Abdus Salam was born on January 29, 1926, and died on November 21, 1996. The month of June is particularly significant in understanding his legacy. On June 9, 1968, he officially opened the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, reflecting his vision of advancing science in developing countries. In June 1974, Pakistan’s National Assembly began debates that ultimately led to the declaration of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community as non-Muslims. Together, these events highlight the contrast between Salam’s international scientific achievements and his community’s growing exclusion in Pakistan.   

The literature on Salam traces his life, religion, education, and scientific work from Jhang to Cambridge, Princeton, and ultimately Trieste. As an Ahmadi Muslim, Salam occupied a contested position in Pakistan, yet he achieved global recognition in theoretical physics. In 1979, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for contribution to the electroweak unification theory. Although my primary research focussed on Salam’s relationship with nuclear weapons, the evidence revealed a scientist who identified with the Third World, now termed the Global South, and viewed science as a means to serve humanity.  

This outlook remains characteristic of the Ahmadiyya Muslims, a persecuted community in Pakistan. Ahmadis regard Salam as a role model whose career demonstrated the possibility of linking religion with science for social benefit. Yet his Ahmadiyya identity also limited his ambitions, bringing him into conflict with political, bureaucratic, military, and academic actors in Pakistan. Before establishing the ICTP, Salam had hoped Pakistan would become a centre for theoretical physics. However, the growing influence of religious extremism made such a vision increasingly difficult to realise.   

Salam was a committed nationalist, yet after the Ahmadiyya Muslim community was declared non-Muslim in 1974, his religious identity increasingly overshadowed his scientific contributions. Salam approached Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to discuss the development, but Bhutto deferred the matter, promising to address it later.

The challenges of being an Ahmadi

Salam’s position as an Ahmadi constrained his ability to realise his vision within the country. Consequently, the establishment of the ICTP outside Pakistan can be understood as both a scientific and political outcome. The persecution of Ahmadis intensified, and their religious freedoms were further restricted under the administration of General Zia-ul-Haq.

The Ayub Khan regime had provided support for scientific development, but the institutional framework fell short of Salam’s ambition to create an advanced centre for theoretical physics comparable to leading research institutions in the West. A comparison with India is instructive. Homi Bhabha successfully secured the support of Jawaharlal Nehru, while the Tata Group financed a major research institute that strengthened India’s scientific infrastructure. This contrast highlights the importance of sustained political and institutional backing for scientific advancement. The limited emergence of Nobel laureates from South Asia may therefore be linked to the broader challenge of developing research institutions capable of sustaining world-class scientific inquiry.

Within the Ahmadiyya community, the pursuit of excellence in science and scholarship acquired renewed significance after Salam’s Nobel Prize in 1979. Subsequent Khalifas of the community encouraged Ahmadi scientists, economists, and researchers to follow Salam’s example and contribute to humanity through intellectual achievement. This objective implicitly requires engagement with leading universities and advanced research centres, where knowledge production and innovation are concentrated.

Despite the increasing educational attainments of Ahmadis and their presence in prestigious academic and research institutions across the world, a second Nobel Prize from the community has yet to materialise. This raises an important analytical question: what factors continue to limit the translation of educational success into recognition at the highest level of global scholarship?

As a community, the Ahmadiyyas are highly organised, emphasise peace, and promote loyalty to the countries where they reside. Ahmadis advocate respect for all religions and faith traditions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, and Buddhism. Salam’s own career reflected these principles. He did not discriminate against colleagues, researchers, or students on the basis of religion or race, a quality that earned him international respect and cooperation. The contrast between this global recognition and his marginalisation in Pakistan illustrates how religious identity, rather than scientific accomplishment, often shaped perceptions of Salam in his homeland.

Some mainstream Muslim groups in Pakistan have portrayed Ahmadis as agents of Israel, a claim linked in part to Salam’s professional collaborations with Jewish scientists and students. Similarly, the presence of an Ahmadiyya mosque in Haifa in Israel has attracted criticism.

Beyond religious and national boundaries

Salam’s own commitment to science always transcended religious, national, and cultural boundaries. He was, for instance, deeply admiring of the renowned Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Inspired by Ramanujan, Salam published his first scientific contribution in 1943, at the age of 16.

