Convention Speakers Bios

July36
46thAnnual
ISNA
Convention
2009
Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness
Speakers
Booklet
Speakers Accumulated Bios

46th Annual ISNA Convention
TableofContents
Muhammad Nur Abdullah ...................... 5
Zerqa Abid .............................................. 5
Salma Elkadi Abugideiri ......................... 5
Swami Agnivesh ..................................... 6
Mansur Ahmad........................................ 7
Munjed Ahmad ....................................... 7
Sanjana Ahmad ....................................... 7
Akbar Ahmed .......................................... 7
Nazir Ahmed ........................................... 8
Safir Ahmed ............................................ 9
Saquiba Ahmed ....................................... 9
Sufiya Ahmed ....................................... 10
Assad R. Akhter .................................... 10
Mehmet Aktas ....................................... 11
Aisha Al-Adawiya ................................ 11
Mohammad S. Alam ............................. 11
Abdalla Idris Ali ................................... 12
Saqib Ali ............................................... 12
Shariq Ali .............................................. 12
Wajahat Ali ........................................... 13
Yasir Al Mahdawy ................................ 13
Salam Al-Marayati ................................ 13
Iyad Alnachef ........................................ 14
Zainab Alwani ....................................... 14
Shahed Amanullah ................................ 14
Patricia Anton ....................................... 15
Sadida Athaullah ................................... 16
Moutasem Atiya .................................... 16
Azhar Azeez .......................................... 16
Salman Azman ...................................... 17
Ihsan Bagby .......................................... 17
Mirza Yawar Baig ................................. 17
Owais Balti............................................ 18
Hazami Barmada ................................... 19
Jamal M. al-Barzinji.............................. 20
David Beckmann ................................... 20
Mirza AbuJafar Beg .............................. 21
Mohamed Rida Beshir .......................... 21
Isra Bhatty ............................................. 21
Yaser Birjas ........................................... 22
Kemal Bozkurt ...................................... 23
Zahid Hussain Bukhari ......................... 23
Shahid Buttar ........................................ 24
Sarah Cady ............................................ 24

Masood Cajee ...................................... 24
Andr Carson ........................................ 25
Sami Catovic ......................................... 25
Robert Chase ......................................... 25
Owaiz M. Dadabhoy ............................. 26
Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo......................... 26
Mikail DeVeaux .................................. 27
Susan Douglass ..................................... 27
Jean F. Duff ........................................... 28
A. J. Durrani.......................................... 28
Bob Edgar ............................................. 28
Maha ElGenaidi .................................... 29
Keith Ellison ......................................... 29
Gazi Erdem ........................................... 30
John Esposito ........................................ 30
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur ....................... 31
Iman Faris ............................................. 31
Manzoor Ghori ...................................... 31
Ghulam Nabi Fai ................................... 32
Maryam Kabeer Faye ............................ 33
Fatemeh Fakhraie .................................. 33
Jess Ghannam........................................ 33
Safiya Ghori .......................................... 34
Linda Gustitus ....................................... 34
Steve Gutow .......................................... 34
Sara Hakeem ......................................... 35
Rabia Terri Harris ................................. 35
Mohamed Hagmagid Ali....................... 35
Asma Hanif ........................................... 36
Mark Hanson ......................................... 36
Aziza Hasan .......................................... 36
Maher Hathout ...................................... 37
Abida K. Haque .................................... 37
Najiyah Diana Helwani ......................... 38
Leslie Hewitt ......................................... 38
Altaf Husain .......................................... 38
Lubna Ismail ......................................... 39
Ameena Jandali ..................................... 39
Rizwan Jaka .......................................... 39
Shaik Jeelani ......................................... 40
Jamillah Karim ...................................... 40
Mohammad Karim ................................ 41
2

Merve Kavakci ...................................... 41
Yusuf Kavakci ...................................... 42
Asma Khalid ......................................... 42
Hena Khan ............................................ 43
M.J. Khan .............................................. 43
Muqtedar Khan ..................................... 43
Zeba Khan ............................................. 44
Suhail Khan ........................................... 44
Farhana Khera ....................................... 45
Riaz Khokher ........................................ 46
Richard L. Killmer ................................ 46
John Kiser ............................................. 47
Nsenga Knight ...................................... 47
Kasim Kopuz ........................................ 47
Radwan Kouatli .................................... 48
Murat Kose............................................ 48
Alexander Kronemer ............................. 49
Ola Lanke .............................................. 49
Bruce Lustig .......................................... 50
Edina Lekovic ....................................... 50
Mahmood A. Madani ............................ 51
Mokhtar Maghraoui .............................. 51
Johari Abdul Malik ............................... 51
Sakil Malik ............................................ 51
Mahmood Mamdani .............................. 52
Salam S. Al-Marayati............................ 52
Priscilla Martinez .................................. 53
Ingrid Mattson. ...................................... 53
Ali Alamin Mazrui............................... 54
Bonita McGee ....................................... 54
Jack Moline ........................................... 55
Hadia Mubarak...................................... 55
Nasreen Mustafa ................................... 55
Mikal N. Nash ....................................... 56
Ghulam N. Mir ...................................... 56
Uzma Mirza .......................................... 57
Asma Mirza........................................... 57
Yaqub Mirza ......................................... 58
Dalia Mogahed ...................................... 58
Haroon Moghul ..................................... 59
Sultan Muhammad ................................ 59
Abdul Malik Mujahid ........................... 59
Nasreen C. Mustafa............................... 60
Rayyan Najeeb ...................................... 60
Husain Nagamia .................................... 60
Pervez Nasim ........................................ 61
Ayman Nassar ....................................... 61

