SCHOLAR PROFILES BY NAME
Maria Chin Abdullah
Dr. Abdullah is the Executive Director of the Women’s Development Collective (WDC), a non-governmental organization in Malaysia focused on research, education, and training. Established in the early 1980’s, WDC’s programs focus on gender analysis, worker health and safety, awareness and understanding of Malaysian laws, and leadership and grassroots organizing.
Contact her through wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Aziza Abemba
Dr. Abemba is the Executive Director of the Women’s Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM) in Zimbabwe. WSPM provides training and education for Zimbabwean women and girls and for refugee women from African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi. Their programs promote women’s leadership, micro-enterprise, and political participation, as well as provide training in conflict resolution skills and domestic violence prevention.
Contact her through wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
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
Asma Afsaruddin
Dr. Afsaruddin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of the advisory boards of the Crescent University Foundation and Karamah, a women’s and human rights organization based in Washington DC, and is a fellow of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Her fields of specialization are the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith studies, and Islamic intellectual history.
Access selected publications via: http://www.nd.edu/~col/faculty/index.html
Email: asma [dot] afsaruddin [dot] 1 [at] nd [dot] edu
Leila Ahmed
Dr. Ahmed is Professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Her areas of expertise include women in Islam, Muslims in America, and Islam’s internal pluralism.
She can be contacted via email at leila_ahmed [at] harvard [dot] edu
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.
Akbar S. Ahmed
Dr. Ahmed is the Chair of Islamic Studies and Professor of International Relations at American University in Washington, DC. His research interests include the impact of global Islam on contemporary society and inter-faith dialogue.
Email him at ahmed [at] islam-democracy [dot] org.
Payam Akhavan
Dr. Akhavan is a Research Associate at the Danish Center for Human Rights and works for the UN Centre for Human Rights in Geneva. He has contributed to fact-finding missions and expert seminars on issues of minority protection in Central and Eastern Europe.
Contact him via the Danish Center web site at http://www.humanrights.dk
Taha Jabir Alalwani
Dr. Alalwani is the President of The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, where he holds the Imam Al-Shafi’i Chair in Islamic Legal Theory as a professor. His areas of expertise include the social implications of Islamic law, human rights, and modern world Muslim issues. He is also the President of the Fiqh Council of North America and was previously President of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia.
Visit the graduate school�s website to learn more and to contact Dr. Alalwani at http://www.siss.edu/.
Azizah al-Hibri
Dr. Al-Hibri is Professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at the T.C. Williams School of Law, University of Virginia. She is also the founding editor and current president of Karamah�Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, Washington, DC. Her research is in the area of Muslim women’s rights, especially the Islamic worldview on gender, and the marriage contract. Since September 11, she has become more involved in the area of American Muslim civil rights.
Read her articles and learn more about Karamah at: http://www.karamah.org
Contact Dr. Hibri at aalhibri [at] richmond [dot] edu
S. James Anaya
S. James Anaya is Samuel M. Fegtly Professor of Law at the University of Arizona College of Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of international law and organizations, human rights, and issues concerning indigenous peoples. He has been a consultant for numerous organizations and government agencies in several countries on matters of human rights and indigenous peoples, and he has represented indigenous groups from many parts of North and Central America before courts and international organizations.
Email him at anaya [at] nt [dot] law [dot] arizona [dot] edu
Vivienne Sm. Angeles
Dr. Angeles is Assistant Professor of Religion at LaSalle University, Pennsylvania. She is also a board member of American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies. Her research pertains to the relationship between Philippine Muslims and the government, Philippine Muslim women and their participation in Muslim movement, and the cultural side of Philippine Islam.
Email her at angeles [at] lasalle [dot] edu and view her current research project via http://www.pluralism.org/affiliates/angeles/index.php.
Abdullahi A. An-Na’im
Abdullahi An-Naim (from Sudan), the Director of the Fellowship Program in Islam and Human Rights, is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School. An internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, and human rights in cross-cultural perspectives, Professor An-Na’im teaches courses in human rights, religion and human rights, Islamic law, and criminal law. His research interests also include constitutionalism in Islamic and African countries, and Islam and politics. He is the Director of the Religion and Human Rights Program of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University School of Law. He directs several research projects which focus on advocacy strategies for reform through internal cultural transformation.