In his later years, Salam collaborated with Jogesh Pati at the University of Maryland. Such associations are significant in the Pakistani context, where Ahmadis are often accused of maintaining close links with Indian Hindus and Israeli Jews, groups regarded by some as adversaries of Islam. While physicists in Pakistan widely admire his contributions to theoretical physics, influential maulavis have portrayed him as an opponent of both Islam and Pakistan.

Demographically, Ahmadis are concentrated in Pakistan and India, with smaller communities in Africa and several Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. However, Ahmadis residing in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other developed countries are often encouraged to emulate Salam’s example because these societies provide access to leading universities and advanced research institutions. This emphasis highlights the structural conditions necessary for scientific excellence. While admiration for Salam may be widespread in developing countries, the pursuit of a Nobel Prize requires sustained engagement with world-class academic and research infrastructure that may be lacking in these.

Salam himself recognised this reality, observing that “If Einstein had been born in Burkina Faso, he would never have become what he was” (Cosmic Anger: Abdus Salam - The First Muslim Nobel Scientist by Gordon Fraser, Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, page 162).

Community guidance

Paradoxically, Salam’s rise can also be examined through the lens of religious belief and community guidance. According to family accounts, his father, Muhammad Hussain, experienced a dream foretelling that his son, later named Abdus Salam (Servant of Peace), would attain distinction in education and research. Within the family, this was interpreted as a sign of divine favour.

Muhammad Hussain had accepted “Ahmadiyyat” after his elder brother, Ghulam Hussain, had done so, and both became devoted followers of Khilafat and the Ahmadiyya movement. He sought interpretation of his dream concerning his son from Ahmadi missionaries, who reportedly affirmed that Salam would attain academic distinction.  

Muhammad Hussain was for ever committed to nurturing Salam’s academic abilities and providing him with opportunities for advancement. Family support was thus crucial in Salam’s career. In nurturing Salam’s talent, the family received guidance from prominent Ahmadi figures, including Chaudhry Zafrulla Khan and Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad, the second successor of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect. Chaudhry Zafrulla Khan emerged as Salam’s most influential mentor, playing a significant role in guiding his development in higher education.

Their involvement demonstrates the extent to which educational and intellectual advancement was embedded within broader community networks and religious ideals. Salam’s exceptional abilities in mathematics and languages enabled him to secure several government and Ahmadi scholarships.

However, belonging to the Ahmadiyya sect brought its own set of challenges. The claim of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be the Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi (the Guided One) is not acceptable to mainstream Islam and has led to the social and religious marginalisation of Ahmadis in Pakistan. Ahmadiyyas are even denied the right to worship, as evidenced in the imprisonment of Ahmadis for reciting the Holy Quran or offering namaz in mosques.

Salam, however, has consistently maintained that the Holy Quran shaped his intellectual outlook and inspired his engagement with science. Collectively, Ahmadiyyas continue to regard the integration of religion and science as a central responsibility, a principle that Salam pursued throughout his life. His admiration for classical Muslim scholars such as Al-Haytham, Ibn Sina, and Al-Biruni shaped his conviction that scientific advancement was essential for the progress of Muslim societies.

Within the Ahmadi world view, religion is understood as the word of Allah, while science is viewed as a study of Allah’s creation. Consequently, scientific inquiry is not regarded as separate from faith but as a means of uncovering truths embedded within the natural world through sincerity, discipline, and intellectual effort. 

The effort to connect Islam and science, however, requires more than individual achievement; it also depends upon institutional support. In this regard, the establishment of the Fazle Umar Research Institute (FURI) in Qadian in 1946 reflected an early attempt by the Ahmadiyya community to promote scientific research. The partition of British India in 1947 disrupted these ambitions, and the institute struggled to develop after its relocation to Lahore before eventually ceasing operation. Nevertheless, the Fazle Umar Foundation continues to function in Rabwah, Pakistan, with a commitment to research activities.  

Rabwah in Punjab, where Ahmadis constitute the dominant community, provides an example of the community’s development in religion, administration, finance, and education. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that Salam was involved in shaping the future direction of the FURI. Given that he was still in his teenage years during the 1940s, his absence from this initiative is understandable.

