About
Shabbir Akhtar
Dr Shabbir Akhtar is a philosopher who was trained at Cambridge University. He has published widely on pluralism, political Islam, Islamophobia, extremism and interfaith dialogue, besides Islam and Christianity’s differing responses to the challenges of modernity.
His books include The Light in the Enlightenment (Cassell, 1990)
and his well-known Be Careful with Muhammad! (Bellew, 1989)
which is considered a classic critique of Salman Rushdie.
Dr Akhtar has also written The Quran and the Secular Mind (Routledge, 2007) and Islam as Political Religion (Routledge, 2010).
In 2018, he published The New Testament in Muslim Eyes: Paul’s letter to the Galatians (Routledge, 2018), the first such work on the Greek New Testament in Islamic history.
Dr Akhtar has published three volumes of poetry in English, and he has also lectured at universities in Malaysia, USA and the UK.
His articles have appeared both in academic journals and in the UK press. Several of his books have been translated into the major Islamic languages.
Since 2012, Dr Akhtar is on the Faculty of Theology and Religions at the University of Oxford.