For more information, visit http://www.law.emory.edu/aannaim
Mucha-Shim Q. Arquiza
Ms. Arquiza is the Secretary General of the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN), an Asia-wide network of Muslims working for human rights, peace and social justice through inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue. She is also the Executive Director and senior researcher for an all-women, mostly-Moroland (an indigenous community in the Philipines) research collective. The aim of the organization (HAGS, Inc.) is to work towards indigenous women�s empowerment.
Contact her at: mucha-shim [at] eudoramail [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.
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
Nihad Awad
Nihad Awad is co-founder and the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington DC-based grassroots membership organization which seeks to empower the North American Muslim community through political and social activism. Mr. Awad helped found CAIR in June 1994, which has grown rapidly in the United States and Canada. In 1997 he joined the Civil Rights Advisory Panel to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. Mr. Awad conducts training in public relations, lectures about American Muslims, and is frequently interviewed on national and international media such as CNN, BBC World Service, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Mr. Awad also frequently serves as a consultant for various Islamic organizations.
View the Council’s website on http://www.cair-net.org/
Jamal Badawi
Dr. Badawi is a professor in the department of Religious Studies at Saint Mary�s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the Founder-Chairman of the Islamic Information Foundation, a non-profit foundation seeking to promote better understanding of Islam by Muslims and non-Muslims. Presently, he is the Vice-Chairman of the Islamic American University in Missouri. He has written on topics such as the status of women in Islam and gender equity.
Email him at jamal [dot] badawi [at] stmarys [dot] ca.
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
Osman Bakar
Dr. Bakar is the Malaysia Chair of Islam in Southeast Asia at The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. His research interests include Southeast Asian Islam, particularly Malaysian-Indonesian Islam, globalization, and contemporary Islamic thought.
Email him at obb [at] georgetown [dot] edu
Nimat Hafez Barazangi
Dr. Barazangi holds a Research Fellow position for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, New York. There she specializes in curriculum and instruction, Islamic and Arabic Studies, and adult and community education. She is a board member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID). Her areas of expertise include Muslim women�s education and human rights and her current research work focuses on (1) Islamic education in North America (2) self-identity and Educating the Muslim Women, (3) literacy and women development, and (4) research-based computerized curriculum of Arabic as a first and a foreign language.
Email her at nimat [at] islam-democracy [dot] org.
Asma Barlas
Dr. Barlas is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and former Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York. Her most recent work has focused on how Muslims produce religious knowledge, especially patriarchal exegesis of the Qur�an.
Send her an email at: barlas [at] islam-democracy [dot] org, and view her webpage at http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/abarlas/
Maria Luisa Bartolomei
Dr. Bartolomei is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Sociology of Law, Lund University, in Sweden. Her research interests are general human rights in the third world and Latin America, human rights as they are connected to legal cultures and globalization, and indigenous children’s rights in Latin America. She is currently developing two new internet courses: “Human Rights and Legal Development” in collaboration with several universities in South Africa, India and Argentina; and “Human Rights in Europe” together with the University of Lithuania.
Contact her at: Maria_Luisa [dot] Bartolomei [at] soc [dot] lu [dot] se
M. Cherif Bassiouni
M. Cherif Bassiouni is College of Law Professor at Depaul University in Chicago, and the President of DePaul’s International Human Rights Law Institute. In 1992, he was appointed a member, and later Chairman, of the UN Commission to Investigate Violations of International Humanitarian Law in the former Yugoslavia. He was nominated for a 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for his lifelong work to establish an International Criminal Court.
Contact Prof. Bassiouni at: cbassiou [at] depaul [dot] edu
Irene Bloom
Dr Bloom is Anne Whitney Olin Professor and Chair, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College. Her research interests include human rights and Asia, philosophy of human rights, and religion and human rights.
