Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. He has lived a colourful life of great academic excellence and success throughout his career, which spans over 60 years and has been referred to as a “critical polymath”. He has also authored over 50 books, including Reading the Qur’an, Desperately Seeking Paradise, and Balti Britain.

 In 1987, Sardar moved to Kuala Lumpur to become an advisor to Anwar Ibrahim, the Education Minister and later Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. Sardar also wrote and presented a number of programmes for the BBC and Channel 4. He conceived and presented Encounters with Islam for the BBC in 1983, and two years later his 13-half-hour interview series Faces of Islam was broadcast in Malaysia and other channels in Asia.

 In 2009, Sardar re-launched the defunct Muslim Institute as a learned society that supports and promotes the growth of thought, knowledge, research, creativity and open debate; and became the Chair of the reorganized Muslim Institute Trust. In 2010, Sardar outlined the concept "Postnormal Times" in a paper published in Futures: The Journal of Policy, Planning, and Futures Studies. Since 2013, Sardar has worked as Director at the Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies. He is also a frequent commentator on current affairs and regularly makes media appearances in Britain and around the world. He conceived and launched, in 2011, the quarterly Critical Muslim, a ground-breaking journal of freethinking that seeks new readings of Islam and Muslim culture.