Sayed A. Nassar .................................... 62
Daoud Nassimi ...................................... 62
Zarqa Nawaz ......................................... 62
Muhammad Ninowy ............................. 63
Ashraf Nubani ....................................... 63
Sulayman S. Nyang ............................... 63
Serban Popescu ..................................... 64
Yasir Qadhi ........................................... 64
Amjad Quadri........................................ 65
Saifur Rahman ...................................... 66
Zeyba Rahman ...................................... 66
Sabeeha Rehman ................................... 66
Fatima Rahmatullah .............................. 67
Hussein Rashid...................................... 67
Hafiz Rehman ....................................... 68
Sabeeha Rehman ................................... 68
Nadia Roumani ..................................... 69
Walter Ruby .......................................... 69
Agha Saeed ........................................... 70
Louay Safi ............................................. 70
Patricia Z. Salahuddin ........................... 70
Rashid Abdul-Salaam ........................... 71
Monem Salam ....................................... 71
Jihad F. Saleh ........................................ 71
Achmat Salie ......................................... 72
Ako Abdul Samad ................................. 72
Corey Saylor ......................................... 73
Marc Schneier ....................................... 73
Beverly Schwartz .................................. 73
George Selim ........................................ 74
Zakia Iman Shahbaz .............................. 74
Gerry Serotta ......................................... 75
Ahmed Shaikh ....................................... 75
Zaid Shakir ............................................ 76
Sidney Rahim Sharif ............................. 76
Zaki Sherif ............................................ 76
Osman A. Shinaishin ............................ 77
Muzammil Siddiqi ................................ 78
Shazia Siddiqi ....................................... 78
Abdulkader Sinno ................................. 78
Tabassum Siraj ...................................... 79
Cathy Sultan .......................................... 79
Samina F. Sundas .................................. 79
Sayyid M. Syeed ................................... 80
Mohammed T. Taher ............................ 80
3

Mobin Tawakkul ................................... 81
Asma Mobin-Uddin .............................. 81
Omar Uddin .......................................... 81
Warith Deen Umar ................................ 82
Iqbal Unus ............................................. 82
Burton L. Visotzky................................ 82
Miroslav Volf ........................................ 83
Siraj Wahhaj.......................................... 83
Khurrum Wahid .................................... 84
Rick Warren .......................................... 84
Mohammed Yousuf .............................. 84
HamzaYusuf ......................................... 84
Safaa Zarzour ........................................ 85

MuhammadNurAbdullah
Sheikh Mohammad Nur Abdullah, Imam

and director for the Islamic Foundation of
Greater St. Louis, came to the United States
from Sudan in 1978. He received his B.A. in
Sharia at the Islamic University, Medina and
a M.A. in Sharia at the Ummal Qura
University, Makkah. He completed further
studies at the University of Chicago where
he received an M.A. in Islamic Studies and
is now a Ph.D. candidate.
Abdullah is past chairman of the ISNA Fiqh
Council and has been a member of the Fiqh
Council of North America since 1982. He is
the principal for the Al Salaam Day School
and member of the Shari'a Scholars
Association of North America.
Abdullah has authored several articles on
family in Islam, marriage and divorce, and
the concept of Shura in Islam. He also works
as a marriage counselor.
ZerqaAbid
Zerqa Abid is a social/political activist,

journalist, writer, blogger, editor, TV
producer/director, speaker, marketing
communication specialist, campaign maker,
event manager/organizer and CEO of her
business, ZAPS Technocrats Inc., based in
the United States. She has successfully
organized international trade and consumer

shows. Her consumer show, Expo Juniors,
was recognized as the first mega event and
legendary expo for children in Pakistan. It
drew 800,000 people in three days to the
Expo Center, Karachi. Prior to running her
own business, Abid has worked at the
American news giant, NBC News as News
Editor. She has also worked at ARY Digital
Network of Pakistan as the General Manager
of The City Channel.
Zerqa Abid is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of
North Carolina State University, where her
major was Mass Communication, TV
production, and her minor was
Journalism. She received Norma & Wally
Ausley Merit Scholarship for being The
Outstanding Student of Mass
Communications in her junior year at the
college. Abid was also chosen as a young
woman leader to represent College of
Humanities of NCSU in the U.S. Senate and
the U.S. Congress in a conference organized
by National Organization of Woman, NOW.
She is also a member of Golden Key
International Society.
Abid is proud to accomplish all of the above
while strictly observing Islamic dress code
including head scarf and face veil.
SalmaElkadiAbugideiri
Salma Elkadi Abugideiri is a licensed

professional counselor in private practice in
Reston, VA. She received her masters
degree in counseling from George Mason
University, and completed a post-masters
certification program in marriage and family
5

therapy at Virginia Tech. She provides
individual and family therapy for a wide
range of problems, including mood
disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma, abuse,
and cultural adjustment issues. She has
worked extensively with Middle Eastern and
Muslim families.
As co-Director of the Peaceful Families
Project, an organization dedicated to
educating Muslim community leaders and
members about domestic violence, she
provides educational workshops and
develops resources related to domestic
violence among Muslims. She has written a
chapter in Walking Together: Working with
Women from Diverse Religious Traditions
entitled Working with Muslim women:
Understanding Religious and Cultural
Issues, as well as Domestic Violence
among Muslims Seeking Mental Health
Counseling, which is in the edited volume
Change from Within: Diverse Perspectives
on Domestic Violence in Muslim
Communities. She has also co-authored a
brief guide for helping professionals entitled
What Islam Says About Domestic Violence.
In addition, she is associate producer of the
video Garments for One Another: Ending
Domestic Violence in Muslim Families.
Since 2007, she has been part of Faith Trust
Institutes Leadership team, providing
training to clergy and faith communities on
issues related to domestic violence. She is
also a member of the Interfaith Coalition
against Domestic Violence, a national effort
with a focus on guiding policy and
legislation that supports domestic violence
survivors.
SwamiAgnivesh
Swami Agnivesh, is a prominent Arya

Samaj scholar, social activist and a
champion for peace, harmony and interfaith
dialogue. He is the president of the World
Council of Arya Samaj, an associate of the
original "Arya Samaj", a Hindu reform
movement founded by Swami Dayanand
Saraswati in 1875. He is the Chairperson of
'United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund on
Contemporary forms of Slavery' and also the
Chairperson of Bonded Labour Liberation
Front.
In 1977, he was elected Member of the
Legislative Assembly of the state of
Haryana, and became the State's Minister for
Education, 1979-1982. In 1981, while still a
minister, he founded the Bonded Labour
Liberation Front, which continues to fight
against bonded labour as a form of slavery
in India, especially in the quarries in and
around Delhi. He has been testifying before
the Working Group on Contemporary Forms
of Slavery at the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva.
Among Swami Agnivesh's immense
contributions is his championing of dialogue
and peace activities, the anti-caste
movement, liberation of bonded labour
activities, a movement against alcoholism,
and equal rights of women, such as their
right to education and reading Indian
scriptures.

