Leadership as an Amanah
“Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due…” Surah An-Nisā’ (4:58)
“Each of you is a shepherd, and each of you is responsible for his flock.” The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, Sahih al-Bukhari & Sahih Muslim
Leadership at ISB was never a position of prestige — it was an act of service. Each president who accepted the responsibility inherited unfinished work from those who came before, and entrusted new opportunities to those who would follow. ISB’s presidential history became not a race toward individual achievement but a relay — a passing of the baton from one generation of servant-leaders to the next, with the institution growing stronger at each transfer. What follows are the portraits of those who held the trust.
### Dr. Mohamed Zein Awad — 1967, 1970 <a id="dr-mohamed-zein-awad-1967-1970"></a>
The first name in ISB’s leadership record belongs to Dr. Mohamed Zein Awad, the Egyptian-born physician whose quiet, consistent presence anchored the community from its earliest informal gatherings at Reed Hall and in private Baltimore homes. Before there was an organization, Dr. Awad was already organizing — leading prayers, convening meetings, identifying community needs, and sustaining the vision of a permanent Muslim institution in Baltimore. His decision to help guide the community toward formal incorporation in 1969, and to serve as its first informal president, set the standard of servant-leadership upon which all subsequent presidential terms would be measured. His legacy is perhaps best expressed in a single truth: visionary leadership begins quietly, long before history records it.
### Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan — 1972, 1981 <a id="dr-mushtaq-a-khan-1972-1981"></a>
Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan led ISB during critical periods of its early growth, emphasizing institutional stability and financial accountability with a rigor that proved essential to the organization’s long-term health. His most celebrated contribution to ISB’s institutional character — the principled insistence that the Saudi donation be reissued in the organization’s name rather than his own — was not merely a procedural correction but a defining moral act. In that single gesture, he demonstrated what Islamic stewardship actually means: that the resources of the community belong to the community, that no leader, however prominent or trusted, holds them as personal property. His integrity became a founding legend — not of one man’s virtue, but of the entire institution’s character.
### Dr. Javaid Shafi — 1979 <a id="dr-javaid-shafi-1979"></a>
Dr. Javaid Shafi served during the late 1970s, a period of consolidation and organizational strengthening as ISB prepared for the ambitious campaign that would culminate in the land purchase of 1981. His leadership helped maintain the unity and institutional discipline of the founding years during a period of transition, ensuring that the organizational framework remained strong even as the community’s aspirations grew larger and its plans more concrete.
### Azim ur Rahman Khan — 1980 <a id="azim-ur-rahman-khan-1980"></a>
Azim ur Rahman Khan occupies a distinctive place in ISB’s history as a president who led not only from behind a desk but with his hands. Historic photographs from the early years of Masjid Al-Rahmah’s site preparation show him working alongside fellow volunteers, clearing land and preparing the ground on which the masjid would eventually rise. His example articulated, more powerfully than any speech could have, the principle that genuine leadership begins with genuine service — that no task is beneath the dignity of a leader who has truly accepted the trust of his community.
### Dr. Mohammad Zulfiqar Awan — 1983, 1985 <a id="dr-mohammad-zulfiqar-awan-1983-1985"></a>
Dr. Mohammad Zulfiqar Awan’s encouragement and steady presence during the construction years reflected the core conviction that animated the entire founding generation: that perseverance and reliance upon Allah — tawakkul — would transform vision into reality. His leadership reinforced the community’s faith during a demanding period when the goal was visible but the path to it was still uncertain and the work was arduous.
### Dr. Mahmood Thamer — 1984 <a id="dr-mahmood-thamer-1984"></a>
Dr. Mahmood Thamer guided ISB through the years immediately following the property acquisition — years of active construction, intensive fundraising, careful financial management, and the thousand organizational demands that accompany the transition from a renting congregation to an institution managing its own physical plant. His stewardship during this period of greatest logistical complexity helped ensure that the excitement of having land and beginning construction translated, successfully, into the reality of an open and functioning masjid.
