Dr. Waheed Ahmed: A pillar of Milwaukee’s Muslim community

Photo by Sandra Whitehead

Waheed Ahmed, Ph.D., (left) and Will Perry (right) participated in a panel in May at the book launch for “Muslims in Milwaukee,” a book by three University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee professors whose research began in 2010 with a proposal from Waheed Ahmad and his son Aamer, both leaders at the Milwaukee Islamic Dawah Center, to do a demographic study of Milwaukee’s Muslims.

In an email to the Wisconsin Muslim Journal, Waheed Ahmed, Ph.D., 93, politely offered a correction to an article I wrote in November about the history of the Milwaukee Islamic Dawah Center’s food pantry. It credited former MIDC executive director Will Perry with founding the pantry. 

“We should place the credit where it belongs, although Will Perry’s contribution has been selfless and invaluable. Here is some additional information, which was not available to her at the beginning and probably to almost all people presently associated with the Dawah Center,” he wrote.

“The first stage of every project, big or small, successful or not, is its conception and initiation. The food pantry idea was conceived, initiated and initially financed by Dr. Nauman Siddiqi, a nephrologist, who was doing his fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He now practices in Florida. He was assisted in this effort by the late Br. Ayyub Al-Amin.

“He is one of those selfless people who try to remain out of the limelight,” Dr. Ahmed added. “However, a respectable and vibrant community like ours must place the credit where it belongs before all the witnesses are gone to meet their maker and the information is totally lost.” 

Exactly! I thought. 

Thus began our correspondence, as well as a visit to his longtime home on Milwaukee’s south side, and interviews with his children and others who witnessed Dr. Ahmed’s role in establishing Milwaukee’s Muslim community.

The early days

In a subsequent email, Dr. Ahmed said, “I wrote a history of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee as well as that of the Dawah Center, both of which have become miserably outdated now. I am one of the two or three old goats who are still alive and are dying to tell the tale whenever opportunity is presented.”

“May my husband and I visit you?” I responded. 

“You and your husband are most welcome,” he replied. We visited in mid-January.

Dr. Ahmed’s wife, Syeda, greeted us at the door and directed us to the living room. She disappeared down a hall to tell her husband we arrived.  

Dr. Ahmad emerged from his study where he had been reading a variety of newspapers. One of them was The New York Times. He has been subscribing for 40 years and has never missed a day of reading it, he said.

Apologizing that he couldn’t hear well, the small man, dressed in a beige tunic and loosely fitted beige trousers, sat in a large armchair. He mentioned he still drives, but getting across the ice and snow to the garage behind the house is impossible these days.

Dr. Ahmed presented us with a copy of his self-published, 31-page booklet, “A History of the Islamic Center of Milwaukee, The Formative Years.” Published in 2012, it notes, “The author was the president of the Muslim Student and Community Association of Greater Milwaukee from 1982 to 1983 and the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee from 1983 to 1986. This history was first published as a booklet in 1990 and now revised with minimal changes.”

As he did for my story, Dr. Ahmed wrote his history to set the record straight; its introduction explains. “Written records and documents are scarce and scattered,” he wrote. “If the Islamic Center loses its link with the past, it is likely to lose its relevance.” Having “been involved in the Islamic work in Milwaukee since 1979 and in the acquisition and the administration of the Center since 1979 to 1986, “I have in my possession facts as well as vivid memories which I would like to put on record for the benefit of those who might be interested,” he wrote.

Born in Hyderabad, India, in 1933, Waheeduddin Ahmed completed a Ph.D. in chemistry at London Metropolitan University. He worked as a professor at the University of Tripoli in Libya before coming to Milwaukee in 1976 to work for Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Company. 

Milwaukee Public School System placed the New Road School for sale in 1982. It was purchased by a coalition of two early Milwaukee Muslim organizations (the Islamic Foundation of Greater Milwaukee and the Muslim Student and Community Association) for $115,000.

Ahmed wrote that he came to know other Muslims in Milwaukee at the Sunday Islamic School run by the Muslim Student Association at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he said in a Nov. 12, 2025, email. “In parallel with the classes for children, a Quranic study session for adults used to take place. This whole activity was organized by Dr. Suleyman Kurter. Abdullah Clark, Mahmoud Atta and Ayyub Alamin were among the attendees. 

