Ziauddin Sardar (; born 31 October 1951) 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. The author and editor of more than 50 books, Prospect magazine has named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper calls him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'. Brief biography Ziauddin Sardar was born in Dipalpur, Punjab, Pakistan. However, he was both educated and brought up in Britain. His family belonged to the Durrani warrior clan that founded the state that ultimately became Afghanistan after the break-up of Persia following the assassination of Nader Shah in 1747. Under the Raj, it was official policy to recruit the so-called "martial races" from what is now modern northern India, Pakistan and Nepal into the military. His grandfather served in the Indian Army under the Raj, was decorated for bravery during the Boxer Rebellion in China, and the family's surname was changed from Durrani to Sardar, Urdu for Leader, in recognition of his courage in leading men under fire. Sardar's grandfather also served under William Birdwood when he was a junior officer in the Indian Army, and when his son immigrated to Britain, he sought out the company of Birdwood's son, Christopher and his daughter-in-law, Lady Birdwood. Ziauddin Sardar, when growing up in 1960s London, was lectured by Lady Birdwood on his English. In 1968, she tried to recruit him into her anti-immigration crusade, arguing that having a Muslim Pakistani immigrant writing for her magazine, New Times, would dispel the charges of racism being made against her. Sardar recalled speaking with fury as he rejected her offer, causing her to storm out of his family's house, never to return. Sardar was bullied as a teenager by "Paki-bashing" white youths, and he imagined Lady Birdwood as a churail, the seductive, but ferocious female demons of Urdu folklore. Sardar argued that Lady Birdwood with her thesis that to be British was to be white was not "aberration" in British life, but rather was she was the "quintessence" of Britishness. Referring to Lady Birdwood's convictions in the 1990s for writing, printing and handing out anti-Semitic literature, Sarder wrote: "Racism as overt as that preached by all her hate literature is merely the flip side of the Great Tradition, the underlying, but unstated message of the 'Great Books of Mankind'