Ahmed Paul Keeler

Ahmed Paul Keeler was born in 1942 and christened Paul Godfrey. He was brought up during the 1940s and 50s in a conservative, upper middle-class, Anglo-Catholic family. A chance meeting with a master musician from India introduced him to a wonderful new cultural realm; in response he formulated and organised The World of Islam Festival that took place in London in 1976, was opened by Her Majesty the Queen, and was the most comprehensive exposition of Islamic culture ever to have taken place in the West. Six months before the festival opened Paul embraced Islam.

He is now lecturing and participating in seminars encouraging us to judge the success of human culture through the criteria of Mizan, which is at the heart of the Islamic unfolding. Ahmed Paul Keeler was Distinguished Fellow at USIM Faculty of Leadership and Management in Malaysia in 2016, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University from 2014 to 2023, and is presently a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. He has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Bolton University.