“Those meetings were what gave birth to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee,” he wrote. “When the proposal for the formation of the Muslim Student and Community Association was made, Abdullah Clark was supposed to be the president of that organization, but for some reason he couldn’t attend the elections. So, Dr. Farooq Al Quadan was elected. After he left, Dr. Munir Al Gharaiibah succeeded him and, after him, I was elected president. From that setup, the ISM emerged with me as its first president.”

Another early Milwaukee Islamic organization, the Islamic Foundation of Greater Milwaukee, was also organizing to create a mosque for the Muslim community. Its members included M.Y. Quereshi (president), Mohammad Aslam Cheema, G.M. Shah, Hafiz Yunus, Mohammad Saleem, Mohammad Y. Khan and Mahmoud Atta.

During Dr. Ahmed’s presidency, the two organizations pooled resources to purchase a building in 1982 that had formerly been a Milwaukee Public School. It became a home for the Milwaukee Muslim community that included a mosque, Sunday school classrooms and an area in the basement used for Ramadan iftars and other events. The community expanded the ISM building in the Nineties, making a larger prayer hall and Wisconsin’s largest Islamic School.

Next up—the Milwaukee Islamic Dawah Center

With a home for the community, Ahmed and some other early leaders turned their attention outward. “The Islamic Center of Milwaukee (later ISM – Main) … was at first the target of considerable hostility from the local population,” Ahmed wrote in his history. “As is always the case, it was caused by ignorance about us which bred prejudice.”

Determined to pursue dawah (sharing the message of Islam), the early leaders held an open house, Ahmed said in the interview at his home. “People didn’t know about Islam. They thought we were maybe the P.L.O.

“Our idea was to somehow engage them in asking questions and we could give them information,” he said. “That led to the Islamic Information Center, which was a precursor to the Dawah Center.”

Brother Ayyub Alamin and his business partner monitored a 24-hour phone line. It rang in their store during business hours then transferred to Alamin’s home phone afterwards. 

Remembering the accomplishments

Dr. Ahmed’s son, Aamer Ahmed, 44, spoke with WMJ about his memories of his father. Aamer was born in 1981, the year before ISM formed.

“All of my earliest memories actually happened to be in the mosque,” he said in a phone interview from Florida, where he lives.  “He would take me along every time, for meetings, prayers, everything. The community was a lot smaller and everyone brought their kids along.

“From the standpoint of a child to now, I see the progression of the community. There were dynamics back then you don’t see so much now. One of them is that everyone had the shared goal of building a community. Now the community is well-built, well-established, with multiple institutions.

“Consequently, back then there was a greater need to bind together,” he said. “As a byproduct, the cultures were always secondary. So, I remember it as very diverse. People were from different backgrounds—Sunni, Shia, South Asian Muslims, Arab Muslims and Black Muslims were all together.

“That has shaped my outlook on life, and my mission and purpose in life as well,” said Aamer, who helped establish Mahruf, a Muslim social service organization.

“It was very family-oriented back then, too. Today, you’d hire a construction company and the contractors would do all the work.  Back then, the community came together and did a lot of stuff themselves. That created bonds between us across our diverse backgrounds.

“There was no full-time Islamic school,” he recalled. “My mom was a teacher and when she learned about the Clara Muhammad School, she quit her other school and asked for a job. I remember going there in a preschool type of situation.”

At that time, the Ahmeds lived on the north side of Milwaukee. Aamer was in middle school when they moved to the south side. “They only moved once since they came to America,” he said with a laugh.

“I see my dad as someone who was almost like glue that brought really disparate people together around a common cause,” Aamer said. “I think he did a good job diplomatically in creating a pathway for people to put their differences aside.

“In this country, it didn’t matter if you were Salafi or Sufi, Shia or Sunni, Palestinian or Pakistani. This country doesn’t see those things. They see you as Muslim. That is why my dad saw Dawah as so important. It let us create (for ourselves) an awareness of Islam and Muslims in America, to create a level of understanding and mutual respect between communities.