"I work for peace-building and empathy and this doesn't suit my profile in life to be stopped like this," he said.

"What I'm doing is challenging extremism, and I've been affected by what you're working against," he said, referring to terrorism. He lost a family member in an attack in 2010.

"It's something that needs to be voiced," Shah said, who has now missed a quarter of his academic year. "A lot of people are being stopped."

Shah started his postgraduate programme at the University of Chicago Divinity School in September 2016 with a focus on early Islamic mysticism, and was on a state-sponsored J1 visa, he said.



He first applied for the program in May 2015 and received an offer in October 2015, having to go through security clearances that enabled him to fly to the US a year later – securing a grant and expecting to finish his studies in 2018.

Yousef Casewit, an assistant professor of Qur'anic studies at the University of Chicago, told BuzzFeed News: "I had the pleasure of having him in my 'Introduction to the Quran' course last quarter and I was deeply impressed by his analytical, spoken, and written abilities. ... Zia Hussain is a gem. The irony of his being denied entry into the USA is flabbergasting."

In an email from the US Consulate General in Karachi BuzzFeed News has seen, Shah was told there had been no new information in February. "We recognise that individual applicants may experience inconvenience and hardship of their application takes longer to process that they expected," the email said.



After contacting the US embassy in Pakistan and his Fulbright advisers on the day he was denied entry, the Fulbright scholar said he was advised to reapply for a new visa, and had an interview at the embassy.

He said he would be issued a new visa by the embassy in four to five days, but is still awaiting a new visa for over 12 weeks – which means he has missed a quarter of his studies and fears he will have to drop out.

"I have a valid visa. It's a state-sponsored J1 visa for exchange students," Shah said, adding that the embassy stopped responding to his emails.



A letter from the University of Chicago to the Fulbright program officer in Pakistan confirms Shah was unable to re-enter the US at the beginning of the winter quarter 2017, and advised to take a leave of absence.