Dr. Asad Zaman is a leading and often controversial scholar of Islamic economics, known for his radical critique of mainstream approaches that reduce Islamic economics to an Islamic variant of conventional economics. Currently Head of the Department of Economics at Akhuwat University, Pakistan, he calls instead for a reconstruction of economics and finance on genuinely Islamic foundations of justice, service, and moral purpose.
Educated at MIT and Stanford, Dr. Zaman has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Bilkent University, LUMS, and the International Islamic University Islamabad. His work spans econometrics, methodology, philosophy of social science, Islamic economics, and, in recent years, money, banking, and Islamic finance. He is the author of numerous influential books and articles, and is widely recognized as a pioneering voice of what he describes as Third Generation Islamic Economics.
His keynote at NACIF 2026 continues this distinctive intellectual project by arguing that Islamic finance must move beyond profit-driven institutional models and recover its moral center in service to the Ummah and the pursuit of justice.
Professor, Akhuwat Institute, Kasur​
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