathema by conservative Muslim scholars who insist that the Qur'an was and continues to be whole and perfect.

The Qur’an, he suggests, needs to be interpreted afresh epoch to epoch, by each new generation of Muslims. He has argued consistently, since the late 1970s, that Islamic law (Shariah) needs to be totally reformulated [8]; and politics within Islam should be focused not on creating a utopian ‘Islamic state’ but shaping an accountable civic society [9]. An Islamic society must be ‘devoted to extolling the virtues of reason, of thinking, of studying nature, of seeking knowledge, self-reflection, inner reflection’ [10]

[1] The Independent, Saturday, 5 April 2003

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/paperbacks-war-crimes-for-the-homebrthe-world-belowbrindelible-actsbrislam-postmodernism-and-other-futuresbroffcomer-593383.html

[2] http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/ziauddin_sardar

[3] Ehsan Masood, ‘Introduction: the Ambiguous Intellectual’, in Ehsan Masood, editor, How Do You Know: Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations Pluto Press, London, 2006, p1.

[4] Tony Stevenson, ‘Ziauddin Sardar: Explaining Islam to the West’ in Profiles in Courage: Political Actors and Ideas in Contemporary Asia, editors, Gloria Davies, JV D’Cruz and Nathan Hollier, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2008,page 80.

[5] Ziauddin Sardar interviewed by Tony Fry, ‘On Erasure, Appropriation, Transmodernity, What’s Wrong with Human Rights and What’s Lies Beyond Difference’ Design Philosophy Papers Collection Four, edited by Anne-Marie Wallis, Team D/E/S Publications, Ravensbourne, Australia, 2008, 83-91.

[6] Ehsan Masood, ‘Introduction: the Ambiguous Intellectual’, in Ehsan Masood, editor, How Do You Know: Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations Pluto Press, London, 2006, p1.

[7] Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals’ in Abdullah Omar Naseef (Editor), ­­Today's Problems, Tomorrow's Solutions: Future Thoughts on the Structure of Muslim Society­­, Mansell, London, 1988, p166.

[8] Ziauddin Sardar, ‘The Shariah as Problem-Solving Methodology’ in Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader, edited by Sohail Inayatullah and Gail Boxwell, Pluto Press, London, 2003.

[9] Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Rethinking Islam’ in Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader, edited by Sohail Inayatullah and Gail Boxwell, Pluto Press, London, 2003.

[10] ‘Ziauddin Sardar: the Beginning of Knowledge’ in Joan Bakewell, editor, Belief, Duckworth, London, 2005, page 156.

• How Do You Know? Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations, Pluto Press 2006 (Introduced and edited by Ehsan Masood)
• Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, Granta Books 2005
• American Dream, Global Nightmare, Icon Books 2004 (Written with Merryl Wyn Davies)
• Sohail Inayatullah and Gail Boxwell (eds), Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: a Ziauddin Sardar reader, Pluto Press 2004
• Why Do People Hate America?, Icon Books 2003 (Written with Merryl Wyn Davies)
• The A to Z of Postmodern Life: Essays on Global Culture in the Noughties, Vision 2002
• Ziauddin Sardar and Sean Cubitt (eds), Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema, Pluto Press 2002
• Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars, Icon Books 2000
• Orientalism (Concepts in the Social Sciences Series), Open University Press 1999
• Postmodernism and the Other: New Imperialism of Western Culture, Pluto Press 1997
• Ziauddin Sardar, Ashis Nandy, Claude Alvarez, Merryl Wyn Davies, Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism, Pluto Press 1993
• Information and the Muslim World: A Strategy for the Twenty-first Century, Islamic Futures and Policy Studies, Mansell Publishing Limited, London and New York 1988
• Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, Mansell 1986
• The Future of Muslim Civilisation, 1979
• ISLAM: Outline of a classification scheme. Clive Bingley Ltd., London 1979
• Desperately seeking paradise, 2001

Sardar has also contributed a number of books to the Introducing... series published by Icon Books, including Introducing Muhammad and "Introducing Cultural Studies"

• Ziauddin Sardar's Official Website [2]
• Ziauddin Sardar, "What do we mean by Islamic Futures?" in Ibrahim M Abu-Rabi, editor, The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, Blackwell, Oxford, 2006, 5562-586.
• Ziauddin Sardar,"‘The problem of futures studies", in Ziauddin Sardar, editor, Rescuing All Our Futures: The Future of Future Studies, Adamantine Press, London; Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT; 1998, pages 9-18
• Ziauddin Sardar, "Listening to Islam", in Listening to Islam: Praise, Reason and Reflection, ed. John Watson (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005).
• Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman December 11, 2006, "Welcome to Planet Blitcon"
• Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman, July 18, 2005, "The struggle for Islam's soul"
• Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman, June 14, 2004, 'Is Muslim civilisation set on a fixed course to decline?' Wahhabism, the Saudis' brand of Islam, negates the very idea of evolution in human thought and morality
• Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesman, August 9, 2004, Lost in translation: most English-language editions of the Qur'an have contained numerous errors, omissions and distortions. Hardly surprising, writes Ziauddin Sardar, when one of their purposes was to denigrate not just the Holy Book, but the entire Islamic faith
• Ziauddin Sardar, June 2002, "Rethinking Islam"
• Ziauddin Sardar, "Medicine and Multiculturalism", New Renaissance, Vol. 11, No. 2, issue 37, Summer 2002
• Audio and video of Ziauddin Sardar's 2005 lecture, "Islam and Modernity: The Problem with Paradise"
• Ziauddin Sardar and the founders of the Quilliam Foundation
• Ziauddin Sardar, The Royal Society,"Islam and science: lecture transcript"