Center for International and Regional Studies

Zakaryya Mohamed Abdel-Hady is Associate Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture and Chair of the Department of Dawa and Islamic Culture at Qatar University. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1997 in Islamic Studies from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He worked as a Research Fellow at the same university then at the University of Abertay in Dundee in Scotland, and later moved to the Middle East where he worked in the UAE and Qatar.

Abdel-Hady has presented and published a number of books and articles in both Arabic and English, among them “Islam & Muslims in Scotland”, “‘Islamophobia’ ...A threat ...A challenge”, “Intellectual characteristics of the human being as mentioned in the Quran”, “Rights and Responsibilities of Wife: Islamic Teachings vs. Culture Practices”, and “Why do Arabs and Muslims fear Globalization?”

Abdel-Hady is the Founder and President of the Arab Association of British Alumni (AABA), and Chair of several multi-faith dialogues in the UK. He was nominated for the “Young Alumnus of the Year Award” in 2006 from the University of Glasgow and was also nominated to become a Member of the International Who's Who Professionals Historical Society in 2006-2007.

Omaima Abou-Bakr is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Qatar University, and a founding member of the Women & Memory Forum, a non-governmental women’s studies and research center based in Cairo. She received her education at Cairo University, North Carolina State University, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Abou-Bakr specializes in medieval Sufi poetry and comparative topics in medieval English and Arabic literature. Her scholarly interests also include women’s mysticism and female spirituality in Christianity and Islam, feminist theology, Muslim women’s history, and gender issues in Islamic cultural history and discourse. She has published a number of articles in both English and Arabic on poetry and other medieval literary texts, as well as gender-sensitive readings of women’s pre-modern historical representation (in Islam) and of developing religious discourses. One of her books published in Arabic—Woman and Gender (2002)—deals with women’s intellectual efforts to create emancipatory and egalitarian discourses within the framework of Islam.

Nasr Abu-Zayd holds the Ibn Rushd (Averroes) Chair of Islam and Humanism at the University of Humanistics in Utrecht. He received his B.A. in Arabic Studies from Cairo University in 1972 and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies also from Cairo University.

Abu-Zayd is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Roosevelt Institute Medal for Freedom of Worship, the Ibn Rushed Prize for Freedom of Thought, and, most recently, the Prize of Freedom of Thought awarded by the Muslim Democrats Society in Denmark. Abu-Zayd has published fourteen books in Arabic, many of which have been translated into other languages, including Turkish, Bahasa, and Persian. His publications in English include Voice of an Exile (2004) co-authored with Esther R. Nelson, (2004) and Rethinking the Qur’an: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics (2004) and Reformation of Islamic Thought: A Critical Historical Analysis (2006).

Adonis received his Ph.D. from the University of St Joseph in Beirut in 1973, where he also taught. He later served as Professor of Arabic Literature at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Censier-paris III), and Professor of Arab Poetry at the Université de Genève.

Adonis co-founded and co-edited the literary review Shi’r between 1956 and 1964. He was also the founder of the literary review Afâq in 1964, a founding member of the Lebanese Writer’s Union, and the founder of the literary review Mawâqif, for which he served as editor-in-chief until 1995. A prolific writer, Adonis has published numerous volumes of poetry, prose, translations, and critical essays. Among his earlier works are [Qasâ’id ÛlaFirst Poems], (1957); Awrâk Fî l-Rîh [Leaves in the Wind], (1958); and (1961). The most recent of his poetry publications are Aghani Mihiar ad-Dimashqi [Songs of Mihyar the Damascene],Warraaq Yabii` Kutub al-Noujoum and Ihda` Hamlet, Tanachchaq Junoun Ophelia, which were released in 2007.

Mohammed Arkoun is Emeritus Professor at La Sorbonne in Paris as well as Senior Research Fellow and member of the Board of Governors of The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He studied at Algiers University and at the Sorbonne in Paris where he taught from 1961 to 1992.

Arkoun has taught as a visiting professor at UCLA, Princeton University, Temple University, the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, the Pontifical Institute of Arabic Studies in Rome, the University of Amsterdam, and New York University. He also served as a jury member for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture from 1981 to 1998. Arkoun has acted as editor of ARABICA Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies (Brill, Leiden) and is the author of numerous books in French, English and Arabic, including: Rethinking Islam (1994), The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (2002; 2d ed. with the title of Islam: To Reform or to Subvert? 2006); De Manhattan à Bagdad. Au-delà du Bien et du Mal (2003); Humanisme et Islam: Combats et Propositions (2006); L’ABC de l’islam and Getting out of Dogmatic Enclosures (2007). His shorter studies have appeared in many academic journals and his works have been translated into several languages.