Agnivesh is accepted as peace and harmony
pioneer by all religious communities such as
Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist,
Bahai, Jewish etc. because of his efforts to
build an atmosphere of peace and harmony
in India.
SanjanaAhmad
MansurAhmad
Mansur Ahmad, BDS, PhD, is an Associate

Professor and Director of Radiology at the
University of Minnesota School of
Dentistry. He was raised in India and
worked as a faculty member in a Medical
College before coming to the United States
for his graduate education. He is an author
of 10 textbooks for weekend Islamic
schools. Dr. Ahmad's presentation will focus
on the negative external and internal
influences on the Muslim youths of India,
and suggestions to counter the bleeding of
the society.
Sanjana works on
environmental issues in both her personal
and professional life. She obtained her
Masters in Public Policy with an
environmental policy concentration at the
University of Maryland and currently works
in the DC-area on transportation and
domestic policy. Over the past year and a
half, Sanjana has been working with a group
of "green Muslims" in the Washington, DC
area to explore the Islamic basis for
environmental awareness and activism. The
DC Green Muslims hope to encourage
dialogue and action around these issues to
create a more sustainable future for us all
AkbarAhmed
MunjedAhmad
Munjed Ahmad
received his law degree
at the Catholic
University of America
Columbus School of
Law in Washington
D.C. Mr. Ahmad is also the national Vice
President of American Muslims for
Palestine and one of the organizations cofounders. He is also in the private pratice of
law.
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is currently the

Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies,
American University in Washington DC, the
First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and
Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy,
Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow
at the Brookings Institution. He has taught
at Princeton, Harvard, and Cambridge
Universities and is considered the worlds
leading authority on contemporary Islam
by the BBC. He has advised General David
Petraeus, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke,
7

and Secretary Michael Chertoff on Islam
and foreign policy. He is regularly
interviewed by CNN, CBS, BBC, and Fox
News and has appeared several times on the
Oprah Winfrey Show. He is the author of
over a dozen award-winning books,
including Discovering Islam, which was the
basis of the BBC six-part TV series called
Living Islam. His books have been
translated into many languages, including
Chinese and Indonesian. His most recent
book is Journey into Islam and his current
project, Journey into America, is an
unprecedented study based in fieldwork of
Muslims in America.
NazirAhmed
Lord Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed (born

1958) is a member of the House of Lords,
having become the United Kingdom's first
Muslim life peer in 1998. Many of his
political activities relate to the Islamic
community both in the UK and abroad.
Ahmed was born in Mirpur (Azad Kashmir,
Pakistan) but soon after his birth his family
migrated to the UK, where he was brought
up. He attended Spurley Hey
Comprehensive School, then Thomas
Rotherham Sixth Form College. He studied
Public Administration at Sheffield Hallam
University and joined the Labour Party
when he was 18 years old.
In 1998 Ahmed was appointed to the House
of Lords, becoming the first Muslim life
peer as Baron Ahmed, of Rotherham in the
County of South Yorkshire. Lord Ahmed
took his oath on the Qur'an. At the age of

40, he was also one of the youngest peers to
achieve this position. As a Muslim peer,
much of his activities relate to the Muslim
community, both at home and
internationally. Ahmed led one of the first
delegations on behalf of the British
Government on the Muslim pilgrimage of
the Hajj, to Saudi Arabia and has advocated
legislation against religious discrimination,
international terrorism and forced
marriages.[citation needed]
At home, Ahmed speaks on wider equality
issues, and has spoken several times on
issues of race, religion and gender. He is
seen as one of the leaders of the Muslim
community.
Born in the region, Ahmed has a personal
interest in seeing a peaceful resolve to the
ongoing bloody dispute in Kashmir and
seeks international mediation to achieve this.
As well as being an active figure in the
Indian Subcontinent, he has worked on the
plight of Muslims around the world ranging
from the collapse of former Yugoslavia, to
the Chechens and Palestinians. He has been
on many delegations to the Arab world, the
US, Eastern Europe, Africa, the former
states of the USSR and the Far East, meeting
with heads of state to discuss their
respective problems and how he may be able
to assist them.
Ahmed helps with various charitable causes
and is on the board of several organizations
from local groups such as his position as
President of South Yorkshire Victim
Support, to international bodies such as his
board membership on the SAARC
Foundation.
Lord Ahmed was among the founders of
The World Forum, an organization set up to
promote world peace in the after math of the
8

9/11 with an effort to build bridges of
understanding between The Muslim World
and the West by reviving a tradition of
Dialogue between people, cultures and
civilizations based on tolerance.
In November 2007 Ahmed was involved in
a diplomatic effort to secure the release of
Gillian Gibbons from custody in Sudan. The
teacher, Gillian Gibbons, allowed her class
to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Lord
Ahmed, from Britain's ruling Labour Party,
and Baroness Warsi, an opposition
Conservative, visited Khartoum and had a
meeting with the President of Sudan.
Following this the President pardoned Ms
Gibbons and she was allowed to return to
the UK.
SafirAhmed
Safir Ahmed has been the Executive
Director of Zaytuna since June, 2008 and
since 2005 has overseen the Publications
division at Zaytuna where he helped edit
Shaykh Hamza Yusufs writings, including
the The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi and
Caesarean Moon Births as well as his
articles for Seasons Journal and other
publications. Safir is also an independent
book editor and editorial consultant and has
been a journalist for more than 20 years. He
has served on the boards of various nonprofits and was a Communications Director
for a U.S. Senate campaign in 2004. Among
the authors he has edited are Markos
Moulitsas Zuniga of DailyKOs, George
Lakoff of UC-Berkeley and Glenn
Greenwald of Salon magazine
SaquibaAhmed
Her work history spans beyond US

boundaries. On international assignments,
working for the World Bank, she utilized her
conflict resolution skills to negotiate and
mediate disputes between mission
consultants and local project managers.
Some of her mediation efforts resulted in
opening up lines of communications to
facilitate the implementation of an irrigation
system that provided irrigation to over
40,000 people in eight villages.
As an HR Generalist for Corporate Human
Resources reporting to the Vice President of
Human Resources, she was primarily
responsible for managing programs and
events for diverse external partners, and
managing the vendor, communications, and
implementation of Sodexos nationwide
Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)
Program.
Within Sodexo she was a member of all the
network groups and is a founding members
of the Pan Asian Network Group (PANG).
Saquiba also served as the Sodexho
Relationship Manager for Working Mother
Media, a four year relationship uniting
corporate America to create a safe haven for
executive women of color, corporate leaders
and diversity professionals to speak and
work openly on the most crucial issues;
resulting in a benchmark of best practices
for America's companies to examine and
adopt.
Saquiba is a Certified Trainer for Diversity
Awareness for Frontline Employees. A
graduate of the University of Maryland,
College Park, Saquibas research interests
lie within Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, with a focus on cross cultural
communications.
Saquiba Ahmed is Connecting Cultures'

