Sultan Ahmed Khan, MDiv ’24

“I want to emphasize how important it is to depoliticize peace building and relationship building. I want to bring people from different walks of life together in this larger experience, because we tend to, as human beings—and this is very much present in all cultures—live in our own silos.”

Sultan is from the village of Hoti in the city of Mardan, Pakistan. His specialization is in political Islam, and he is currently conducting his field education placement at Fourth Presbyterian Church in South Boston under the direction of the Rev. Burns Stanfield, MDiv ’88.

Early Years

There is a small tradition in my family where it’s understood that to have education you have to move to a different city. In many ways, I am the first—at least in my specific closed circle of family—hybrid educated guy. I moved out of my home when I was about 13-14 years old, and I went to a military school in Pakistan called the Karnal Sher Khan Cadet College in Sawabi, 35 minutes away from my home. So that was my first experience as this eighth grader moving on. That was 2011. I’ve been away since. In 2013, I cleared a test called the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program. It’s funded by the U.S. government, and through that program I came to the U.S.

The first time I got to the U.S. was in 2013 as an exchange student. The culture is so different here. In Pakistan, you have this extended lens of the world, you always think in the sense of “we.” What are we going to do? Where are we going to eat? Where are we going to—what’s the “we” part? Because the sense of identity that I grew up with was always me, along with other people in this journey, not just me going on. 

When I got to the U.S., the very major change was, what am I going to do? And that was like this whole perspective difference. It’s always me. That was a very specific kind of perspective change because the whole outlook on life is, how do we see ourselves in relation to other people? And the parents are the first couple of people that you know, and then your siblings, and then grandma and grandpa, and a few people in that way. 

Impactful Moments 

My mother was very supportive of me going to the U.S. as an exchange student. She’s a teacher. She’s been teaching for 23 years. She understood the value. 

Even though the religion was different—because I came from Islam, very orthodox, Sunni Islam, raised in a religious family—I was placed with a Christian-American family; that was my first time I met someone that was Christian. It was incredibly wonderful, and I’m very grateful for it. 

This was in Washington, Iowa. I was a sophomore in Washington High School and had a wonderful time just adapting to this new culture. I believe my childhood years between 2006 and 13, and then the year in Iowa, were the two most impactful experiences in my life. In 2006 I lost my father, two of my uncles, and two of my cousins to a flood disaster. It was a major flood disaster in Mardan. And so, I was raised by my single mother in Pakistan. I grew up with that extraordinary lens of being the elder one. You have to set the example. You have to be the high-achieving one, because the two brothers behind you have to follow in your footsteps. 

And when I got to the U.S., my mom, also in the U.S., pushed me to achieve more. Sometimes I’d sit down and I’d think about how nearly 95 percent of the people who have had a major impact on my life have all been women, from my mother to my teachers. I think that really opens a different way of experiencing life, because then you consider the myriad of other challenges that are existent out there, because now you don’t have a father. Now the things that a father could do, especially in a culture like Pakistan, now you don’t have access to that kind of social capital, maybe, to use more Americanized terms, or cultural capital in that way. And that carries an impact. 

And so, when I came to the U.S., I enrolled in numerous programs. I was in choir. I was in band. I was in speech. I was in Future Farmers of America. I was in this multicultural club. I was in everything that I could literally get my hands on because it was such a new experience for me. You do not have choir and band in Pakistan. The concept just does not exist. So, when I was introduced to this new educational landscape, I’m thinking, there are 1,000 opportunities. And I’m ready to do all of them. 

I went back to Pakistan in 2014, and the one thing I really realized is how much of a difference that exchange year made, because when I went back, I had found this new passion for advocacy in leadership and community service. 

Advocacy, Understanding, Goals at HDS

The first really big experience of me holding a Bible was in trying to understand what theology is. When I really picked up the Bible and sat down, that’s when it opened up on me that there are so many similarities—several similarities—within Christianity and Islam. 

Fast forward to Pakistan, some of the projects I was working on were focused on interfaith harmony. I began to ask, what is possible if we could all sit together and be able to imagine a future that belongs to all of us? And that, for me was it—this advocacy arm of, why don’t we sit down and advocate for not just a better life in terms of material life, but better ideas. I want to emphasize how important it is to depoliticize peace building and relationship building. I want to bring people from different walks of life together in this larger experience, because we tend to, as human beings—and this is very much present in all cultures—live in our own silos. 

With HDS, I was looking for a radically diverse kind of perspective that’s present in the educational experience. I’m a student of political Islam, and a huge portion of political Islam is powered by interactions of how Muslims are active and reactive in daily life, physically interacting with other people, their ideologies, their beliefs. 

How does someone who disagrees with me on this specific thing, how can we then come together, sit down, and create still a mutually generative discourse that’s respectful to me and to them? HDS provided me, and those in all traditions, a space to come together. This is the intersection of religion, interfaith harmony, and politics. It is a huge crossroad of where I believe, if we step into this world, there are so many more possibilities. I could have very much gone into a specifically Islamic university, but in that university, I would not have been able to sit across a Jew, and a Christian, and a Buddhist, and a Hindu, and an atheist at the same table. 

I’m here because there’s a life mission involved—there is this deep conviction of achieving something, or solving something, or exploring something. And when you bring that kind of genuine love or genuine commitment to something, it by default is a promise of a very valuable experience. 

And that, for me, connects with the idea of moral imagination of what is possible. When we bring Islam into the conversation that it has been left out of, like female education for instance— nowhere in the Quran does it say that women are not to be educated—Islam can play such a powerful role in changing people’s perspectives on very critical and sensitive issues. 

I’ve been taking a class on religious literacy, and we had to choose a profession and an issue. I chose humanitarian action, and my issue is racial justice. I got my bachelor’s degree in international relations. So, I was really studying a lot of these intersections. 

I think in the short term, I see myself very much exploring the intersection between political Islam and the promise of humanitarian development. And by humanitarian development, I mean the intersection of humanitarian assistance and international development, because I don’t see how development can happen without humanitarian assistance. And I don’t see how assistance can happen without the long-term arc of developing institutional capacity to go into development—international proper development at a country or national level. That really is what political Islam is at its heart, and that’s what really has prompted me. 

The answer is in the nuance, parsing those difficult things out. And I really, truly believe that has the potential to really revolutionize Muslim futures, between Muslims trying to create a spiritual movement that is very religious and that is also reconciling modernity, not westernization, but modern living, that you could be religious perfectly well, and as much as anyone else, sitting in an air-conditioned room in the middle of a corporate office or sitting on a mountain. And that transformation of thought is happening because of political Islam. 

Interview conducted and edited by Denise Penizzotto; top image by Denise Penizzotto, second image courtesy of Sultan Ahmed Khan