Ziauddin Sardar (; born 31 October 1951) is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futures studies, Critique of modernity, postmodernism and science and cultural relations. He has written and edited more than 60 books.Emma Mason, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths: Rethinking Religion and Literature, Bloomsbury Publishing (2014), p. ix Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper called him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
In 2012, he launched the influential quarterly, Critical Muslim, which is published by Hurst Publishers and the Muslim Institute, as a paperback book. In 2014, Sardar established The Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies which focuses on his recent work on Postnormal Times. In 2025, he was appointed Director, International Institute of Futures Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)
Biography
Early life
Ziauddin Sardar was born in Dipalpur, Punjab, Pakistan. He was educated and brought up in Britain. His family belonged to the Pashtun warrior clan of Durrani.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.64 His grandfather served in the Indian Army during the British Raj, and the family's surname was changed to Sardar, Urdu for Leader, in recognition of his courage.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.64 Sardar's grandfather served under William Birdwood when he was a junior officer in the Indian Army, and when his son emigrated to Britain, he sought out the company of Birdwood's son, Christopher and his daughter-in-law, Lady Birdwood.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.64
Sardar, when growing up in 1960s London, was lectured by Lady Birdwood on his English.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.68 In 1968, she tried to recruit him into her anti-immigration crusade.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.68 Sardar angrily rejected her offer, and she never returned.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.68-69 Sardar was bullied as a teenager by "Paki-bashing" white youths.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.66 Sardar argued that Lady Birdwood's thesis that to be British was to be white was the "quintessence" of Britishness.Ziauddin Sardar, ‘British, Muslim, Writer', in Other Than Identity: The Subject, Politics and Art edited by Juliet Steyn, Pluto Press, London, 2006 p.69
He read physics and then information science at the City University, London.
Working life
He worked for five years at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, becoming an authority on the hajj.See Ziauddin Sardar, Chapter 10, ‘Mecca under the Sadis’, Mecca: The Sacred City, Bloomsbury, London, 2014. He returned to work as Middle East correspondent of the science magazines Nature and New Scientist.See: Ziauddin Sardar, ‘A revival for Islam, a boost for science?’, Nature 282 345-356 In 1982, he joined London Weekend Television and helped launch the Asian programme Eastern Eye.See, Ziauddin Sardar, Balti Britain, Granta, 2008, London, p231-2 and 251-5. In the early 1980s, he helped to found Inquiry, a magazine focusing on Muslim countries.See Ziauddin Sardar, Chapter 10, ‘The Inquiry Years’, Desperately Seeking Paradise, Granta, London, 2004.
In 1987, Sardar moved to Kuala Lumpur as an advisor to Anwar Ibrahim, then Minister of Education for Malaysia.See Ziauddin Sardar, The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, Reaktion Books, 2000, p209-221. He 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, later becoming columnist on the magazine.See Ziauddin Sardar, ‘The Next Holocaust’, New Statesman, 5 December 2005, and other cover stories and numerous columns In 1999, he was appointed editor of Futures journal, and became involved in Third Text, a journal of arts and visual culture, which he co-edited till 2005. Also in 1999, he moved to City University London, London, as Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies.From 2001 to 2013, he was Professor of Law and Society in the School of Law at Middlesex University.
After leaving London Weekend Television, Sardar wrote and presented programmes for the BBC and Channel 4. He conceived and presented Encounters With Islam for the BBC in 1983, and two years later his interview series Faces of Islam was broadcast on TV3 (Malaysia) and other channels in Asia. In 1990, he wrote and presented a programme on Islamic science for BBC's Antenna; his Islamic Conversations was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1995. He wrote and presented Battle for Islam, a film for BBC2 in 2005. He wrote Between the Mullahs and the Military, a 50-minute documentary on Pakistan for Channel 4's Dispatches series. He made the documentary The Life of Muhammad for BBC2, broadcast in July 2011. He has appeared on television programmes including the Andrew Marr Show and Hard Talk, and was a member of the 'Friday Panel' on Sky News World News Tonight in 2006 and 2007. He has appeared in filmed philosophical debates at the Institute of Art and Ideas.