For more information, visit http://www.columbia.edu/cu/humanrights/faculty.htm
Lucie Coulibaly
Dr. Coulibaly is a Program Coordinator at the Ivorian League for Human Rights (la Ligue Ivoirienne des Droits de l’Homme – LIDHO). From 1990 to 1999, Coulibaly acted as Secretary of External Relations for LIDHO. In this capacity, she initiated a number of training projects, seminars, conferences, and roundtable discussions on such topics as human rights, women’s rights, religious tolerance, and planning and managing nongovernmental organizations. She also coordinated and participated in a number of conferences that instructed on methods for investigating, researching, and reporting human rights violations.
Email her at: luciecool [at] caramail [dot] com
Francis M. Deng
Professor Deng is the Co-Director of the Brookings-SAIS (School of Advanced International Studies) Project on Internal Displacement, Washington, DC. He has been the Sudanese Ambassador to the United States Scandinavia and Canada and a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations. His areas of expertise include internal displacement, Sudan, human rights, and US-Africa relations.
Visit the Brookings Institution website at http://www.brook.edu/default.htm to learn more.
Jack Donnelly
Dr. Donnelly is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His areas of specialty include international relations theory and human rights.
Visit his website for more information at http://www.du.edu/~jdonnell/index.html.
Yuri Dzhibladze
Dr. Dzhibladze is a the President of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, Russia. His areas of expertise include political science, human rights, international law, and development of civil society. He created several Russian and international NGOs concerned with civil society development, non-violent social change, intercultural dialogue and conflict resolution. He acts as a consultant to a number of Russian and international NGOs as an expert in democratic institution building, development of civil society and rule of law, human rights and conflict resolution.
Email him at: dzhib [at] demokratia [dot] ru
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.
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.
Asghar Ali Engineer
Dr. Engineer is the Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies in Bombay, India. He represents a more open approach to the subject of the application of Shari’a in Muslim countries and has called for a re-consideration of the classical view that ijtihad is closed. Dr. Engineer’s research emphasizes the contextual nature of both Qur’anic teachings as well as the various hadiths which were compiled around 100 years after Muhammad’s death.
For more information, visit, http://www.dawoodi-bohras.com/aboutus/asghar.htm
John L. Esposito
Dr. John L. Esposito is University Professor and Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding: History and International Affairs at Georgetown University. Professor Esposito’s more than 25 books focus on Islam and politics, society, democracy, and human rights. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and The Oxford History of Islam.
For more information, visit, http://www.islam-democracy.org/esposito_bio.asp
Email Dr Esposito at esposito [at] islam-democracy [dot] org
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
Alan Godlas
Dr. Godlas is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia. His award-winning website on Islam, Islamic studies, and religion is acclaimed for its comprehensive collection of links and resources documenting Islam’s history and scripture, information on Islam’s place in the modern world, its stance on women’s rights, Islamic art and architecture, and its history of mysticism. He has conducted extensive research in manuscript libraries in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. His areas of research include Qur’anic commentary (tafsir), hadith, Islamic mysticism (also known as Sufism) and consciousness transformation, and the relationship between Islam, modernism, and postmodernism.
For more information, visit http://www.uga.edu/islam/profbio.html
Email Dr Godlas at godlas [at] uga [dot] edu
Yvonne Haddad
Dr. Haddad is Professor of the History of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Her fields of expertise include twentieth-century Islam; intellectual, social and political history in the Arab world; and Islam in North America and the West. Currently, Professor Haddad is conducting research on Muslims in the West and on Islamic revolutionary movements.
Email her at haddady [at] georgetown [dot] edu.
Riffat Hassan
Dr. Hassan is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She is the founder of The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP), a non-profit organization with a worldwide membership and reputation for playing a noteworthy role in highlighting the issue of violence against girls and women, particularly with reference to “crimes of honor.”
Visit her website at http://www.inrfvvp.org
Send an email to inrfvvpe [at] athena [dot] louisville [dot] edu to contact her.
