Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD, MBA
Scholar, scientist, inventor, historian, legislator, Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed is the founder patron of this Encyclopedia. It was his vision to compile a history of Islam from a global perspective, transcending the traditional emphasis on the Middle East. He wrote a two volume treatise, “Islam in Global History…From the Death of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) to the First World War” which was serialized in the Minaret Magazine in New York during 1994-1997 and then published by Suhail Academy in Lahore, Pakistan. The book was also published by the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture in the United States in 2001. It has been translated into Urdu, Farsi, Malayalam and Hindi and published by the Urdu Academy in Bangalore, India. His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Dr. Ahmed holds a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University, Ae.E in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology, MS in Aeronautics also from Caltech, MBA in Finance and Management from Rider University and BE in Engineering from the University of Mysore, India. A brilliant student throughout his career, he is fondly known as “Rank Nazeer” in his native land. He was an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico (1995) and Chapman Universities (1996) and served as President of Austin University in California (2018). He is the director of the American Institute of Islamic History and Culture and also served on the boards of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education in Washington, DC (2015) and HMS Institute of Technology in India (1998).
Dr. Ahmed is an inventor and holds 12 United States patents on spaced based lasers, energy conversion and advanced manufacturing technologies. A space scientist by training, he was a Principal Scientist on the NASA Hubble Space Telescope in Danbury, Connecticut and delivered diffraction limited performance in the Secondary Mirror Assembly at 1/700th of the wavelength of red light. He was a Team Leader on the NASA Lunar Land Rover, Apollo and Saturn and Program Manager on several DoD Space Surveillance projects of national importance. He has published scores of scientific articles in the Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Applied Mechanics, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Journal of Basic Engineering and other scientific journals. He has authored NASA reports and was a chair of the sixth AIRAPT international conferences on high pressure physics in Denver, Colorado in 1977. He has conducted a large number of seminars and given lectures around the world on Islamic History and Science.
Dr. Ahmed is a philanthropist and for decades has supported scholarship programs for needy children and has built several mosques and schools. Under RankStudent Trust, which he established in 2012, he provides digital learning to tens of thousands of children around the world. He was the architect and patron of a unique Eidgah religious complex near Bangalore which serves 12,000 worshipers and has attracted wide acclaim for its fusion of Sufi spirituality and space age geometry.
Video of Eidgah
Dr. Ahmed is well versed in several languages and has traveled widely in Asia, Europe and Africa. He received his training in Arabic from Molvi Abdul Quddus Qudsi and has remained a keen student of Qur’anic sciences throughout his life. In the year 2000, he met the eminent Shaikh Mohammed Nazim al Haqqani al Qabrasi of Cyprus and Turkey of the distinguished Naqshbandi Order and received deep spiritual insights from his sohbets. Dr. Ahmed’s book, What Makes Us Human…A Spiritual Perspective was published in 1998. His lasting achievement is a translation of the Qur’an into easy to read modern American English. The translation was worked on for a period of ten years and was published in 2011 by Tahreek e Tarseel e Quran in New York. It has earned the commendation of noted ulema and has been read on the internet by over 3 million people from practically all corners of the globe.
Dr. Ahmed’s political career also spans two continents. In 1978 he was an elected member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, Bangalore from the 56th legislative constituency of Tumkur. In 1988 he was an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention from the 42nd Congressional District in California representing Jesse Jackson. In 1992 he contested in the Congressional elections from the 96th Congressional District in California. In 2013, Dr. Ahmed was appointed a member of the Karnataka State Knowledge Commission in Bangalore. The mandate of this Commission is to transform the state into a “knowledge society”.
The compilation of an ambitious work like an encyclopedia is a multi-generation effort. It is the hope of Dr. Ahmed that the effort will continue with contributions from scholars, especially those of future generations.
Prof. Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, DSc
Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed is a distinguished Radiological/Medical Physicist. He holds a DSc degree in Medical Nuclear physics from the Johns Hopkins University, MSc and BSc degrees from the University of Mysore. He is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology, the American Institute of Chemists, the British Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of Health.In 1984, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the International University in Malta.