Sardar was a Commissioner of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission (March 2005 – December 2009); and served as a Member of the Interim National Security Forum at the Cabinet Office, London, in 2009 and 2010. His journalism and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, the UK weekly magazine, New Statesman and the monthly magazine New Internationalist. Sardar's online work includes a year-long project for The Guardian, 'Blogging the Qur'an', published in 2008.
In 2009, Sardar re-launched the Muslim Institute as a learned society, and became the Chair of the Muslim Institute Trust. He launched, in 2011, the quarterly Critical Muslim, jointly published by the Muslim Institute and Hurst & Co. In 2014, he established The Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C1672/32) with Sardar in 2016 for its Science and Religion collection held by the British Library.National Life Stories, 'Sardar, Ziauddin (1 of 8) National Life Stories Collection: Science and Religion', The British Library Board, 2016 . Retrieved 9 October 2017 In 2025, Sardar was appointed Director, International Institute of Futures Studies (IIFS), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM).
Life and thought
Sardar describes himself as a 'critical polymath'. 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'.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 Futurist Tony Stevenson points out that his 'intellectual aggression' hides a 'sincere and deep humanity': 'while his cultural analysis is surgically incisive, it is largely free of the theoretical correctness of academic thought', and that while he 'draws on a depth of academic thought', he 'always remains accessible'.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.
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'.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. The corollary is that there are different ways of knowing. The question that Sardar asks 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'.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.
He has produced over sixty books during a period of 40 years, some with his long-time co-author Merryl Wyn Davies. These books include the classic studies The Future of Muslim Civilisation (1979) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985), a vigorous intellectual assault on postmodern thought, Postmodernism and the Other (1998) and Orientalism (1999), and the international bestseller Why Do People Hate America? (2002). Mecca: The Sacred City (2014) 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. He was the editor of the journal Futures from 1999 to 2012.
Books An Introduction to Future Studies, CPPFS/IIIT, Kuala Lumpur, 2026 An Introduction to Islamic Futures, CPPFS/IIIT, Kuala Lumpur, 2026 Editor, (with Shamim Miah and C Scott Jordan), The Postnormal Reader Volume 2, CPPFS/IIIT, London, 2024 Three Begums: The Women Who Shaped My Life, Hurst, London, 2025. A Person of Pakistani Origins, Hurst, London, 2018 Editor, The Postnormal Times Reader, CPPFS/IIIT, London, 2017 (with Jeremy Henzell-Thomas), Rethinking Reform in Higher Education, IIIT, London, 2017 Islam Beyond the Violent Jihadis, Biteback, London, 2016 Mecca: The Sacred City, Bloomsbury, London, 2014 Future: All That Matters, Hodder Education, London, 2013 Muhammad: All That Matters, Hodder Education, London, 2012 Muslims In Britain: Making Social and Political Space, Routledge, London, 2012 (edited with Waqar Ahmad) Reading the Qur’an, Hurst & Co, London; Oxford University Press, New York, 2011 Breaking the Monolith: Essays, Articles and Columns on Islam, India, Terror and Other Things That Annoy Me, ImprintOne, Delhi, 2008 Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience, Granta, London, 2008 How Do You Know? Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations Archived 9 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Pluto Press 2006 (Introduced and edited by Ehsan Masood). . What Do Muslims Believe? Granta, London, 2006. Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim, Granta, London, 2005 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: a Ziauddin Sardar reader, Pluto Press, London 2004 (introduced and edited by Sohail Inayatullah and Gail Boxwell). The A to Z of Postmodern Life: Essays on Global Culture in the Noughties, Vision, 2002 Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema, Pluto Press, London, 2002 (Edited with Sean Cubitt)