Walter B. Denny has taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Art History Program since 1970. He has held curatorial positions in Islamic art at the Harvard University Art Museums and the Smith College Museum of Art, and in September of 2002 was named Charles Grant Ellis Research Associate in Oriental Carpets at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC, where he was a Trustee for six years in the 1980s. He is Senior Consultant in the Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is part of the curatorial team planning the Museum's new Islamic galleries scheduled to open in 2011. His exhibition, with catalogue, of the Ballard collection of Islamic carpets will open at the St. Louis Art Museum in late 2008.

Denny’s books include Gardens of Paradise: Turkish Tiles 15th-17th Centuries (1998), Anatolian Carpets: Masterpieces from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul (1999), and, with two co-authors, Ipek: Ottoman Imperial Silks and Velvets (2001). Iznik: La céramique turque et l’art ottoman (2004) appeared in English and German in 2005.

Peter Gran is Professor of History at Temple University. His research interests are modern Arab studies, comparative Third World history and political economy theory. Gran is the author of Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History (1996); Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (1979), and edits a series for Syracuse University Press entitled “Beyond Dominant Paradigms in Middle East Studies.” In 1990 Gran was guest lecturer at the Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He was elected president of the research group on “Imperialism and National Liberation Movements” of the International Sociological Association.

Sumaiya Hamdani is Associate Professor at George Mason University and founder and director of the Islamic Studies Program. She completed her B.A. in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, her M.A. at the American University in Cairo, and her Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Princeton University.

Hamdani has published in the field of medieval Islamic thought and law, and Muslim women’s history. Aside from numerous reviews and articles, she has authored Between Revolution and State: Qadi al-Numan and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy (IB Tauris, 2006). She has served as book review editor of Hawwa: the Journal of Middle East and Islamic Women’s Studies, board member of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies (2004-2007) and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (2006-2007), and a member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Middle East Medievalists, and the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMSS). She has received annual grants from the Fulbright Commission, Social Science Research Council, grants from George Mason University, and has served on selection, grant and prize committees for MESA and AMSS.

Hassan Hanafi is Professor of Philosophy as Cairo University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1966 from la Sorbonne in Paris. Hanafi has acted as Secretary General of the Egyptian Philosophical Society since 1976 and Vice President of the Arab Philosophical Society since 1983.

Hanafi is the author of thirty books in the French, English, and Arabic languages. He is also the author of a project entitled Tradition and Modernism, which is based on three sections consisting of the reconstruction of Islamic classical sciences: theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, mysticism, and scriptural sciences; the foundation of the Science of Occidentalism to study the West; and the theory of reality as hermeneutics.

Hanafi is the author of thirty books in the French, English, and Arabic languages. He is also the author of a project entitled Tradition and Modernism which is based on three sections consisting of the reconstruction of Islamic classical sciences: theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, mysticism and scriptural sciences, the foundation of the Science of Occidentalism to study the West and the theory of reality as hermeneutics.

Nelly Hanna is a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo. She obtained her Doctorat d'Etat from the University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence in France. Her research has focussed on seventeenth and eighteenth century history. Hanna served as Visiting professor at Harvard University in 2001. She is the author of a number of works that deal with economy, society and culture in Ottoman Egypt. Her books include, Making Big Money in 1600, The Life and Times of Ismail Abu Taqiya, Egyptian Merchant (1998), and In Praise of Books, A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class (2003).

Sherman A. Jackson is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Visiting Professor of Law, and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Oriental Studies Islamic Near East in 1991. In 1987-89 he served as Executive Director for the Center of Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt. Jackson is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî (1996), On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (2002) and Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford).

He is a member of the U.S.-Muslim World Advisory Committee of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Sharî‘ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He is featured on the Washington Post-Newsweek blog, “On Faith”, and is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation's Religion Link as among the top ten experts on Islam in America.