### Dr. Shaukat Yousuf Khan — 1985, 1986 <a id="dr-shaukat-yousuf-khan-1985-1986"></a>
Shaukat Yousuf Khan served as Acting President at one of the most consequential moments in ISB’s history, signing official documents connected with the property purchase that secured Masjid Al-Rahmah’s future. His willingness to accept formal legal responsibility at a moment of institutional significance — signing his name to documents that would stand in the historical record — embodied ISB’s collaborative nature: an institution where officers accepted responsibilities that extended far beyond their formal titles, wherever the community’s need demanded it.
### Dr. Maqbool H. Patel — 1987, 1993, 1999, 2009, 2011 <a id="dr-maqbool-h-patel-1987-1993-1999-2009-2011"></a>
Few individuals in ISB’s history have demonstrated the depth of long-term commitment expressed by Maqbool H. Patel’s service across five presidential terms spanning more than two decades. Returned to the presidency repeatedly by a community that trusted his experience, his balanced judgment, and his unwavering dedication, he provided the kind of institutional continuity that organizations need as they navigate changing circumstances, leadership transitions, and periods of both growth and difficulty. Multiple terms of presidential service are not only a testament to personal commitment — they are a reflection of the community’s confidence that his leadership served the institution faithfully across very different chapters of its history.
### Dr. Yaseen Tomhe — 1989 <a id="dr-yaseen-tomhe-1989"></a>
Dr. Yaseen Tomhe served during a period of deepening religious and organizational life at ISB, following the initial excitement of the masjid’s opening years. His thoughtful leadership helped the community consolidate the gains of the construction era and strengthen the educational and religious programming that would define ISB’s character in the decades ahead. His long-standing commitment to the community’s welfare extended well beyond his presidential term.
### Mir Mahmood Ali Khan — 1991 <a id="mir-mahmood-ali-khan-1991"></a>
Mir Mahmood Ali Khan’s presidency coincided with a period of continued institutional growth and the deepening of ISB’s educational and community programs. His leadership preserved and strengthened the close partnership between administrative governance and spiritual guidance — the relationship between the masjid’s organizational officers and its religious leadership — that had been one of ISB’s most important structural strengths since its earliest years.
### Usman (Osman) Khawaja — 1995 <a id="usman-osman-khawaja-1995"></a>
Osman Khawaja continued ISB’s tradition of steady, consensus-oriented leadership through the 1990s, a decade of expansion and increasing community engagement. His presidency emphasized the core values of volunteerism, consultation, and responsible governance that the founding generation had established as the institution’s operating principles — ensuring that as ISB grew in size and complexity, it remained true to the character that had sustained it through its earlier, more challenging years.
### Dr. Syed Habib Ashruf — 1997, 2003 <a id="dr-syed-habib-ashruf-1997-2003"></a>
Dr. Syed Habib Ashruf’s decades of service to ISB — as president, pioneer, planner, educator, and community elder — represent one of the most comprehensive examples of Islamic civic commitment in the institution’s history. He participated in the earliest planning discussions, contributed to educational initiatives, was present for Qur’an competitions, and received the zoning permit that enabled the land purchase from Councilman Hickernell’s own hand. At the 2025 founders’ reunions, he offered a reflection whose wisdom deserved to be recorded: had he remained in India, he might not have learned the Qur’an as deeply as he did in America — a reminder that the Muslim community of Baltimore had nurtured its members even as its members had built the community.
### Umar Mustafa (James Thomas) — 2001 <a id="umar-mustafa-james-thomas-2001"></a>
Umar Mustafa — known also as James Thomas — embodied, through his very identity and leadership, the inclusive vision that ISB’s founders had inscribed into the organization’s founding documents. As an American Muslim leader serving a congregation that included immigrants from dozens of countries alongside American-born Muslims of diverse backgrounds, he fulfilled the founding aspiration that ISB would be a community defined by shared faith rather than shared ethnicity. His presidency was itself a declaration that the masjid belonged to every Muslim who came to its doors.
### Muhammad Tufail Chaudhry — 2005 <a id="muhammad-tufail-chaudhry-2005"></a>
Muhammad Tufail Chaudhry guided ISB through years of continued growth and increasing civic engagement, strengthening the institution’s reputation for educational excellence, responsible community service, and principled governance. His leadership helped consolidate ISB’s position as one of the most respected Muslim institutions in the Baltimore-Washington region — recognized not only within the Muslim community but by the broader civic society of which it was an active part.
