Mohammed Abu-Nimer
Dr. Abu-Nimer is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. He conducts research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the application of conflict resolution in non-western contexts, and holds dialogues for peace among Palestinians and Jews in Israel. As a practitioner, he has been conducting conflict resolution training workshops in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, and the US.
Email him at abunimer [at] american [dot] edu
Mahnaz Afkhami
Dr. Afkhami is Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), Executive Director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and former Minister of State for Women’s Affairs in Iran. Born in Kerman, Iran, she founded the Association of Iranian University Women and served as secretary general of the Women’s Organization of Iran prior to the Islamic revolution. Ms. Afkhami has lectured and published extensively on the international women’s movement, women’s human rights, women in leadership, women and technology, and women, civil society, and democracy.
Email: wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad
Dr. Ahmad is the President of the Minaret of Freedom institute, a Maryland-based institution founded to counter misconceptions about Islamic beliefs and practice and to expose both American and Islamic-world Muslims to free market thought. Dr. Ahmad�s research interests include Islam and human rights, inter-faith issues, Palestine, and the Islamist movement.
To learn more, send him an email to Dean [dot] Ahmad [at] iad [dot] blkcat [dot] com.
Donna E. Arzt
Dr. Arzt is Professor of Law at the College of Law at Syracuse University, New York. She serves as the Director of the Center for Global Law and Practice, as well as Director of the Lockerbie Trial Families Project, established under a grant from the US Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime. She has published numerous articles on human rights in the Soviet Union and the Middle East and served as a consultant to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Human Rights Watch, and the UN special rapporteur on population transfer. She received the Michael J. Tryson Memorial Award for Excellence and Leadership in the field of human rights law. Her current research pertains to the Middle East peace process, refugees, religious freedom in secular states, humanitarian intervention, and Islamic law.
Send her an email to dearzt [at] syr [dot] edu.
Mashood A. Baderin
Dr. Baderin is a Reader in Law at the School of Law, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. He teaches Public International Law, International Law and Institutions, Collective Security Law, International Human Rights and Islamic Law, with particular research interest on the interaction of International law with Islamic law in Muslim States. His publications include International Human Rights and Islamic Law (OUP, 2003), �Towards Effective Collective Security and Human Rights Protection in Africa: An Assessment of the Constitutive Act of the New African Union (2002) 49 Netherlands International Law Review, No.1, pp.1-41, �A Macroscopic Analysis of the Practice of Muslim State Parties to International Human Rights Treaties: Conflict or Congruence?� (2001) 1 Human Rights Law Review, No.2, pp.265-303, and �The Evolution of Islamic Law of Nations and the Modern International Order: Universal Peace through Mutuality and Co-operation� (2000) The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, No.2, pp.57-80. He is a co-editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights.
Contact him at Mashood [dot] baderin [at] uwe [dot] ac [dot] uk or mashooduk [at] hotmail [dot] com
Talal Asad
Dr. Asad is Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. He has conducted extensive research on the phenomenon of religion (and secularism), particularly the religious revival in the Middle East. He also researches the links between religious and secular notions of pain and cruelty, and the modern discourse of human rights.
Email him at tasad [at] gc [dot] cuny [dot] edu
Mona Makram Ebeid
Dr. Ebeid is Professor of Political Science and American Political Sociology at the American University in Cairo. She is the President-Founder of the Association for the Advancement of Education, an NGO with observer status in the United Nations, and also a founding member of the Arab Organization for Human Rights.
,br> Contact her at mmakbeid [at] aucegypt [dot] edu.
Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Dr. El-Affendi is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Westminster Centre for the Study of Democracy and Co-ordinator of the Centre’s Project on Democracy in the Muslim World. Dr. El-Affendi is also a member of the Consultative Council of the Arab Human Rights Organization in the UK. One of his latest research initiatives is to examine the crisis of democratization in the Middle East in particular, and Muslim majority countries in general.
Visit the Centre�s website at http://www.wmin.ac.uk/csd
Email Dr El-Affendi at: A [dot] El-Affendi [at] westminster [dot] ac [dot] uk
Khaled Abou El Fadl
Dr. Fadl is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he teaches Islamic Law, Immigration, Human rights, International and National Security Law. He serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, and also works closely with the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights. He is regarded as one of the leading authorities in Islamic law in the United States and Europe, and often provides expert testimony in international litigation cases involving Middle Eastern and immigration law, and in political asylum claims.
Email him at abouelfa [at] law [dot] ucla [dot] edu.
Nader Fergany
Dr. Fergany is the editor and lead author of the first-ever Arab Human Development Report (AHDR). He is the Director of Almishkat, an independent, non-commercial institution devoted to advancing knowledge on contemporary Egypt, and Arab countries, through research in the social sciences, with emphasis on human development.
For more information, visit the website: http://www.almishkat.org
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
Dr. Ibrahim is Professor of Political Sociology at the American University in Cairo and the Director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies (ICDS), Cairo. ICDS is a non-governmental research organization seeking to promote the use of available research in the social sciences in the policy-making process in Egypt and the Arab world, and to advocate this objective among influential pressure groups in policy-making circles. An internationally renowned sociologist and advocate of democracy and human rights, he is known as one of Egypt’s most prominent human rights activists.
Contact Dr. Ibrahim at saadedin [at] aucegypt [dot] edu to learn more.
Ayesha Imam
Ayesha Imam has been a woman’s rights activist for over two decades.� She is founding director of BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights in Nigeria.� BAOBAB was formally established in 1996 as an organization focusing on women’s legal rights issues under customary, statutory and religious laws.� Dr. Imam is a core group member of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East.� She has also worked on gender training, evaluation and research for activists in NGOs, for mid-level planners and functionaries in government, and for researchers.� She is currently Chief of the Culture, Gender and Human Rights Branch of UNFPA.