Mehran Kamrava is Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. In addition to a number of journal articles, he is the author of Revolution in Iran: The Roots of Turmoil (1990), The Political History of Modern Iran: From Tribalism to Theocracy (1992), Revolutionary Politics (1992), Politics and Society in the Developing World (1993, 2000), Under- standing Comparative Politics: A Framework for Analysis (1996, 2008), Democracy in the Balance: Culture and Society in the Middle East (1998), Cultural Politics in the Third World (1999), The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War (2005), and the forthcoming Iran’s Intellectual Revolution (2008). He has also edited The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity (2006) and is the co-editor of the forthcoming two-volume work Iran Today: Life in the Islamic Republic.

Patrick Laude is Professor of French at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. A former fellow of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he earned a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne with certificates in Islamic and Indian philosophy and a Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Laude's scholarly and personal interests lie in the relationship between poetry and contemplative or mystical traditions, as well as in Western representations and interpretations of Islam and Asian religions. He is currently working on a book on Islamic spirituality in 20th century French thought, and its relevance in the Islamic world.

He is the author of nine books, including Pray Without Ceasing: The Way of the Invocation in World Religion, 2006; Divine Play, Sacred Laughter and Spiritual Understanding, 2005; Singing the Way: Insights in Poetry and Spiritual Transformation, 2005; Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998): Life and Teachings, 2004; Massignon intérieur; 2001; and Approches du quiétisme, 1992.

Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist, specializing in Islamic law, gender, and development. She obtained her B.A. in Sociology from Tehran University (1974) and her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from University of Cambridge (1980). She is Senior Research Associate at the London Middle Eastern Institute, SOAS, University of London and has held numerous research fellowships and visiting professorships. Since 2002 she has been Hauser Global Law Visiting Professor at the School of Law, New York University.

Mir-Hosseini’s publications include the monographs Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco (I. B. Tauris, 1993, 2002), (Princeton University Press, 1999; I. B. Tauris, 2000), and (with Richard Tapper) Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary IranIslam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (I. B. Tauris, 2006). She has also directed (with Kim Longinotto) two award-winning feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001).

Jawid Mojaddedi, a native of Afghanistan who was raised in Britain, is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University, where he is the Director of the Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Mojaddedi’s most recent book is his translation of Rumi’s Masnavi. The first volume was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press as an Oxford World’s Classics edition, and was awarded the Lois Roth Prize for excellence in translation by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. The second volume, The Masnavi: Book Two, was published, also as an Oxford World’s Classics edition, in July 2007. His previous books include The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001) and Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature (2003).

Tariq Ramadan is Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan), and at the Lokahi Foundation (London). He is also a Visiting Professor (holding the chair: Identity and Citizenship) at Erasmus University (Netherlands). Through his writings and lectures, Ramadan has contributed substantially to the debate on the issues of Muslims in the West and Islamic revival in the Muslim world. He is active both at the academic and grassroots levels, lecturing extensively throughout the world on social justice and dialogue between civilizations. Ramadan is currently President of European Muslim Network (EMN) in Brussels. Ramadan’s latest book is The Messenger: The Meaning of the Life of Muhammad (Penguin, February 2007).

Amira El-Azhary Sonbol is Professor of Islamic History, Law, and Society at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She specializes in women, gender, and Islam. She is the author of several books, including The New Mamluks, Women, Family Law and Divorce in Islamic History; The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt: 1800-1922; and The Memoirs of Abbas Hilmi II: Sovereign of Egypt. Sonbol is co-editor of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, a quarterly journal co-published with Selly Oak Colleges (U.K.). She teaches courses on the History of Modern Egypt, Women and Law, and Islamic Civilization.

John O. Voll is Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He taught Middle Eastern, Islamic, and world history at the University of New Hampshire for thirty years before moving to Georgetown in 1995. Voll graduated from Dartmouth College and received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. He has lived in Cairo, Beirut, and Sudan and has travelled widely in the Muslim world.

The second edition of his book Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World appeared in 1994. He is co-author, with John L. Esposito, of Islam and Democracy and Makers of Contemporary Islam and is editor, author, or co-author of seven additional books. He is a past president of the Middle East Studies Association and also of the New England Historical Association. He has served on the Boards of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies, the New Hampshire Humanities Council, the New Hampshire Council on World Affairs, the Sudan Studies Association, and the Board of the World History Association. In 1991 Voll received a Presidential Medal in recognition for his scholarship on Islam from President Husni Mubarak of Egypt. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on modern Islamic, Sudanese, and world histories.