M. A. Muqtedar Khan

Some of Khan's statements have ignited controversy. Some Shia Muslims objected to his comparison of Ayatollah Sistani to Saddam Hussein and his suggestion that Sistani was a dictator: "The US-led invasion of Iraq may have replaced an overt and brutal dictatorship by Saddam Hussein with a covert and subtle dictatorship by the Marja-e-Taqleed, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani—the highest-ranking Shiite authority on the planet:.

Unlike the present day Islamists, Prophet Muhammad, when he established the first Islamic state in Medina – actually a Jewish-Muslim federation extended to religious minorities the rights that are guaranteed to them in the Quran. Prophet Muhammad's Medina was based on the covenant of Medina, a real and actual social contract agreed upon by Muslims, Jews and others that treated them as equal citizens of Medina. They enjoyed the freedom to choose the legal system they wished to live under. Jews could live under Islamic law, or Jewish law or pre-Islamic Arab tribal traditions. There was no compulsion in religion even though Medina was an Islamic state. The difference between Medina and today's Islamic states is profound. The state of Medina was based on a real social contract that applied divine law but only in consultation and with consent of all citizens regardless of their faith. But contemporary Islamic states apply Islamic law without consent or consultation and often through coercion. It is a sad commentary on contemporary Islamists that while democracy is a challenge to contemporary Islamic states, it was constitutive to the first Islamic state in Medina established by the Prophet of Islam.

Khan has testified at hearings hosted by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the US House Armed Forces Committee. A fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, he has been the president, vice-president and general secretary of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. In October 2008, Khan received the Sir Syed Ahmed Khan Award for service to Islam from Aligarh Muslim University.

Muhammad Abdul Muqtedar Khan (Urdu: محمد عبد المقتدر خان) , born 1966, is a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. Khan is the founding director of the Islamic Studies Program at the university. He chaired the Department of Political Science and was Director of International Studies at Adrian College. He was a senior non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2003 to 2008. He was a senior fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding from 2011-2014 and is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Global Policy since 2014. He earned his Ph.D. in international relations, political philosophy and Islamic political thought from Georgetown University in May 2000.