Vice President for Business Development.
9

Penguin editors and she has just returned
from participating in the international Abu
Dhabi book fair, an event organised by the
ruling Sheikh to encourage Arab children to
the joys of reading.
SufiyaAhmed
Sufiya Ahmed set up her own company,

BIBI Publishing, to bring the Zahra series to
the market which follows the adventures of
a young British Muslim girl. Sufiyas
published novels include Zahras First
Term at the Khadija Academy and Zahras
Great Debate, the former of which was
shortlisted in the Best Published Book
Category at the 2008 Muslim Writers
Awards in London. Her new book, Zahras
Trip to Misr is scheduled for release in
September 2009.
Sufiya set up the BIBI Foundation to
encourage teenagers from deprived and
diverse backgrounds to visit the Houses of
Parliament and learn more about the
democratic process. She is also part of
Mosaic, a Muslim charity led by HRH
Prince Charles, and delivers her own
creative writing workshops in schools.
Currently Sufiya is acting as a judge in the
childrens category at the 2009 MWA with
AssadR.Akhter
Assad R. Akhter currently serves as

Legislative Director to Congressman Bill
Pascrell (D-NJ) where he oversees the
Congressmans entire legislative agenda and
manages his legislative staff. He is also
tasked with coordinating the Congressmans
position on the House Ways & Means
Committee as well as staffing his
assignment on the House Homeland
Security Committee. He previously worked
for Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (DTX) where he helped create the
Congressional Pakistan Caucus and was the
lead staffer for the House Science
Committee. He has also spent a substantive
amount of time working on political
campaigns throughout America. He
provided material assistance to and
campaigned with both Reps. Keith Ellison
(D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN) as they
became the first and second Muslim
Members of Congress in 2006 and 2008,
respectively. In 2005, Assad worked
directly with the NJ AFL-CIO to organize
and mobilize over one million labor workers
10

which led to the election of Jon Corzine (DNJ) as Governor in New Jersey and an
increase in the majority for Democrats in the
State Assembly. Apart from his official
legislative duties, Assad serves as the
current President of the Congressional
Muslim Staff Association (CMSA).
MehmetAktas
Mehmet Atkas is President of Religious
Counsel, United American Muslim
Association, Brooklyn NY.
Kemal Aktas was born in Corum, Turkey.
He received traditional Islamic education
from private teachers and institutions and
worked as an imam and Vaiz (official
religious speaker) in various cities in
Turkey. He moved to USA in 1980 and has
spend most of his time as and imam first at
the Turkish Society of Rochester, and then
Islamic Cultural Center of Rochester,
Rochester, NY. He retired from active imam
duties and periodically visits various
masajid to give speeches. He is married
with three children and lives in Boston MA.
on Islam, Gender Equity, Conflict

Resolution, Cross-Cultural Understanding,
and represents Muslim women in United
Nations forums as a Non-Governmental
Organization. She also coordinates Islamic
input for the Preservation of the Black
Religious Heritage Documentation Project
of the Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture. Ms. Al-Adawiya serves on
numerous boards related to the interests of
the global Islamic community. She also
serves as a consultant to numerous interfaith
organizations and documentary projects on
the Muslim American experience. Ms. alAdawiya is a guest host and producer on
Tahrir, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York
City.
Ms. al-Adawiya specializes in developing
educational forums on human rights and
social justice, interfaith initiatives, crosscultural understanding, and peace-building.
MohammadS.Alam
AishaAlAdawiya
Aisha Al-Adawiya is the Founder and

Executive Director of Women In Islam Inc.,
an organization of Muslim women which
focuses on human rights and social justice.
Ms. al-Adawiya organizes and participates
in conferences, symposia and other forums
Dr. Mohammad S. Alam is a Professor and

Chair of the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department at the University of
South Alabama. He is a Fellow of the
Optical Society of America (OSA), a Fellow
of the International Society for Optical
Engineering (SPIE), a Fellow of the
Institution of Engineering and Technology
(IET, UK), a Fellow of the Institute of
Physics (IoP, UK).
11

AbdallaIdrisAli
Abdalla Idris Ali is a public speaker and

fund-raiser, and has served as ISNAs
President from 1992-1997. Sheikh Abdalla
Idris co-organized the Canadian Islamic
Banking conferences for 1996 and 1997. He
serves as a member on the Board of Trustees
for the Islamic Teaching Center (ITC) and
North American Islamic Trust. He also is
on the Board of Advisors of the American
Muslim Council and past Board member of
the Council of Islamic Schools in North
America. As an ISNA School principal, he
developed and implemented Islamic and
Arabic Studies curricula for elementary and
junior high students. He has written various
articles in Islamic Horizons and is a member
of the ATP Editorial Board. His expertise
is in the area of Islamic education and
Islamic Schools in North America.
SaqibAli
Saqib Ali is a State Delegate in the

Maryland House of Delegates, having been
elected to represent the 39th District in the
2006 elections. Ali is of Indian and Pakistani
descent and having elected both Ali and
Kumar P. Barve (for the 17th District),
Maryland became the first state to send two
South Asians to the state legislature. This

was seen as part of Asian Americans
displaying political clout beyond traditional
strongholds in California and Hawaii. Alis
election is also seen as evidence of another
American minority moving towards civic
empowerment by participating in the
political process, as He is the first Muslim
in the Maryland State legislature. His
election and that of Keith Ellison (D-MN) to
the United States Congress are viewed as
part of a concerted march of Muslims into
civic and political life in reaction to
worries about civil liberties and
immigration policy that began after Sept.
11, 2001.
ShariqAli
Shariq Ali, LEED AP, EIT is a Mechanical

Engineer at URS Corporation, where he
contributes to the engineering and design of
high performance HVAC (heating,
ventilation and air conditioning) and
plumbing systems. Currently he is involved
in designing health care, transit, and retail
facilities, and assessing energy conservation
measures on new and existing buildings.
Recently Mr. Ali has been involved on
volunteer projects such as Masjid planning,
financing for minor Masjid renovations, and
www.GotIslam.com.
Mr. Ali is a graduate of the University of
Michigan and a product of the Islamic
community of greater Detroit. He currently
lives with his wife in Dearborn Heights, MI,
holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering,
and is pursuing post-graduate studies.
12