Dr. Imam has lectured and carried out research in women’s studies and gender analysis at universities and research institutes in Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal.� She has published widely for both academic and activist uses.�� Her work on women�s rights in Muslim laws and practices include the widely reprinted articles “The Muslim Religious Right (�Fundamentalists�) and Sexuality,” and� “Women�s Rights in Muslim Laws (Sharia),” as well as contributing to the introduction and chapter on “Legal Systems and Change” and conceptual editing of Knowing Our Rights: Women, Family, Laws and Customs in the Muslim World (WLUML 2003).� Her formal publications include editing and writing chapters for Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1994, also published in French 2002) and two special issues of Africa Development, Re-Visiting Gender I and II, as well as numerous journal articles, training modules and research reports.
Contact her at AyeshaImam [at] earthlink [dot] net
Asma Khader
Dr. Khader is the Coordinator of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI), where she is the coordinator of SIGI’s human rights education program. A leading advocate of the campaign to strengthen legislation outlawing honor killing, She is the former President of the Jordanian Women’s Union and is a member of the Permanent Arab Court as Counsel on violence against women.
Contact her at sigi [at] qc [dot] aibn [dot] com.
Chibli Mallat
Dr. Mallat is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He is also the Director of the Center for the Study of European Union and the Chair of European Law at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. Formerly, he was the Director of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law at SOAS, University of London, where he taught European and Islamic laws over the past decade. Dr. Mallat has held the platform that fiqh, qanun, and Shari`a are essential sources for studying the history and identity of the Mediterranean Muslim
Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Dr. Mayer is Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Islamic law in the contemporary Middle East, international human rights law, women�s rights, globalization and human rights, and comparative law. She has examined various dimensions of the controversies about the universality of human rights and has compared how particularisms have been used in Middle Eastern countries and the United States to rationalize non-compliance with international human rights law. She has published extensively, and her book Islam and Human Rights is in its third edition.
Find out more at: http://lgst.wharton.upenn.edu/mayera
Email: mayera [at] wharton [dot] upenn [dot] edu
Mahmood Monshipouri
Dr. Monshipouri is the Executive Director of the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis (CIRA), an independent and non-profit educational organization designed to generate and publicize scholarly research on developments in Iran and the Middle East. He is also the Chair of the Political Science Department at Quinnipiac University, Connecticut. He has studied the abrupt democratization of Third World countries and the effect this process has on Human Rights. Dr. Monshipouri’s publications include Islamism, Secularism, and Human Rights in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), and, more recently, the volume Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (eds. Mahmood Monshipouri, Neil Englehart, Andrew J. Nathan, and Kavita Philip, Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe, 2003).
To learn more about CIRA, visit their website at http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libarts/monshipouri/cira/.
Contact Dr. Monshipouri via email at Mahmood [dot] monshipour [at] quinnipiac [dot] edu.
Ahmad Moussalli
Dr. Moussalli is Professor of Islamic and Western Political Thought in the Political Studies and Public Administration Department at the American University of Beirut. He is also a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C. His areas of specialization are Arab-Israeli relations and Islamic fundamentalism and politics of the Islamic world.
Contact him at usip_requests [at] usip [dot] org
Azar Nafisi
Dr. Nafisi is a Visiting Fellow and Professional Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington D.C. She researches subjects such as the Middle East, Iran, culture and politics, democracy, human rights in Muslim societies, and women’s rights.
Email her at anafisi [at] jhu [dot] edu
Sulayman Nyang
Professor Nyang teaches in the department of African Studies, Howard University in Washington, DC. He has been the Deputy Ambassador of the Gambian Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and is currently a member of the Academic Council of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Dr. Nyang also co-directs Muslims in the American Public Square (MAPS), a study that examines Muslim, Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical Christian, African American Christian, Hispanic Christian and Jewish communities. Dr. Nyang has written extensively on Islamic, African, and Middle Eastern affairs.
Visit the MAPS website at to learn more.
Contact Dr. Nyang via email. at snyang [at] fac [dot] howard [dot] edu
John Strawson
Dr. Strawson works in the area of law and postcolonialism with special reference to the Middle East, Islam, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and international law. A Principal Professor at the University of East London, he is an expert in the areas of international law, human rights, the Middle East, and Islamic law.
Email him at john [dot] strawson [at] virgin [dot] net
Azzam Tamimi
Dr. Tamimi is Senior Lecturer at Markfield Institute of Higher Education in London and the Director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought, London. He has researched issues of human rights, liberty, and democratization in the Islamic world and has extensive knowledge on the trends and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. In 1992, he helped to found the London-based organization Liberty for the Muslim World, and in the 1998 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan, he served as Chairman of the Islamic Movement’s Parliamentary Office.
Contact him via email at info [at] ii-pt [dot] com.
Mai Yamani
Dr. Yamani is an Associate Fellow in the Middle East Programme at the Center of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) and a Research Associate at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), London. She has taught at King Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia, and lectured widely in Middle East, Europe and the United States. She has a particular interest in women’s rights in the Middle East. Her areas of expertise include social, political and human rights issues in Arab States, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council States.
Contact her via email at myamani [at] riia [dot] org
M. Hakan Yavuz
M. Hakan Yavuz is the Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University. He is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah, and a frequent commentator in the Turkish media. His work focuses on Islamic conceptions of human rights, the politics of identity, and the impact of globalization on developing countries. Dr. Yavuz is particularly interested in its implications for the evolution of modernist thinking in the Islamic world as a whole and for future relations between Islam and the West.
Email him at hakan [dot] yavuz [at] poli-sci [dot] utah [dot] edu.