Dr. Syed is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Louisville, Kentucky,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_B._Syed – cite_note-4 and a former Professor of Nuclear Medicine.
He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Health Physics and of the American Board of Radiology, as well as an examiner for both boards. He functioned as a technical expert in nuclear medicine for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He also served as an expert in radiological physics for the United Nations Development Program, visiting postgraduate medical institutions in India over a two-month period.
Dr. Syed is listed in several biographical reference works, including American Men and Women of Science and a number of Marquis Who’s Who publications including Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.
He is a founder and the current president of the Islamic Research Foundation International (IRFI), headquartered in Louisville, and is a past managing editor of its publication, Aalim. As the Managing Editor, he has posted over 6,000 Islamic articles at the IRFI’s Website: www.irfi.org.
Dr. Syed has written more than 300 articles on a number of Islamic subjects, particularly on Islam and the Qur’an as they relate to science, and in particular Islamic medicine. He is the author of the books Intellectual Achievements of the Muslims (published 2002), and Qur’anic Inspirations (published 2007).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_B._Syed – cite_note-10.
Dr. Ibrahim Gamard, PhD
Dr. Ibrahim Gamard is a Shaykh in the Mawlawi (Mevlevi) Order of Sufism, authorized by Faruk Hemdem Çelebi, the 22nd generation direct descendant of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi and the international leader of the Mevlaei tradition. His affiliation began when he was initiated as a Mevlevi whirler (semazen) in 1976. He converted to Islam in 1984 and went on the Pilgrimage to Mecca in 1999. Dr. Gamard lives in the United States and is a psychologist by profession, but his main passion has been studying Mawlana’s poetry in Persian. He began teaching himself to read Persian in 1981 for the sole purpose of reading Mawlana’s works. In 1985, he met Dr. Rawan Farhadi, an Afghan scholar who was teaching Persian literature at the University of California in Berkeley; that was when Dr. Farhadi suggested that they translate the nearly 2,000 quatrains attributed to Mawlana. After collaborating in their spare time and adding many improvements, their work was finally published as The Quatrains of Rumi (2008). Dr. Gamard is also the author of Rumi and Islam: Selections from His Stories, Poems, and Discourses (2004), translations of verses in which Mawlana praised the noble virtues of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2001, he began a website (http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org) with translations, commentary, and transliterations from Mawlana’s works, plus articles related to the Mevlevi tradition.
Prof. Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quik, PhD
Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quik is a scholar with African American and Caribbean roots. He has traveled extensively to over 50 countries in the Caribbean, Central America, Africa and the Middle East. He is a graduate of the Islamic University of Madinah. Saudi Arabia and holds an M.A. degree and PhD in African History from University of Toronto, Canada. His direct involvement in Caribbean Islamic development as the first Ameer (leader) of the Islamic Council of Jamaica and a founding member of the Association of Islamic Communities of the Caribbean and Latin America, gives him a rare insight into the evolution of Islam in this region.
Prof. Dr. Abdel Latif Aljibury, PhD
Dr. Aljibury holds a Ph D in Physical Chemistry from Oregon State University and a B.Sc (honors) in Chemistry from the University of London, England.
He was a professor of physical chemistry at the College of science, University of Baghdad. He held the position of President of the Iraqi Scientific Research Council and The Dean of Graduate studies at the University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq. He was also the Editor of the College of Science Journal of the University of Baghdad. He was formerly President of the Iraqi Chemical Society and Secretary General of the Arab Chemists Union. He worked as a research chemist at Du Pont Experimental Station at Wilmington, Delaware and was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, California.
His scientific field of interest is in the application of Quantum Mechanics in the study of structure of hydrocarbons and the use of Infrared spectroscopy to study the structure of molecules at very low temperatures.
Dr. Aljibury has had an abiding interest in the study of The Qur’an and the Sunnah. He has published a book on “Islam Pure And Simple,” as well as several articles on topics such as “ How to Eradicate Sectarianism in Islam”, “ A Muslim Woman’s Dress code.” More of his publications can be found on the web-site: Islamicbooks.Info.
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