Maher Hathout
Dr. Hathout is the Senior Advisor and one of the founders of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a public service, non-profit, non-partisan agency that disseminates accurate information about Islam and Muslims to the media and to elected officials. He is also the spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Southern California. Dr. Hathout�s areas of expertise include Islamic jurisprudence and international human rights issues.
Visit http://islamctr.org/ to learn more.
Jeff Haynes
Dr. Haynes is Professor of Politics and co-developer of the International Relations Program at London Guildhall University. His areas of specialization are politics of developing countries and international relations. He has examined the continuing importance of religion as an important factor in politics using examples drawn from a range of religious groups around the world, including Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States.
Contact him at jeff [dot] haynes [at] londonmet [dot] ac [dot] uk
Amir Hussain
Dr. Amir Hussain is a member of the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Northridge, where he teaches courses in world religions. His own particular speciality is the study of Islam, focussing on contemporary Muslim societies, specifically those in North America. Although born in Pakistan, Amir emigrated to Canada with his family when he was four. His academic degrees (BSc, MA, PhD) are all from the University of Toronto where he received a number of awards, including the university�s highest award for alumni service. Amir�s PhD dissertation was on Muslim communities in Toronto.
Visit his website at http://www.csun.edu/~ah34999/ to learn more.
Contact him via email at amir [dot] hussain [at] csun [dot] edu
Download Dr Hussain’s CV
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.
Jibrin Ibrahim
Dr. Ibrahim is the Nigeria Program Director at the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, DC. His research interests are democratization and the politics of transition, comparative federalism, religious and ethnic identities, and the crisis in social provisioning in Africa.
Contact him at jibo72 [at] yahoo [dot] com
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
Azza Karam
Dr. Azza Karam is the Program Director of the Women’s Department at the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP). She has worked since the 1980s in the fields of gender, development, human rights, democratization, conflict, and political Islam.
To learn more about the World Conference, visit the website at http://www.wcrp.org/RforP/RFP_1_MAIN.html
Email Dr. Karam at akaram [at] wcrp [dot] org.
Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi
Mr. Kazmi is the Head of International Development at Al-Khoei Foundation, London and New York, and Senior Advisor to HRH Prince El-Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. He has worked in human rights advocacy and humanitarian development since 1991. He is also an Advisor to the Amnesty International UK Ethnic Minorities Working Group and a member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House, London).
Visit http://www.communitytransitions.org to learn more about his work.
Contact him at kazmico [at] idt [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.
Muqtedar Khan
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Studies Program at Adrian College in Michigan and is currently on the executive board of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Washington DC. Dr Khan has published numerous research articles on the subjects of international relations, globalization, American foreign policy and Islam. Dr. Khan is also the founder and editor of Ijtihad “an e-zine on Islam and global affairs that seeks to promote freedom of thought (hurriyah al-ra’y) and independent thinking (ijtihad) among Muslims everywhere.”
For more information, visit http://www.glocaleye.org/resume.htm
Amina Lemrini
Amina Lemrini is a Founder of the Moroccan Human Rights Organization, and an Executive Committee member of the Association D�mocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), a non-governmental organization working on the promotion and defense of women’s rights in Morocco. She is also on the Board of Directors of Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalite, a women’s regional NGO working in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Ms. Lemrini has lectured and published on a variety of issues dealing with human rights, particularly on the rights of the child and women’s rights.
Email her at: adfm [at] mtds [dot] com or at Lemrini [at] iam [dot] net [dot] ma
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
J. Paul Martin
Dr. Martin is the Director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, New York. His current research focuses on Africa and includes human rights education, religious proselytization, cooperative training programs in human rights with and for African NGOs. He has been working with human rights NGO coalitions in Africa to develop their own research and training programs.
E-mail him at jpm2 [at] columbia [dot] edu.
Radwan Masmoudi
Radwan Masmoudi is the founder and President of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a Washington-based non-profit think tank. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Center’s quarterly publication, Muslim Democrat. Dr. Masmoudi is very active with local Muslim organizations and was elected as Director of the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was also a Founding Member and President of the Tunisian Scientific Society (TSS). Dr. Masmoudi has published several papers on the topics of democracy, diversity, human rights, and tolerance in Islam. Dr. Masmoudi has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and has been active in interfaith dialogue and in promoting a greater understanding of democracy and democratic values within Islam and within the Muslim World.
