Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad is a Palestinian American scholar and the president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a libertarian 501(c)(3) tax-exempt think-tank. He also is president of the Islamic-American Zakat Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt religious and charitable organization that primarily serves poor and needy Muslims in the United States.
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate for women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular, Western, or otherwise non-Muslim feminist discourses, and have recognized the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Human rights in the Middle East have been shaped by the legal and political development of international human rights law after the Second World War, and their application to the Middle East. The 2004 United Nations Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) claimed that although Arab-Islamic tradition does hold unique importance for ideas of human welfare, History has proven that "they were not sufficiently prevalent in society to foster a culture based on a political contract, and allow for the legitimacy of differences of opinion, dialogue and transfer of power." Issues of the validity of democracy in the region and human rights are at the very centre of the challenges facing Middle Eastern society today.
Sunni Islam is the dominant religion in Jordan. Muslims make up about 97.2% of the country's population. A few of them are Shiites. Many Shia in Jordan are refugees from Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Ed Husain is a British author and a professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University. As a political advisor he has worked with leaders and governments across the world. He is also a senior fellow and director of the Atlantic Council’s N7 Initiative which is focused on peace in the Middle East and broadening and strengthening relationships between Israel and its Arab and Muslim neighbours. He has held senior fellowships at think tanks in London and New York, including at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) at the height of the Arab uprisings (2010–2015). While at CFR, his policy innovation memo led to the US-led creation of a Geneva-based global fund to help counter terrorism. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on terrorism and insurgency.
Zainab Salbi is an Iraqi American women's rights activist, writer, television show host, and podcaster. She is the co-founder of Daughters for Earth, a fund and a movement of Daughters rising up worldwide with climate solutions to protect and restore Mother Earth. She is also the co-founder of Women for Women International, a non-profit organization that helps women affected by sexual violence and conflict. She hosted Through Her Eyes and #MeToo, Now What? television shows, about issues affecting women. From 2022 she hosted the Redefined podcast.
Ali Abbas al-Ahmed (Arabic: علي عباس آل أحمد, Gulf pronunciation: ; born 1966, is a Saudi analyst focusing on the politics of the Persian Gulf region: including terrorism, Islamic movements, Wahhabi Islam, Saudi political history, Saudi-American relations, and the history of the al-Saud family. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C. focused on providing analyses and disseminating information on political issues in the Persian Gulf region and particularly Saudi Arabia, and U.S.-Gulf relations. IGA also convenes conferences, conducts independent research and investigations, and works with the media and policymakers to foster a deeper understanding of Arab states of the Persian Gulf by providing them with up-to-date and exclusive information and connecting them with reliable analysts.
In the Arab world, racism targets non-Arabs and the expat majority of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf coming from South Asian groups as well as Black, European, and Asian groups that are Muslim; non-Arab ethnic minorities such as Armenians, Africans, the Saqaliba, Southeast Asians, Jews, Kurds, and Coptic Christians, Assyrians, Persians, Turks, and other Turkic peoples, and South Asians living in Arab countries of the Middle East.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI) is a Christian human rights NGO that is "committed to defending religious liberty, helping victims of religious repression, victimized children, and victims of disaster." It is based in Switzerland, with affiliates in the United States, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, and South Korea.
Sally "Salwa" Shatila Kader is the co-founder and president of the International Federation for Peace & Sustainable Development, a bipartisan, non-profit and non-governmental organization, which has seventeen chapters around the world including its headquarters in New York City. Kader is a peace activist and currently leads IFPSD programs and events at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City and around the world. She has been recognized by world leaders and organizations for her contributions towards peace.
Zainab Al-Suwaij (b. 1971) is an Iraqi American activist and the co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress. She advocates for women's equality, civil and religious rights, and interfaith understanding.
Islam in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. According to an estimate by the CIA, it is followed by 63% of the country's total population. Sunnis make up 31.9%, Twelver Shia make up 31.2%, next to smaller percentages of other Shia branches, such as Alawites and Ismailis. The Druze community is designated as one of the five Lebanese Muslim communities, even though most Druze do not identify as Muslims, and they do not accept the five pillars of Islam.
Nasser Weddady is a Mauritanian-American activist known for his social media activism during the Arab Spring.
Women played a variety of roles in the Arab Spring, but its impact on women and their rights is unclear. The Arab Spring was a series of demonstrations, protests, and civil wars against authoritarian regimes that started in Tunisia and spread to much of the Arab world. The leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were overthrown; Bahrain has experienced sustained civil disorder, and the protests in Syria have become a civil war. Other Arab countries experienced protests as well.
Irreligion in the Middle East is the lack of religion in the Middle East. Though atheists in the Middle East are rarely public about their lack of belief, as they are persecuted in many countries where they are classified as terrorists, there are some atheist organizations in the Middle East. Islam dominates public and private life in most Middle East countries. Nonetheless, there reside small numbers of irreligious individuals within those countries who often face serious formal and, in some cases, informal legal and social consequences.
Zainab Chaudry is an American Muslim civil rights and political activist. She is the Maryland Director for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR).
This is a list of individual liberal and progressive Islamic movements in North America, sorted by country.
Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian writer. She is the author of The Curious Case of the Three-Legged Wolf - Egypt: Military, Islamism, and Liberal Democracy and other internationally acclaimed non-fiction books on Middle East politics. She currently works as the Chairperson of the Liberal Democracy Institute, and executive director of MEEM Center for Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean Studies.
Patricia (Trish) Madigan is an Australian religious sister, a member and leader of the Dominican Sisters of Eastern Australia and the Solomon Islands and Executive Director of the Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry Education and Research (CIMER). Madigan is known nationally and internationally as "a leader in ecumenical and interfaith relations in the Catholic Church in Australia".
Zainab Alwani is an American activist and Islamic scholar. She is Founding Director and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Howard University School of Divinity.
