Ziauddin Sardar - Life and Thought

Life and Thought

Sardar has lived the life of a 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 (Croom Helm, 1977). 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 1990s, 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 The Hague and for short periods in Cairo and Fez.

Sardar describes himself as a 'critical polymath'. 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'. 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', while he 'draws on a depth of academic thought', he 'always remains accessible'.

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'. 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'.

Considered a pioneering writer on Islam and contemporary cultural issues, he has produced some fifty books over a period of 30 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). Two collections of his essays and critical writings are available as readers: Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader (2003) and How Do You Know? Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations (2006). His two volumes of autobiography, Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim and Balti Britain: A Provocative Journey Through Asian Britain, have been highly praised. His latest book Reading the Qur’an presents a humanist and pluralist reading of the sacred text of Islam.

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