Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

Who is Javed Ahmad Ghamidi?

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a well-known Pakistani Muslim theologian, Quran scholar and exegete, and educationist. A former member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who extended the work of his tutor, Amin Ahsan Islahi, Ghamidi is the founder of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organization Danish Sara. He became a member of Council of Islamic Ideology on January 28, 2006 for a couple of years, a constitutional body responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to Pakistan Government and the Parliament. He has also taught at the Civil Services Academy from 1980 until 1991. He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wastiyya in Egypt on the popular electronic media of Pakistan.

Ghamidi's discourse is primarily with the traditionalists on the one end and Jamaat-e-Islami and its seceding groups on the other. In Ghamidi’s arguments, there is no reference to the Western sources, human rights or current philosophies of crime and punishment. He comes to conclusions which are similar to those of Islamic modernists on the subject, but he never goes out of the traditional framework.