Trustees

Ejaz Qureshi

Chairman

Ejaz Qureshi was born in Pakistan and had all his education in the UK. He graduated from Loughborough University in 1983 with a Masters degree in Engineering Design. He is a member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and also a Justice of the Peace. He is now at Nottingham University involved in technology transfer from research into innovations, including programmes to help society reduce its carbon footprint.

Ejaz is married with two grown up children and a wife who is a primary school teacher and as a family they are deeply passionate about the sustainability agenda. His vision for IFEES is that it acts as the Knowledge Hub for popularising the Islamic environmental message and it engenders a sense of Islamic duty so that each and every one of us become passionate and active “Guardians of the Earth”.

Harfiyah Haleem

Secretary

Harfiyah Haleem is one of the leading Muslim environmental activists in the UK. She is editor of a book of essays on Islam and the Environment (Ta Ha Publishers 1998) and co-author of Sharing Eden, a book of green teachings and practical hints on sustainable living from the Abrahamic faiths (Conservation Foundation and Kube Publishers 2012). She is a regular reviewer for the Muslim World Book Review. She has also written khutbah (sermon) notes for imams and leaflet texts and has helped to run sustainable living and recycling projects in the London area, where she is a Director of the Muslim Women’s Collective, Tower Hamlets. She is in demand as a speaker and also runs children’s workshops on environmental themes.

Shaid Latif

Shaid Latif was born in England to Kashmiri parents and raised and educated in Bedford. He graduated in 1992 from the University of Westminster and works for GlaxoSmithKline as their global procurement manager. He has proven skills in organisation and management and has successfully deployed them in numerous voluntary projects. He has collaborated with IFEES in producing a “green” booklet to highlight the religious guidance consistent with being responsible citizens and observant Muslim’s. Since starting a family he has come round to thinking that the world should be handed to our children in a better state than we find it as a matter of guardianship and fulfilling an implicit trust.

Lutfi Radwan

Lutfi Radwan was born and educated in the UK. He got a degreein Geography and Arabic from London University (SOAS) and subsequently completed a PhD at Oxford University. He went on to lecture at Oxford at the same time undertaking research and consultancy in the Middle East and West Africa for various public agencies (FAO, UNDP) and private agricultural development companies, specialising in dryland reforestation and irrigated horticultural production. More recently he changed his focus from global to local and sold his house to move onto a 43 acre site north of Oxford where he has established Willowbrook organic farm.

Hajj Ahmad Thomson

Hajj Ahmad Thomson was born in Zambia, educated in Zimbabwe and England, embraced Islam in 1973 and called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1979. He is a practicing barrister specialising in Charity law, Discrimination, Employment and Islamic Law. He has authored several books on Islam and is also a public speaker of some repute.

www.wynnechambers.co.uk

Dr. Najma Mohamed

Dr. Najma Mohamed works on ideas and solutions that address climate change, fight inequality and restore nature. She has over two decades of experience working from international to national level in science, policy and practice that embodies systems thinking and supports a just transition to green and inclusive economies. She studied Environmental and Geographical Sciences at the University of Cape Town and completed her PhD at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Najma has been active in writing about the ecological message of Islam, supporting faith-based climate and environment action. She is based in the UK where she is Head of Nature-Based Solutions at UNEP-WCMC and a 2023 Atlantic Fellow in Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics.  

Dr. Rizwan Nawaz

Rizwan was born and raised in the UK. He studied at the Universities of Sheffield, Glasgow and Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh. He was awarded his PhD in climate change in 2001 by Heriot-Watt University. Subsequently, he worked as a researcher and lecturer in the geography departments at the Universities of Hull and Leeds, respectively. He has 20 years’ experience of undertaking climate change research, particularly its impacts on environmental systems. Rizwan has held memberships of a number of professional bodies including the Royal Geographical Society, the Chartered Institute of Water & Environmental Management and the UK Higher Education Academy. He has published extensively on climate change and has been passionate about communicating his findings to the wider public via television and radio. He has provided significant input to major water supply and demand assessments in the UK (e.g. Thames Water) and abroad (Abu Dhabi). Over recent years, he has turned his attention to understanding more fully, the drivers of global warming in order to identify effective and lasting mitigation strategies. Rizwan works as a Learning Advisor at the University of Leeds. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family and tending to the allotment.

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SlJEohoAAAAJ&hl=en

Luzita Ball

Luzita Ball, holds a BSc degree in Agroforestry (holistic land and ecosystem management), an MA in Urban Regeneration (Improving cities for people and the environment), and a Certificate in Permaculture Design and Teaching. Mrs Ball has been working in community education at all levels since 1993. Her main focus has been to encourage community building and empowerment initiatives, and the role of communities in the conservation and regeneration of ecosystems. With these aims, she has worked to spread awareness about Islam, environmental management, regenerative agriculture, and gardening (especially permaculture), human rights and responsibilities and natural health. She has organised educational activities in many settings including grassroots community women and youth groups including scouts, nurseries, primary, supplementary, and forest schools, on radio and TV programmes, and at universities. She has represented her community and religion at local and national government level, and at international workshops. Mrs Ball has authored and edited various articles for academic journals, a national newspaper in Qatar, an international environmental website, and many public awareness leaflets, and has advised on public awareness posters and short video production.
Luzita is a founding committee member of the pioneering Pearls of Peace women’s community group, which has, since 2010, been building bridges between different nationalities and faith groups in Northampton, UK, where she is currently based- and supporting, uplifting and educating women, in particular Muslim women, and their families. She has been a trustee of IFEES Eco Islam since 2019. She has advised and worked with various ecogarden, ecosystem and soil improvement projects in the UK, Africa and the Middle East. She is currently helping to write and produce the IFEES EcoIslam newsletter, and is available through IFEES to answer enquiries and advise environmental projects, events and courses on Islam and environmental management.

Ashfaq Ahmed

Ashfaq Ahmed was born in Pakistan and had his primary and early secondary education in Pakistan and completed the rest in UK. After working in industry as a Quality Controller and Industrial Chemist for seventeen years, he went back to full time education. He graduated from the University of Birmingham in 1995 with a Social Science degree in ‘Media, Culture and Society’. Ashfaq went on to qualify as a teacher of English and taught English in secondary schools. He is currently working as a student development officer and a cover teacher in a 6th form college. He has also been a school governor for ten years. As a teacher and a member of three other community and educational trusts he is involved in teaching “nature consciousness” to young inner city adults and equip them with the skills to deal with climate change and work towards leading green lifestyles.

Adnan Ashfaq

Adnan Ashfaq is a business entrepreneur and runs a successful Medical Device Consultancy (Simplimedica Ltd) assisting startups launch their Medical Technology through a labyrinth of legal and engineering complexities. He is also an activist since the last 25 years and has led many initiatives such as Dinar Exchange which has been promoting an alternative economic model using bimetallic currency, in 2017 he was responsible for the minting of the British Silver Dirham as an alternative to fiat currency as a basis for Islamic Trade. He was also responsible for the British Muslim Network which collaborated with several communities within the British Isles. His latest initiative is the Madina Town Movement which bonds three main themes – Sunnah Environment, Sunnah Business and Sunnah Health. He currently has undertaken a project to thread these themes together in Scotland where he intends to run workshops on his home grounds.

Madina town Movement