Khurshid Ahmad

Khurshid Ahmad (23 March 1932 – 13 April 2025) was a Pakistani economist, thinker and politician who helped make Islamic economics an academic discipline, and who co-founded, with Khurram Murad, the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. ^{1 2}

He was born in Delhi to an Urdu-speaking family and studied at the Anglo-Arabic College there; after Partition in 1947 the family moved to Lahore. He read economics at Government College, Lahore, published his first English article in 1949 at seventeen, and graduated with first-class honours in 1952. In Karachi he took master's degrees in economics (1958) and Islamic studies (1962) at the University of Karachi, then a PhD in economics at Leicester (1967–68) with a thesis on Islamic economic jurisprudence. ¹

As a young man he read Abul A'la Maududi and worked for the Jamaat-e-Islami he founded, translating some of his books into English. In the 1980s he chaired Pakistan's Planning Commission and was federal minister for planning, development and statistics; elected to the Senate after the 2002 elections on the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal ticket, he sat there until 2012. ^{1 3}

The prize's page says he founded and chaired the Institute of Policy Studies in Pakistan, chaired the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, was rector of the Markfield Institute of Higher Education (2001), and received the first Islamic Development Bank Award (1988). His books include 'Islam and the West' (1957), 'Tahrik-i Islami' (1963) and 'Socialism ya Islam' (1969); he edited 'Islam: Its Meaning and Message' (1976). ^{3 1}

He received the King Faisal Prize for Service to Islam in 1990, shared with Ali al-Tantawi, and Pakistan's highest civil award, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, on 23 March 2011. ^{3 1}

He died in Leicester, England, on 13 April 2025, aged 93, and was buried the next day at Saffron Hill Cemetery. ^{1 2}

Wikidata listed articles on him in nine Wikipedia editions on 7 November 2026. ²

• English Wikipedia article, revision of 12 October 2026. ¹

• Wikidata item Q6403143. ²

• The laureate's page on the King Faisal Prize's official site, read on 7 November 2026. ³