WajahatAli
Wajahat Ali is a playwright, journalist,

humorist, blogger and Attorney at Law,
whose play, "The Domestic Crusaders
[www.domesticcrusaders.com], is the first
major play about the American Muslims
experience making its New York premiere
on 9-11-09 at the world famous Nuyorican
Theater.
He was honored as an "An Influential
Muslim American Artist" by the State
Department and invited to their Annual
Ramadan dinner. He was also recently
honored as a "Muslim Leader of Tomorrow"
for his journalism. He is the recipient of
Muslim Public Affairs Council's prestigious
"Emerging Muslim American Artist" Award
of 2009.
He is an Associate Editor of Altmuslim.com,
the leading American Muslim online
magazine; and a contributing editor to the
award winning Illume Magazine He is a
contributor to the Washington Post, The
Guardian, and Huffington Post. His first
movie, "Ms. Judgments," was a finalist for
the LinkTV Muslim American Film Contest.
His first short story, "Ramadan Blues," was
published in the anthology "Pow Wow"
published by Perseus/De Capo Press. His
blog, "Goatmilk: An Intellectual
Playground" (goatmilk.wordpress.com) is
ranked in the top 7% of all political blogs
and recently rated "Great" by blogged.com.
YasirAlMahdawy
Mr. Al Mahdawy was born in Iraq in March
of 1973 and grew up in Baghdad in the same
house his family lives in today. After
completing his engineering degree from
Baghdad University College of Engineering,
he worked for the Japanese Embassy, the
United Nations and a French NGO. After
June 2006, he fled Iraq and lived in Jordan
for more than one year before being
approved for resettlement in the United
States.
In late 2007 he arrived in Albany, NY, and
shortly thereafter he began volunteering
with USCRI Albany. He acted as a
translator and liaison for the other Iraqi
families that were being resettled in Albany.
Finally in May 2008 he started working as
Reception and Placement Case Manager at
the agency. He values working at USCRI
Albany because it allows him to provide
services to new comers to the U.S.
SalamAlMarayati
Salam Al-Marayati serves as the Executive

Director of MPAC. For the past 16 years,
Salam has had the opportunity to speak to
congregations at community-sponsored
events, temples, synagogues, churches, high
schools, and college campuses. He has
written extensively on Islam, human rights,
democracy, Middle East politics, the Balkan
Crisis, and the Transcaucus conflict. His
articles and interviews have appeared on
13

such prominent newspapers as The Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The
Christian Science Monitor, The LA Daily
News, The Chicago Tribune, The San
Francisco Chronicle and USA Today. He
has appeared on radio and TV talk shows,
including The Dennis Miller Show, Tonight
with Deborah Norville, Politically Incorrect,
and has been featured on C-SPAN and NBC.
Salam has also been deeply involved in
interfaith activities. He served as co-chair of
the Interfaith Coalition to Heal Los Angeles,
which formed as a result of the Los Angeles
uprising in the Summer of 1992. Salam also
works as an advisor to several political, civic
and academic institutions seeking to
understand the role of Islam and Muslims in
America and throughout the world.
IyadAlnachef
Iyad Alnachef earned his Masters in Youth

Development from Michigan State
University. Between January 1999 and
September 2005, Iyad worked as an Islamic
Studies/Arabic Teacher, youth leader, and
youth program director in several Islamic
Centers in Michigan and Ohio. During that
period, he organized about several youth
camps, events and programs in that area.
For the period between October 2005 and
August 2006, he worked with the National
Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of
America as a District Executive for
Powhatan District that served more than 80
scouting units.
Iyad joined ISNA since August 2006 as the

Director of the Youth Programming and
Services Department.
ZainabAlwani
Zainab Alwani is a PhD candidate in Islamic
Studies. Her research interests have focused
on Islamic studies (Fiqh & Usul al fiqh), and
Family and Women's issues. She has
developed Quranic models through various
courses toward building "Quranic family
structure". A few of her publications
include: Al Qazali and his Methodology in
Fiqh legislation, Aishas Commentaries and
Their Methodological Premises in Hadith
Sciences, What Islam Says about Domestic
Violence: A Guide for Helping Muslim
Families, and others. Currently, she teaches
Islamic and Arabic Studies along with the
Culture of Middle East at Northern Virginia
Community College NOVA and the School
of Advanced International Studies at Johns
Hopkins University. She has developed
courses in Arabic Studies examining the link
between Islamic Philosophy, language and
the culture at previous institutes. Ms. Alwani
also teaches Women and Family in Quran at
GSISS. She is a Board Member on different
academic, educational, and social
organizations.
ShahedAmanullah
Shahed Amanullah is an award-winning

journalist and editor-in-chief of
altmuslim.com, an online newsmagazine
14

covering issues related to Islam in the West.
Named by Islamica Magazine as one of
Ten Young Muslim Visionaries, he writes
and speaks regularly about the challenges
and opportunities facing Islam in the West.
His work and writings have been featured in
Newsweek, San Jose Mercury News, New
York Times, Washington Post, BBC News,
National Public Radio, BeliefNet, Los
Angeles Times,
Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco
Chronicle, and the Voice of America. His
television appearances include Nightline
with Ted Koppel, CNN Headline News, the
Today Show, and Hannity & Colmes.
Shahed is also the founder of Halalfire
Media LLC, a network of Islamic-themed
websites with over 6 million annual visitors.
Along with altmuslim.com, signature
properties include zabihah.com, the worlds
largest database of Halal restaurants and
markets, salatomatic.com, an extensive list
of reviewed mosques and schools in
Muslim-minority countries,
unitedmuslims.org, a resource for civic
engagement, and halalapalooza.com, a
comprehensive guide to Islamic ecommerce.
Shahed has served as a board member of the
United Muslims of America, the Muslim
Public Service Network, and the Muslim
Youth Camp of California. He is also a
general partner in Zakat Community
Ventures, the first venture philanthropy
fund dedicated to promoting Islamic
charitable values.
PatriciaAnton
Originally from Medina, Ohio, Patricia

Anton accepted Islam in 1997 as a student at
Ohio State University, where she received
her BA in International Studies. Patricia was
awarded a Graduate Fellowship in NonProfit Management and Governance through
Indiana University, earned an MA in Islamic
Studies from Cordoba University, and has
continued her graduate studies at George
Mason Universitys Institute for Conflict
Analysis and Resolution. She has also
studied Arabic at Yarmouk University in
Jordan. Anton has worked for several
Muslim organizations including The Islamic
Society of North America, Islamic Relief,
the International Institute of Islamic
Thought, and Cordoba University. She has
also worked on contract with the United
States Institute of Peace, George Mason
University, and the Institute for Defense
Analysis. She has contributed to developing
trainings and manuals for Say Peace: An
Islamic Model of Conflict Resolution,
Project L.I.G.H.T. (Learning Islamic
Guidance on Human Tolerance), and the
Muslim-Christian Initiative on the Nuclear
Weapons Danger. Anton is co-founder of
Medina Center in Bethesda, Maryland,
where she has served as board member. She
has also served on the board of Asia Relief.
15