### Dr. Bassam Sayad — 2007 <a id="dr-bassam-sayad-2007"></a>
Bassam Sayad’s presidency reflected the increasingly international character of ISB’s congregation — a community that had grown, over four decades, from a handful of Muslim families from a limited number of countries to a genuinely global gathering of believers from virtually every corner of the Muslim world. His leadership demonstrated that ISB’s founding vision of unity across diversity had not only survived but flourished: the Islamic Society of Baltimore was, in the fullest sense, a community united by faith rather than divided by origin.
### Dr. Mohammad Abdul Khadeer — 2013 <a id="dr-mohammad-abdul-khadeer-2013"></a>
Dr. Mohammad Abdul Khadeer presided over ISB during a period of expanding educational programs, growing community services, and increasing institutional maturity. His presidency occurred in the years leading up to what would become one of the most historically significant moments in ISB’s existence: the February 2016 presidential visit. The groundwork of institutional credibility and community excellence that made such recognition possible was laid, in significant part, during the years of his leadership.
### Muhammad Jameel — 2015 <a id="muhammad-jameel-2015"></a>
Muhammad Jameel occupies a unique place in ISB’s presidential history: he is both a president and a community historian — a leader who understood that preserving the story of an institution is itself an essential act of leadership. His emphasis on documenting the stories, photographs, and experiences of the founding generation before those memories were irretrievably lost expressed a profound wisdom: that communities which forget their history lose their direction, and that the recovery of institutional memory is as urgent and necessary as the management of institutional finances or programs. His service as Community Historian for this volume is the fulfillment of a commitment he made to the community he served.
### Dr. Ahmed (Edmund) A. Tori — 2017, 2019 <a id="dr-ahmed-edmund-a-tori-2017-2019"></a>
Dr. Ahmed A. Tori guided ISB through continued expansion during his two presidential terms, strengthening governance structures and supporting educational and community initiatives in a period of both opportunity and challenge. His leadership reflected the institutional maturity that ISB had achieved over five decades — an organization now sophisticated enough to plan strategically, to respond thoughtfully to external pressures, and to maintain its core commitments even as circumstances changed around it.
### Hasan Hammad — 2022, 2025 <a id="hasan-hammad-2022-2025"></a>
Hasan Hammad represents, in the most visible and concrete way, ISB’s evolution into the twenty-first century and its embrace of the generational transition that the founders had always envisioned. His leadership has emphasized youth engagement and empowerment, educational excellence, community outreach, and compassionate service — values that connect directly to the founding generation’s aspirations while expressing them through the language and tools of a new era. His presidency at ISB’s most recent moment is a living testament to the founders’ greatest achievement: having built not just a masjid, but a community capable of producing its own future leaders.
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### More Than Presidents <a id="more-than-presidents"></a>
To tell ISB’s history through its presidents alone would be to tell only a small fraction of the story. Behind every presidential term stands an extensive architecture of service provided by the vice presidents, secretaries, and treasurers who managed the institution’s administrative work; the trustees who provided governance oversight; the committee chairs who led the programs and initiatives through which ISB’s mission was actually realized; the Sunday School principals and teachers who educated generation after generation of Muslim children; the youth leaders who invested in young people at the moments when their faith identity was most uncertain and most at stake; the women’s committees that organized, educated, fundraised, and sustained the community’s social fabric; the maintenance volunteers who kept the masjid clean, functional, and welcoming; the fundraisers who made every construction project and program possible; the caretakers who treated the masjid as their personal responsibility; the physicians who offered free medical advice to community members in need; the engineers who contributed professional expertise without billing for it; the architects who designed spaces for worship; the accountants who ensured financial integrity; the students who volunteered their energy; and the parents who drove their children to Sunday School every week, year after year, decade after decade, in the faith that the investment would matter.
Their names may not all appear in this volume. Their contributions are recorded in the ledger that matters most.