Later, as a scientific adviser to General Ayub Khan, Salam appears to have adopted a broader vision centred on advancing science throughout Pakistan rather than within a specifically Ahmadi framework. His outlook reflected a nationalist vision of Ahmadis contributing to the country through scientific achievement. The subsequent experience, however, proved more complex as Ahmadis continued to face obstacles in accessing educational opportunities and university life in Pakistan.

Exposure to the wide world of scientific scholarship

Securing a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge, as Salam did, was exceptionally difficult in the late 1940s. Once at Cambridge, he entered an international scientific environment that connected him to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and to many of the leading physicists of the period. Figures such as Paul Dirac, Fred Hoyle, Nicholas Kemmer, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer influenced his academic development. Salam learned from Nobel laureates, engaged directly with original scientific papers, and tested his ideas in conversation with prominent researchers across Cambridge, Birmingham, Princeton, Maryland, California, Imperial, and later Trieste. The pattern suggests that exposure to first-rate intellectual communities was not incidental but central to his formation as a theoretical physicist.

Salam’s intellectual orientation was especially shaped by Dirac. He regarded Dirac, rather than Einstein, as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. As Fred Hoyle later recalled, “For Salam, the greatest scientist of the twentieth century was undoubtedly Dirac. Of course, you could say this was one John’s man supporting another. But when I asked [Salam] if this included Einstein, he was clear in his answer, which went something like this: ‘Einstein had his mathematics all done for him. Dirac invented his. Not only that, but it was Dirac who first made it clear that the route towards real understanding in theoretical physics lies through abstract mathematics, not through engineering mathematics.’” (Cosmic Anger, page 84.)

Salam also recognised a structural problem: encouraging scientists in developing countries was insufficient if they lacked sustained access to advanced research environments. His response was institutional rather than rhetorical. He pursued the creation of a research centre designed specifically for scientists from the developing world. Several countries sought to host the project, but Salam ultimately secured approval for the ICTP in Trieste with funding support from Italy, UNESCO, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The ICTP was conceived as a platform where scientists from developing nations could think, study, collaborate, and strengthen their research abilities in conditions closer to those available at leading Western institutes. Although Salam originated the idea, the centre’s mission and structure were refined with inputs from prominent scientists, including Oppenheimer. The later record of the ICTP (three Nobel Prizes in Physics and one Nobel Peace Prize associated with individuals who worked there after Salam’s tenure) shows Salam’s achievement went beyond his personal research. It lay in the construction of an institution that reduced the gap between scientific talent in the Global South and the infrastructure concentrated in advanced economies.

In search of the right institutional environment

The obstacles that Salam encountered after returning to Pakistan from Cambridge in the early 1950s contributed to his academic maturation. His eventual decision to return to Cambridge reflected a recognition that Pakistan lacked the institutional environment necessary for the type of scientific work he wished to pursue. The move ultimately contributed to the achievement that defined his career, the Nobel Prize.

Critics of the Ahmadiyya community regard Salam as an impure Muslim and even allege that his Nobel Prize was orchestrated by lobbies opposed to Islam. Salam himself remained steadfast in his religious commitment, and his life reflected an attempt to integrate faith and science. Salam’s collaborators found his intuitions amusing, and whenever they asked how he developed them, he responded by pointing his finger to the sky. Salam embraced his Imam’s fundamental message of conducting a “jihad by the pen”. From this perspective, his achievements may be interpreted by Ahmadis as evidence that scientific excellence and spiritual conviction can coexist.

A contemporary example is Atif Mian, an Ahmadi economist at Princeton University who is widely regarded by many observers as a potential contender for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He accepted Ahmadiyyat in 2002, completed his doctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and regularly attends Ahmadiyya events in the US and UK. Clerics pressured the government of Imran Khan to exclude him from Pakistan’s Economic Council. Nevertheless, he continues to offer recommendations on how Pakistan might address its economic challenges.

The comparison suggests that Salam’s experience is part of a broader Ahmadi narrative that links intellectual achievement with religious commitment. There may be hundreds of Ahmadis with similar stories, and time alone will determine who might add a second Nobel Prize to the community. If and when that happens, it will likely emerge from the same combination of intellectual ambition, service, perseverance, and faith that shaped Salam’s career.

Rameez Raja teaches political science at CGC University, Mohali, Punjab. He is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of the book India’s Nuclear Policy Since 1998: Perspectives and Challenges.    

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