Fareed Zakaria

Zakaria in 2011, photo by Prphotos.com

Birth Name: Fareed Rafiq Zakaria

Place of Birth: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Date of Birth: January 20, 1964

Ethnicity: Konkani Indian

Fareed Zakaria is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He has hosted the show Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN since 2008, and writes for The Washington Post. He has also been editor-at-large of Time, editor of Newsweek International, and a columnist for Newsweek.

His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was a writer, who was editor of the Mumbai Times, and the Sunday editor of The Times of India. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was born in Nala Sopara, and was a politician, Islamic religious cleric, and author. He was associated with the Indian independence movement, and the Indian National Congress. Fareed is a cousin of actor Arif Zakaria and politician Asif Zakaria.

He moved to the U.S. in the 1980s to attend college, and has become an American citizen. Fareed is from a Konkani Muslim family. He is a secular Muslim.

Fareed’s father had occasionally said that he has Turkish and/or Central Asian ancestry, although Fareed always regarded these claims as untrue.

Fareed has three children with his former wife, jewelry designer Paula Throckmorton Zakaria.

A DNA test taken by the project CNN Roots (2014) stated that Fareed’s genetic ancestry consists of:

*85% South Asia
*6% Caucasus
*3% Italy/Greece
*2% East Asia
*<1% Central Asia
*<1% European Jewish
*<1% Iberian Peninsula
*<1% Polynesia

Sources: http://english.aawsat.com
http://edition.cnn.com
https://blogs.ancestry.com