Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (; April 18, 1952) is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and a scholar of Islam. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara. He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani Government and the country's Parliament) on 28 January 2006, where he remained for a couple of years. He also taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy for more than a decade from 1979 to 1991. He was also a student of Islamic scholar and exegete, Amin Ahsan Islahi. He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wasatiyyah, on the popular electronic media of Pakistan. Currently he is Principal Research Fellow and Chief Patron of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning in United States. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi was named in The Muslim 500 (The World's Most Influential Muslims) in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions. Javed Ahmed Ghamidi was born as Muhammad Shafique (later he renamed himself as Javed Ghamdi) on 18 April 1952 to a Kakazai family in a village called Jiwan Shah, Arifwala in (District Pakpattan), Punjab, Pakistan. His family village settlement was Dawud in Sialkot. His father, Muhammad Tufayl Junaydi, was a landowner, involved in medicine and a committed follower of tasawwuf until his death in 1986. Ghamidi and his two elder sisters grew up in a Sufi household. His early education included a modern path (matriculating from Islamia High School, Pakpattan), as well as a traditional path (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur'an with Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal). His first exposure to traditional Islamic studies was in the Sufi tradition. After matriculating, he came to Lahore in 1967 where he is settled ever since. Initially, he was more interested in Literature and Philosophy. He later graduated from Government College, Lahore, with a BA Honours in English Literature & Philosophy in 1972. Ghamidi encountered the works of Hamiduddin Farahi, a scholar of the Quran by chance in a library.