Professor Shabbir Akhtar: A Voice Between Faith and Reason

In July 2023, the Muslim intellectual world lost one of its most original and daring voices. Professor Shabbir Akhtar, philosopher, poet, Qur’anic thinker, and interpreter of Christianity in Muslim eyes, passed away, leaving behind a body of work that will continue to inspire debate for generations. His writings, published in English, Arabic, French, Bosnian, and Indonesian, reflect a life devoted to wrestling with the most profound questions of faith, philosophy, and modernity.

Shabbir Akhtar was born in Pakistan but migrated to the United Kingdom with his family at a young age. His father worked as a bus driver in Bradford, Yorkshire, at a time when South Asian migration to Britain was reshaping the cultural landscape. Akhtar grew up in this working-class environment, but instead of being confined by it, he blazed his own intellectual path.

From an early age, he was drawn to religious and philosophical questions. Unlike many of his peers, who were more concerned with assimilation and survival in a new land, Akhtar immersed himself in the study of Christianity, Islam, philosophy, and literature, equipping himself with the tools to engage both East and West on equal terms.

His formal academic journey took him to Cambridge University, where he earned both his BA and MA degrees in philosophy. Later, he crossed the Atlantic and completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Calgary, Canada, in 1984. His doctoral thesis, Religion in the Age of Reason: Faith and the Apostasy of Humanism, foreshadowed much of his later work: an insistence that faith and reason must be brought into dialogue without compromise.

Professor Akhtar’s career spanned continents.

From 1994 to 1997, he served as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the International Islamic University, Malaysia, introducing a generation of students to both classical Islamic thought and Western philosophy.

Between 2002 and 2011, he served as Associate Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University in Virginia, USA, where he engaged in cross-cultural debates on secularism, religion, and ethics.

In 2012, he joined the Faculty of Theology and Religions at Oxford University, where he remained until his passing in 2023. At Oxford, he became widely known as an expert on the New Testament in Muslim eyes and a respected voice in interfaith dialogue, even as his writings challenged both Muslims and Christians to reexamine their assumptions

Akhtar was a polymath—a philosopher who wrote with equal fluency in theology, poetry, and political critique. His first book, Reason and the Radical Crisis of Faith (1987), set the tone for his career: a willingness to confront modernity without apologetics and to defend Islam with philosophical rigor.

His prolific writings include:

Be Careful with Muhammad! Salman Rushdie and the Battle for Free Speech (1989)

Islam as Political Religion: The Future of an Imperial Faith

The New Testament in Muslim Eyes: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians

The Quran and the Secular Mind: A Philosophy of Islam

A Faith for All Seasons: Islam and the Challenge of the Modern World

The Light in the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Secular Heritage

The Final Imperative: An Islamic Theology of Liberation

Multiple collections of poetry, including Love in the Wrong Season, The Mother of Judas Iscariot, and A Season in the Ghetto.

Many of these works were translated into French, Bosnian, and Indonesian, extending his influence across diverse Muslim communities.

Akhtar’s writing consistently revolved around the tension between faith and secular modernity. Some of his central arguments included:

Islam as a political religion: He argued that Islam cannot be reduced to a private faith, for its moral and legal dimensions are inherently public. He challenged Muslims to recover Islam’s intellectual and political vitality while rejecting extremism.

A Muslim critique of Christianity: In The New Testament in Muslim Eyes, he rejected Christian claims of salvation, contrasting the uncertain historical record of Jesus with the well-documented life of Muhammad. He drew a sharp distinction between īmān (knowledge with certainty) and pistis (belief based on speculation).

The Qur’an and reason: In The Quran and the Secular Mind, he contended that Islam, unlike Christianity and Judaism, has not capitulated to secularism. Instead, Islam insists on confronting modernity with its own rational and theological framework.

Political reform: Akhtar criticized both Western calls for a “colonial-style” Islamic reformation and Muslim tendencies toward violence and withdrawal. He called instead for an organic, authentic reform rooted in Islamic tradition but intellectually equipped for modernity.

He often reminded Muslims that, lacking a clerical hierarchy, every Muslim thinker is an “individual voice crying in the wilderness”—yet he embraced that lonely responsibility.

Akhtar came to public attention during the Rushdie Affair of 1989, when he published a controversial article in The Guardian. He wrote:

“There is no choice in the matter. Anyone who fails to be offended by Rushdie’s book ipso facto ceases to be a Muslim.”

He further warned:

“The next time there are gas chambers in Europe, there is no doubt concerning who’ll be inside them.”

These words provoked intense debate. For some, they cemented his reputation as a fierce defender of Islam against blasphemy and secular arrogance. For others, they painted him as uncompromising. What is undeniable is that Akhtar was never afraid to speak uncomfortable truths to both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Professor Shabbir Akhtar’s life was one of intellectual courage. He lived between worlds: a Pakistani migrant in Britain, a Muslim thinker in Western academia, a philosopher who also wrote poetry, and a believer who challenged both secularism and religious complacency.

His writings will remain significant for Muslim minorities in the West, offering them a way to navigate modernity without surrendering their tradition. At the same time, his works challenge Western audiences to engage Islam on its own terms, not as a diluted or domesticated version.

For Muslims, he was a reminder that the Qur’an demands intellectual seriousness and moral integrity. For Christians and secularists, he was a relentless interlocutor who refused to let them define Islam by their categories.

When he left this world in 2023, he left behind not silence, but a library of thought. His books—dense, provocative, poetic—ensure that his voice will continue to echo in the debates of tomorrow.explanation of Islam is unapologetic and authentic.