Find out more about the Center at http://www.islam-democracy.org
Contact him at masmoudi [at] islam-democracy [dot] org
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
Ali A. Mazrui
Dr. Mazrui is Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is also the Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria. The Chair of the Board of Directors for the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), Dr. Mazrui has been involved in a number of UN projects on matters which have ranged from human rights to nuclear proliferation. He is also internationally consulted on Islamic culture and Muslim history. His research interests include African politics, international political culture, political Islam, and North-South Relations.
Contact him at amazrui [at] binghamton [dot] edu.
Sindi Medar-Gould
Sindi Medar-Gould is Executive Director of the Nigeria-based organization BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, a non-profit organization working for women’s human rights and legal rights under customary and religious law in Africa. BAOBAB also coordinates programs for Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Medar-Gould has been a women’s human rights activist for over 20 years, and is an experienced teacher, trainer, and researcher.
Contact her at sindi [at] baobab [dot] com [dot] ng.
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.
Ebrahim E.I. Moosa
Dr. Moosa is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Religion and Co-director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks at Duke University, North Carolina. His research interests include issues in ethics and law and cover topics such as human rights, women’s rights, Muslim family law, and historical studies that deal with questions of Qur’an exegesis and medieval Islamic law and philosophy.
Learn more about Dr. Moosa at http://www.duke.edu/religion/home/moosa/moosa.html
Contact him via email at: moosa [at] duke [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
Makau Mutua
Dr. Makau Mutua is Professor of Law and Director of the Human Rights Center at The State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law where he teaches international human rights, and international law. He has written numerous scholarly articles exploring topical subjects in international law, human rights, and religion.
Email him at mutua [at] buffalo [dot] edu
Chandra Muzaffar
Dr. Muzaffar is a professor at the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue at the Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. He is the President of the Malaysian based international NGO, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), which seeks to raise public consciousness on the moral and intellectual basis of global justice. Dr. Muzaffar�s research interests include religion and human rights, Malaysian politics, and Malaysian politics.
Visit the JUST website for more information at http://www.just-international.org.
Azar Nafisi
Dr. Nafisi is a Visiting Fellow and Professional Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC. 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
Farish A. Noor
Dr. Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist. He has taught at the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya and the Institute for Islamic Studies, Frie University of Berlin. Dr. Noor is also an associate fellow at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia and the Secretary General of the International Movement for a Just World.
Email: muza [at] po [dot] jaring [dot] my
Nissam H. Nasr
Nissam H. Nasr is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Islamic Institute for Human Rights (IIHR). IIHR was created to promote a cross-cultural human rights dialogue and to give a voice to activists from around the globe. Mr. Nasr�s most recent research proposes a comprehensive and exploratory analysis of the human right to life.
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
Thoraya Obaid
Dr. Obaid, of Saudi Arabia, is the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). She holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN. A leading advocate for the advancement of women’s rights, she is the former Director of the Division for Arab States and Europe at UNFPA and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).
Email her at ryanw [at] unfpa [dot] org.
Ayo Obe
Ayo Obe is the second President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). In October 1998, Obe was one of eight African human rights activists at a roundtable discussion in Dakar, Senegal, with President and Mrs. Clinton. Obe is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association.
Email her at Amoo [at] alpha [dot] linkserve [dot] com or clo [at] gacom [dot] net.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Dr. Odinkalu is an International Fellow at the Centre for Justice, Ethics and Public Life at the Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He is also a Doctoral Candidate at the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He holds membership in the UK Foreign Secretary’s Advisory Panel on the Death Penalty and sits on the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. He is widely published on issues of law, human rights, and public policy in Africa.
