Qanta A Ahmed

Early life and education

Ahmed is the daughter of Pakistani immigrants to Britain. She graduated from the University of Nottingham. She went to New York City for medical training. Without an US visa to extend her stay, she left to practice in Saudi Arabia for a year. She wrote down her daily experiences as a woman practice medicine and published them in a book. In June 2013, Ahmed visited Israel, speaking at universities and research institutes around the country. Ahmed currently resides in Manhattan, New York City.

Medical career

Ahmed practised medicine in the National Guard Health Affairs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She returned to the U.S. in 1996 and practised at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina and sleep disorders medicine in Garden City at the Winthrop University Sleep Disorders Center.

As of 2011, Ahmed was associate professor of medicine at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook.

Ahmed holds an Honorary Professorship at the School of Public Health at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland.

Literary and journalism career

Ahmed is the author of In the Land of Invisible Women, an account of her experiences as a physician in Saudi Arabia.

She has published opinion pieces in major newspapers.

In 2012, she was invited to be a regular contributor to Pakistan's English daily newspaper, The Express Tribune.

Awards and recognition

Ahmed is the first Muslim woman and first physician to be selected as a 2010 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge, England. In November 2010, she was recognized by NY MOVES Magazine as a 2010 Power Woman. Ahmed also serves as a member of the board of directors for the non-profit foundation Women's Voices Now which sponsors Voices from the Muslim World, a short-film festival.

Views on Islamism

Ahmed has called for the State Department to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organizations, saying that in the doctrine of political Islam, or Islamism, the faith must be expressed through statehood and that "Islamists exploit democratic institutions to further their sectarian aims", citing the regime of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt as a recent example of the consequence of Islamists rising to power. According to Ahmed while Islamists in the west are not attempting to Islamize the entire society and that such calls are alarmists, but rather "It aims to drive a wedge between Muslims and the wider society. By encouraging separatism and indoctrinating its members with the totalitarian tenets of 20th-century Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to disrupt the fabric of democracy". Furthermore "Exposing Islamists as dangerous totalitarians is not an act of anti-Muslim bigotry but an essential defense of both liberal democracy and Islam".

Referring to Linda Sarsour's call for Jihad against the Trump administration, Ahmed said "This is classic Islamist tactics right out of the Muslim Brotherhood playbook" and that while Jihad could also be non-violent "In this climate, jihad could be construed by a fanatic as a call to arms to act against our president or against our structures" and that Sarsour was "driving a wedge against the wider society" in "her call for Muslims to resist the democratic decision of the American people".

Views on Israel

Ahmed is accused by her critics of being a "Zionist in Muslim guise". She is firmly opposed to the boycott against Israel, saying that the boycott movement attempts to vilify Israel. Ahmed is opposed to the occupation of the Palestinian Territories, but admits that she doesn't know how Israel can relinquish control over a region hosting "a virulent Jihadist ideology" and leaders calling for Israel's destruction. In 2010, Qanta wrote, "Call me an Accidental Zionist, if you must, but Eretz Yisrael is a vital shelter, an only shelter, from lethal, genocidal anti-Semitism... If we care for wider humanity at all, we must all be 'accidental' Zionists and want for the Jews, for the Israelis, what each Muslim already has for themselves: a future, a nation and a faith, secured."