SadidaAthaullah
ensure appropriate transmission of

knowledge and infuse its practical
application in daily lives. Br. Moutasem
currently resides in Columbia, MD with his
wife and son.
AzharAzeez
Sadida Athaullah, born and raised in
Hyderabad, India, is the literary executor of
the great 20th century Islamic scholar Dr.
Muhammad Hamidullah and Director of the
Muhammad Hamidullah Center. Athaullah
holds an Master's degree in Education and
works for the public school system of
western Maryland. Regularly involved in
peace and justice issues, she is a founding
member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship
and sits on its board.
MoutasemAtiya
Br. Moutasem Atiya, an IT professional and

Islamic activist, has been actively involved
in the Maryland and Metropolitan DC
communities through classes, speaking
engagements, and Friday khutbahs on a
regular basis for the past 10 years. He has
studied the Islamic Sciences from three of
the luminaries of our time, Shaykh Mohsen
An-Najjar, Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui, and
Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya AlNinowy. Br. Moutasem established the AlMadina Institute, which opened its doors in
2008. As a mobile institution providing
higher learning to Muslim Americans, AlMadina Institute uses time tested methods to
Azhar Azeez was born in 1971 in

HYDERABAD, INDIA and has been living
in US since 1995. He has bachelors in
Finance from Osmania University and a
Masters degree in business administration
(MBA) and currently is pursuing his PhD in
Islamic studies. For last 14 years he worked
for major US corporations such as General
Electric, American General Life and Capital
One. He is a member of ISNA Executive
Council (Central Zone Representative) since
2003 and is also the founder and current
President of Islamic Association of
Carrollton, Texas one of the large mosques
in the suburbs of Dallas, TX. He was also a
founding member & past President of
Council on American Islamic Relations
Dallas/ Fort Worth Chapter. He is a regular
speaker and a fundraiser for various local,
regional and national Islamic organizations.
He has made several media appearances and
was interviewed by many local and national
T.V. stations and newspapers such as
affiliates of CBS, ABC, FOX, KDTN, NBC,
PBS KERA, CNN, Associated Press, USA
today, Dallas Morning news etc. He speaks
regularly on local & national radio programs
and has written for various newspapers and
magazines. He is the founder & moderator
16

of the weekly global e-mail newsletter
which goes out to over 15,000 subscribers
every week on issues related to Islam &
Muslims. He is married and has two kids
and currently resides in Dallas, TX.
IhsanBagby
SalmanAzman
Ihsan Bagby is currently the Associate
Professor Islamic Studies at the University
of Kentucky. He obtained his PhD from the
University of Michigan in Near Eastern
Studies and his research for the last ten years
has focused on Muslim in America.
Salman Azam is one of the founders of the
Lakeshore Law Group LLP and is the
Managing Partner of the firm. He
coordinates the Corporate and Transactional
groups within the firm. After graduating
from DePaul University School of Law, he
worked as an associate at a prominent
Chicago corporate law firm. Mr. Azam then
set out to create a brand new firm focused
on the needs of small businesses and
professionals, especially those in the South
Asian community. Today Lakeshore Law
Group LLP represents many prominent
physicians, small and medium-sized
businesses in the Chicago area and across
the country. Mr. Azam also serves as legal
advisor to several Muslim community nonprofit organizations and is on the board of
the Pakistani American Bar Association of
North America and the Downtown Islamic
Center.
MirzaYawarBaig
Founder and President of Yawar Baig and

Associates, International Speaker, Coach,
Trainer and Facilitator specializing in
Leadership in Family Business, enabling the
critical transition from being Person-driven
to becoming Process-driven to create
Enduring Leadership. Yawars Enduring
Leadership program shows business families
how to grow, yet stay together, by applying
case studies from both family businesses and
multi-national corporations. Its experiential
learning format enhances the application of
inherent and learned knowledge and skills.
Yawar also works as a life coach and mentor
for prominent family businesses in India and
South Africa. He transcends cultural
boundaries by blending Eastern values with
17

Western systems. Yawar brings to bear his
varied experience in bauxite mining, tea and
rubber plantations, tourism marketing and
teaching which gives him the advantage of
speaking from the perspective of a
practitioner and not merely as a theorist.
Thanks to his openness, competence, valuebased professionalism and the ability to
speak five languages, Yawar has instilled
leadership and management fundamentals
within many local, national and global
organizations aimed at identifying and
nurturing leadership potential.
OwaisBalti
Owais Balti was born in Buffalo, NY. His

parents, Drs. Mohamad Ashraf and
Mubeena Balti, are members of the ISNA
Founders Committee and active leaders in
the Islamic Society of Niagara Frontier.
Owais is a graduate of Georgetown
University, with a Bachelors degree in
Finance. He served a term as the President
of the Muslim Students Association during
his time at Georgetown. Owais works in the
area of Financial Planning and Analysis. He
currently lives with his wife, Amnah
Taufique, in Sterling, VA. Owais is an
active member of the ADAMS center and
volunteers with the educational wing of
ADAMS, the Qurtuba Institute, which
provides classes, lectures, and seminars to
promote greater Islamic literacy and deeper
respect for the traditional sciences of Islamic
scholarship. Owais also participates in
ADAMS outreach through interfaith and
community service activities.
AsadM.BaYunus
Asad M. Ba-Yunus is an Associate at the

law firm of Lubell &Rosen. He is a native of
Cortland, New York, practices in the area of
medical malpractice defense litigation.
While earning his Bachelor of Arts in
Political Science from State University of
New York at Binghamton, Asad worked as a
Level III Critical Care Paramedic, serving
mainly rural and elderly patients through the
Broome Volunteer Emergency Squad. After
graduating in 1997, he went on to earn his
Juris Doctor from The American
University's Washington College of Law in
2000. While at American University, he was
a Note & Comment Editor for the
Administrative Law Review, the American
Bar Association's official journal on
administrative law, participated in
interschool moot court competitions and
served as a judge in many competitions.
Asad was admitted to the Florida Bar in
2001 and the Washington D.C. Bar in 2002.
Asad has also been admitted to practice
before the Supreme Court of the United
States. Prior to joining Lubell & Rosen,
Asad was a defense attorney for Fertig &
Gramling Law Partnership, the Mager Law
Group and worked as an Assistant State
Attorney in Miami-Dade County. .
18