For more information, visit, http://www.africaexpert.org/people/data/person11905.html
M. Fathi Osman
Dr. Osman is the Director of the Research Center at Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University, Saudi Arabia and the Vice-President of the American Association of Muslim Social Scientists. He has published extensively in the areas of Islamic thought and human rights.
Email him at fathiosman [at] hotmail [dot] com.
Xiao Qiang
Xiao Qiang is the Executive Director of Human Rights in China (HRIC). He is a full-time human rights activist and acted as deputy director of the Washington-based Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (IFCSS) before he assumed his current position at HRIC in April, 1991. He has spoken on behalf of the Chinese human rights movement at each meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights since 1993 and testified in front of the European Parliament and the United States Congress on numerous occasions. Xiao is a founding member and North American representative of the Asia-Pacific Human Rights NGO Facilitating Team
Find out more at http://www.hrchina.org
Email him at Hric2 [at] igc [dot] org
Loretta Ross
Loretta Ross is the founder and Executive Director of the Atlanta-based Center for Human Rights Education, a training and resource center for grassroots activists which uses human rights criteria to address social injustice in the United States. She is an expert on human rights, women’s issues, diversity, hate groups, and bias crimes.
Visit the Center’s website for more information at http://www.nchre.org/.
Abdulaziz A. Sachedina
Dr. Sachedina�s work covers a broad range of topics that deal with contemporary Islam. His areas of expertise are political Islam, religious conflict resolution through analysis of Islamic legal tradition, Islamic roots of religious and political pluralism, and human rights in the Middle East, Pakistan, and East Africa. He has written articles on issues of Muslim youth, Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic perspectives on human cloning, and issues of riba in Islamic faith and law.
For more information, visit http://www.people.virginia.edu/~aas/home.htm
Louay Safi
Dr. Safi is the Director of Research at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Herndon, Virginia, and founding Board Member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), Washington DC. He has written on different aspects of human rights with a prevailing focus being on the cultural foundation of human rights reform in the Muslim world.
For more information, visit http://home.att.net/~louaysafi/curriculum.html
Email Dr. Safi at louay [at] att [dot] net
Lamin Sanneh
Dr. Sanneh is James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and Professor of History at Yale Divinity School, Connecticut. He is an internationally recognized authority on Muslim-Christian relations, and has been actively involved in Yale’s Council on African Studies. For his academic work he was made Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Lion, Senegal’s highest national honor.
Contact him by email at lamin [dot] sanneh [at] yale [dot] edu.
Yoginder Sikand
Dr. Yoginder Sikand is currently a post-doctoral research scholar at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden, The Netherlands. His research project is ‘Islamic Perspectives on Inter-Faith Relations in Contemporary India’. He also edits a web-magazine, Qalandar, that is devoted to a discussion of issues related to Islam and Inter-Faith Relations in South Asia (www.islaminterfaith.org). He has taught Islamic history at the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies, Hyderabad, India, and has also worked with voluntary agencies in the areas of education and communal harmony. His extensive list of publications includes 4 books, over 30 journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, and over 250 articles in numerous South Asian periodicals and newspapers.
Email Dr. Sikand at ysikand [at] yahoo [dot] com
Download Dr. Sikand’s CV
Visit the Qalandar website at www.islaminterfaith.org
Abdol Karim Soroush
Dr. Soroush is the Director of the Research Institute for Human Sciences in Tehran, Iran. He is a renowned Iranian and Islamic political philosopher and theologian.
Visit the website that was created to cover his ideas and principles at http://www.seraj.org/
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.
John O. Voll
Dr. Voll is Professor of Islamic history with a joint appointment in the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and in the History Department at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Professor Voll’s research interests include modern Islamic movements, human rights, and Sudanese history. He is currently writing books on the history of Sufism and on the world in the eighteenth century.
Email him at vollj [at] georgetown [dot] edu.
John Witte Jr.
Dr. John Witte Jr. is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics, Director of the Law and Religion Program, and Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University. A specialist in legal history, marriage, and religious liberty, he has published 100 professional articles, and 12 books.
For more information, visit http://www.law.emory.edu/faculty/facbio.php?userid=jwitte
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.
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