M. Shahab Ahmed *99

Shahab Ahmed, an Islamic Legal Studies Program research fellow at Harvard, died Sept. 17, 2015. He was 48.

Raised in Malaysia by Pakistani parents, he went to boarding school in Britain and earned his undergraduate degree from the American University in Cairo in 1991. In 1999, he earned a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton.

In 2000, Ahmed went to Harvard as a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and in 2005 was appointed to the faculty of Arts and Sciences. From 2014 to 2015, he was a research fellow at Harvard.

In October 2015, his book, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic, was published by the Princeton University Press. A review in Publishers Weekly stated, “It dives deeply into heady discussions of philosophy, religious studies, aesthetics, poetry, epistemology, and fiqh — Islamic jurisprudence.” At his death, Ahmed was working on two other book manuscripts.

Ahmed is survived by his wife, Nora Lessersohn, a doctoral candidate in history and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard; his sister, Shahla Ahmed; and his parents, Razia and Mohammed Mumtazuddin Ahmed.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.