HatemBazian
Dr. Hatem Bazian, received his Ph.D. in

Philosophy and Islamic Studies from the
University of California, Berkeley.
Currently, Bazian is a senior lecturer in the
Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic
Studies. Dr. Bazian between 2002-2007,
also served as an adjunct professor of law at
Boalt Hall School of Law at the University
of California, Berkeley. He teaches courses
on Islamic Law and Society, Islam in
America: Communities and Institutions, DeConstructing Islamophobia and Othering of
Islam, Religious Studies, and Middle
Eastern Studies. In addition to Berkeley, Dr.
Bazian is a visiting Professor in Religious
Studies at Saint Mary's College of California
and adviser to the Religion, Politics and
Globalization Center at UC Berkeley as well
as Academic Affairs Chair at Zaytuna
College of California. In Spring 2009, Dr.
Bazian founded at Berkeley the Center for
the Study and Documentation of
Islamophobia, a research unit dedicated to
the systematic study of Othering Islam and
Muslims.
Dr. Bazian is known for being an organic
intellectual, a term used for academics
directly connecting their research to the
people; rather than looking down from the
ivory tower. Dr. Bazian's published book,
Jerusalem in Islamic Consciousness, is a
reflection of his desire to contribute to a
better understanding of Muslim attachment
and informed political attitudes toward the
Sacred City and Palestine in general.
Currently, Dr. Bazian is working on two

books, The Silicon Rush: Documenting
Muslim Communities in the the Silicon
Valley; and Virtual Internment: Muslims
and the War on Terrorism. Bazian most
recent publication is a chapter published in
France, Islamophobie: dans le monde
moderne and an entry to Oxford's Human
Rights Encyclopedia covering HR under the
Palestinian Authority. As an activist, Dr.
Bazian has played a significant role almost
in every human and civil rights movement in
the Bay Area, nationally and internationally
including the defense of Affirmative Action
in California, American With Disabilities
Act, Anti-Apartheid, Anti-Globalization
Movement, and Central American Solidarity
struggles.
HazamiBarmada
Hazami Barmada is Executive Director for

the 2008 9/11 Unity Walk. Barmada
received a B.A. in Anthropology and
Sociology from Rhodes College. Barmada is
an independent contractor and consultant for
several profit and non-for-profit
organizations and companies with a focus on
public and intercultural relations,
international communications, and
organizational management. She is currently
the Administrator for the Institute of Quality
of Life at Georgetown University. Barmada
is the President of the Progressive Muslim
Network and was recently appointed as the
Executive Vice President of the Council for
Advancement of Muslim Professionals, DC
19

Chapter. She is involved in many
organizations in a volunteer capacity.
JamalM.alBarzinji
Islamic Movements, Current Affairs,

Education and Islamic Presence in the U.S.
and Europe. Dr. Barzinji holds a Ph.D. and
M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering, with a
minor in Management from Louisiana State
University, U.S.A. (1974), and a B.Sc. in
Chemical Engineering & Fuel Technology
from the University of Sheffield, England
(1962).
DavidBeckmann
Dr. Jamal al-Barzinji is a founding member,
a Trustee and Vice President for Research &
Publications of the International Institute of
Islamic Thought (IIIT).
He has over forty years of progressive
experience in development and leadership of
diverse organizations (business, educational,
think-tanks, political and charitable), such as
Mar-Jac Poultry, Safa Trust, Amana Mutual
Funds, SAAR Foundation, Bank Islam
Malaysia, Dean of School of Islamic
Revealed Knowledge & Social Sciences of
International Islamic University Malaysia,
Nada International, and North American
Islamic Trust (NAIT).
David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S.

advocates for hungry people. He has been
president of Bread for the World for 15
years, leading large-scale and successful
campaigning to strengthen U.S. political
commitment to overcoming hunger and
poverty. Before that, he served at the World
Bank for 15 years, overseeing large projects
and driving innovations to make the Bank
more effective in reducing poverty.
He served as President of the Muslim

Students Association of the United States &
Canada, Member of (MSA), Majlis AlShura of The Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA). He is a founding member
of International Charitable Foundation
(KWT), the Association of Muslim Social
Scientists (AMSS), and the Association of
Muslim Scientists & Engineers (AMSE).
Mr. Beckmann earned degrees from Yale,

Christ Seminary, and the London School of
Economics, and five universities have
awarded him honorary doctorates. He is a
clergyman as well as an economist. He has
written many books and articles, including:
Transforming the Politics of Hunger and
Grace at the table: Ending Hunger in Gods
World.
Dr. Barzinji served as advisor and consultant

to various educational, charitable and
professional organizations. He delivered
numerous lectures and wrote articles on
various topics on Islamic Thought, Banking,
20

MirzaAbuJafarBeg
Moulana Mirza AbuJafar BegImam is Imam

and Khatib of the Jamaica, NY Muslim
Center and Principal of the centers weekend
school. He is a former Imam and Khatib of
Masjidul Akbar Dhaka, Bangladesh,
Principal of Islamia Aliya Madrasa, Dhaka,
and founder of Anitur Rahman complex,
Barisal
the area of Education as well as other City

of Ottawa awards for valuable services to
community children in year 2006. He is an
Engineer by profession, with over 30 years
of experience in Dawa in North America.
He has held various volunteer national/local
elected positions with MSA, ISNA, and
MAS. He is one of the founders of Human
Concern International. He is actively
developing and delivering training programs
to various Muslim communities all over the
world. He is a regular speaker in ISNA,
ICNA, MSA, MAC and MAS conventions
IsraBhatty
Imam Begs Educational Background

includes Kamil from hadith, tafseer and
fekaguru from Aliyah madrasa;Dowrah
hadith from dawandinesab; Quiraat from
Muminbari, Kumila; and Tafseer from
Mukahtil Mukarama.
MohamedRidaBeshir
Dr. Mohamed Rida Beshir is the co-author
of four best-selling books on family issues
and parenting: Parenting in the West,
Muslim Teens, Blissful Marriage, and
Parenting Skills as well as other parenting
books in Arabic. Several of his parenting
books have been translated to many other
languages. Dr. Beshir, who is teaching two
parenting courses with the Islamic American
University, is a regular contributor to the
family section of several Magazines and an
adviser for the Islam online websites family
section. Dr. Beshir is the recipient of the
City of Ottawa Certificate of Appreciation
for the year 2003 for his volunteer work in
Bhatty graduated from The University of

