Bassam Tibi, is a Syrian-born German political scientist and professor of international relations specializing in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies. He was born in 1944 in Damascus, Syria to an aristocratic family, and moved to West Germany in 1962, where he later became a naturalized citizen in 1976.
Gilles Kepel, is a French political scientist and Arabist, specialized in the contemporary Middle East and Muslims in the West. He is Professor at Sciences Po Paris, the Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) and director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Program at PSL, based at Ecole Normale Supérieure. His latest english-translated book, Away from Chaos. The Middle East and the Challenge to the West was reviewed by The New York Times as “an excellent primer for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the region”. His last essay, le Prophète et la Pandémie / du Moyen-Orient au jihadisme d'atmosphère, just released in French, has topped the best-seller lists and is currently being translated into English and a half-dozen languages. The excerpt The Murder of Samuel Paty is presently released in the Issue 3 of Liberties Journal.
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.
Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is a German-American Middle East historian. He is a specialist in comparative studies of modern international relations between the United States, the Middle East, and Europe. Schwanitz is known for his research on relations between Arabs, Jews, and Germans, and on the history of German relations with the Middle East.
Peter Mandaville is an American academic and former government official.
Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently is a professor of International Relations and holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University, School of International Service in Washington, D.C. Akbar Ahmed served as the Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He currently is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) is a non-profit, non-governmental think tank based in the Department of War Studies at King's College London whose mission is to educate the public and help policymakers and practitioners find solutions to radicalisation and political violence. It obtains some of its funding through the European Union.
Dilwar Hussain is an independent British consultant working on social policy, Muslim identity and Islamic reform in the modern world. He formerly taught MA courses on Islam and Muslims at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education.
Sherifa D. Zuhur is an academic and national security scholar of the Middle East and Islamic world. She was most recently a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies, University of California, Berkeley and is the director of the Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies.
Geneive Abdo is an American scholar and author of several books on the Middle East and the Muslim World. She was previously a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a nonresident fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Middle East program at the Stimson Center think tank. In 2017 Abdo released her latest book The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi'a--Sunni Divide.
Mark P. Taylor is the Donald Danforth, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Finance at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, he was Dean of Olin Business School after holding the same role at Warwick Business School (WBS) at the University of Warwick. Before that, a managing director of BlackRock.
Islamic extremism in Egypt caused terrorism and controversy in the country in the 20th century and continues to be a main issue in the 21st century Egyptian society. Egypt has a long history of radical and extreme sects of Islam with roots dating back to around 660 CE. Islamic extremism opposes "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs". These extreme beliefs led to radical actions across the Middle East. The main conflict between Islamic extremists and the government officials throughout history stems from two major issues: "the formation of the modern nation-state and the political and cultural debate over its ideological direction".
The Markfield Institute of Higher Education is an educational institution based in Leicestershire, in the United Kingdom. Specialising in Islamic subjects, the institute runs part-time and full-time courses, awarding BA and MA degrees validated by Newman University, and PhD degrees validated by the University of Gloucestershire. The institute is accredited by the British Accreditation Council, reviewed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, and registered with the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Shadi Hamid is an American author and political scientist, who is currently a columnist and member of the Editorial Board at The Washington Post. Previously, he was a longtime senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He also holds the position of research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary. This appointment is the first time a Muslim scholar has been hired in the school's history. He has been called a "prominent thinker on religion and politics" in the New York Times and was named as one of "The world's top 50 thinkers" in 2019 by Prospect Magazine. He is known for coining the phrase "Islamic exceptionalism" to describe Islam's resistance to secularization and outsized role in public life. The phrase has come under some criticism.
Moderate Islam and moderate Muslim are labels that are used within counterterrorism discourse as the complement of "Islamic extremism" and imply that supporting Islamic terrorism is the characteristic of a "radical" faction within Islam, and a "moderate" faction of Muslims denounces extremist violence such as Islamic terrorism, militant jihadism and radical Islamism.
Shiraz Maher is a British writer and analyst, and Director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King's College London. He also teaches at Johns Hopkins University. The son of Pakistani immigrants, for several years after 9/11 Maher was a member of the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, but left the movement after the 2005 London bombings and became an outspoken critic of radical Islam. He has written for leading newspapers in Britain and elsewhere, produced reports and studies on counterterrorism strategy, and appeared in the international news media as a commentator on jihad and radicalisation.
Dame Sara Khan is a British human rights activist and the chief executive officer of Inspire, an independent non-governmental organisation working to counter extremism and gender inequality. Khan is a contributor to The Guardian and The Independent newspapers, as well as The Huffington Post and has made appearances on British television and radio. She has been interviewed for the BBC's HARDtalk and Desert Island Discs.
Several notable opinion polls have been undertaken on Islam and related topics, including fundamentalism, and Islamic terrorism. Polls have interviewed both Muslim respondents and other groups.
Najm ad-Dīn Abū r-Rabīʿ Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Qawī aṭ-Ṭūfī was a Hanbali scholar and student of Ibn Taymiyyah. He referred to ibn Taymiyyah as "our sheikh." Most of his scholarship deals with Islamic legal theory and theology. His writings did not attract a large following of Hanbalis, though his Mukhtasar al-Rawdah has been commented upon up to the 16th century.
Dr. Ahmad Mahmoud Karima, professor of Islamic law and comparative jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, is best known for his religious moderation and condemnations of radicalism, and for his intense criticism of the Salafi-Wahhabi movement, and the Muslim Brotherhood group.
