Ahmed Faraz

Ahmed Faraz was one of the most renowned and influential Urdu poets of the 20th century. He was born as Syed Ahmed Shah in Hisar, a small town in Punjab, India, to a Memon Muslim family. He moved to Pakistan in 1947, after the partition of India. He graduated from Edwardes College, Peshawar and received his master's degree in Urdu and Persian from the University of Karachi. He wrote his poetry under the pen name Faraz, which means 'excellence' in Persian. He was influenced by the works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ali Sardar Jafri, Hamiduddin Farahi, Amin Ahsan Islahi, Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Rafiuddin. He joined the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1950 and became a prominent member of the party. He left the party in 1956, due to some ideological differences, and formed his own group, the Tanzeem-e-Islami, in 1975. He devoted his life to preaching the Quran and its wisdom to the masses. He wrote and lectured extensively on various topics related to Islam, such as Islamic philosophy, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, Islamic law, Islamic revivalism, Islamic economics, Islamic politics, and Islamic eschatology. He authored more than 60 books and delivered thousands of lectures, which are available in audio and video formats. He also hosted a popular TV show, Al-Huda, on Pakistan Television. He was awarded the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the third-highest civilian award of Pakistan, in 1981. He returned this award two years later in 2006, as a means of protest against the actions of the Musharraf regime. He died in 2008, at the age of 77, after suffering from a cardiac arrest. He is widely respected and admired by millions of Muslims around the world for his scholarly and sincere efforts to revive the true spirit of Islam.