Chicago in 2006 with majors in economics
and near eastern languages and literature.
She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a
college junior and won many prizes for
leadership and scholarship at The University
of Chicago. Bhatty founded a tutoring
program in Chicago, was an English-Urdu
translator of detainees at Guantanamo Bay,
led a Chicago coalition on criminal justice
reform, and has worked closely with
Chicagos inner-city Muslim Action
Network. She also founded and captained
an intramural champion womens football
team and is a hip-hop artist and poet.
At Oxford she is pursuing a M.Phil. in
evidence-based social intervention, with a
focus on programs for people of color,
immigrants, and substance abusers. Bhatty is
also looking forward to working with the
21

country's South Asian and Muslim
populations.
ImanBibars
Based in Cairo, Egypt, Dr. Iman Bibars is

launching Ashoka's program in the ARAB
WORLD. Iman has a BA and an MA in
Political Science from the American
University in Cairo (AUC), and a Ph.D. in
Development Studies from Sussex
University in the UK. Iman also joined the
Georgetown University Arab Studies MA
Program and was a Parvin Fellow at
Princeton. Iman is a regional expert with
more then 22 years experience in the social
sector of the Arab World and the Africa
region. She has committed her life to work
with marginalized and voiceless groups,
such as female heads of households in the
poorest slums of Egypt, street children,
street vendors and garbage collectors. She
has worked with many international
agencies and NGOs, including UNICEF,
Catholic Relief Services, CARE-Egypt,
GTZ and KFW. Iman is herself a social
entrepreneur, and co-founded and chaired
The Association for the Development and
Enhancement of Women (ADEW), an NGO
providing credit and legal aid for poor
women who head their households.
Shaykh Yaser Birjas is originally from the

Holy Land and was born in Kuwait in 1970.
He started his career in Electronic
Engineering in 1988 in the UAE, then in
Madinah where he graduated as class
Valedictorian with the highest honors from
The Islamic University of Madinahs
College of Shariah (Fiqh and Usool) in
1996.
In 1997, after the war was over, he went to
work as a relief program aide under the
international umbrella of relief agencies to
rebuild the war-torn Bosnia. Thereafter, and
in the year 2000, he immigrated to the U.S.
Yaser Birjas is presently residing in El Paso,
Texas. He was the Imam and religious
leader at The Islamic Center in El Paso since
his arrival until the end of 2007.
He is also an instructor at AlMaghrib
Institute, an organization that provides
trademark double-weekend seminars in
Islamic studies. And a co-founder of
Practimate.com a world-class marriage
training program for practical practicing
Muslims in the West. He travels around the
nation to teach academic classes in Islamic
studies as well as to speak on different social
subjects pertinent to the lives of Muslims in
the West.
YaserBirjas
22

KemalBozkurt
ZahidHussainBukhari
Kemal Bozkurt is Reference Librarian at

Lawrance Public Library in MA. He has BS
in Arabic Literature and Language from
Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey, MS in
Banking and Insurance from Marmara
University, Istanbul Turkey and currently
pursuing MS degree in Information Library
Science , Southern Connecticut State
University, New Haven CT.
Dr. Zahid H. Bukhari is currently working

as Director, American Muslim Studies
Program (AMSP) at the Prince Alwaleed
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding,
Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
From 1999-2004, he also worked as Director
Project MAPS: Muslims in American Public
Square, which examined the role and
contribution of the Muslim community to
the American public life. The Pew
Charitable Trusts awarded a grant of $1.25
million for this purpose. In January, Dr.
Bukhari was elected President of Islamic
Circle of North America (ICNA) for 20092010. He is also serving as Executive
Director of the Center for Islam and Public
Policy (CIPP). Dr. Bukharis research
interests focused on religion and politics in
the United States and South Asia. He has a
vast experience in all aspects of survey
research. From 1978-1983, he worked as
executive director of the Pakistan Institute of
Public Opinion (PIPO), Islamabad, a
member of Gallup International. He has
published and presented papers on Islam and
development, Muslim public opinion in the
US and other related topics in national and
international forums. He is also editor of two
volumes of the Project MAPS: Muslims
Place in the American Public Square: Fears,
Hopes and Aspirations and Muslim in
America: Engaging Polity and Society in
Post 9/11 Era (forthcoming). Dr. Bukhari
has a Masters in Economics from the
University of Karachi and Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Connecticut.
Mr Bozkurt is the founder and publisher of

the Green Pages Muslim Business Directory
and Editor-in-Chief of habername.com, a
Turkish Daily Online Newspaper, reporter
for AKRA FM radio station. He is also the
president of kemalpasha.com an online
wholesale Turkish products business. He
He is a member of Zoning Board of City of
Lawrance, MA, State Delegate for
Democtatic Party, MA and School
Committee Candidate for City of Lawrance,
MA.
He is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of
habername.com and mgreenpages.com,
Boston, MA. He is married with three
children and lives in Lawrance MA.
23

ShahidButtar
Shahid Buttar, is Executive Director of the
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
(BORDC) and the Peoples Campaign for
the Constitution (PCC), two organizations
aimed at raising awareness about the
impacts of national security policies on civil
liberties and privacy interests. Previously he
served as Counsel to Muslim Advocates
Program to Combat Racial & Religious
Profiling. Buttar has long advocated in
defense of the Constitution.
A 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, he
served as Professor Lawrence Lessigs
Constitutional Law Teaching Assistant and
as Executive Editor of the Stanford
Environmental Law Journal. Based in
Washington, DC, from 2003 to 2008, Buttar
also served the American Constitution
Society for Law & Policy as Associate
Director for Communications & Outreach.
As a musician, Shahid has performed around
the world for audiences as large as 50,000.
His debut CD, Get Outta Your Chair, was
released in 2008 and features music from the
funk, blues, hip-hop, house, drum 'n bass,
and South Asian fusion traditions, including
Bumpin in My SUV and the Baghdad
Blues.
SarahCady
Ms. Cady supports partner agencies in the

Reception and Placement Program. Prior to
working at USCRI HQ, Ms. Cady worked
with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in
New York City as a Program Associate
supporting resettlement around the United
States. She has also worked as a refugee
Case Manager/Job Developer in USCRIs
Albany field office and as an Americorps
member with the International Rescue
Committee in Baltimore, Maryland. Ms.
Cady received a dual B.A. in International
Relations and French Language, Literature
and Culture from Syracuse University in
New York State. She studied in Strasbourg,
France and is proficient in French.
MasoodCajee
Masood Cajee is a California-based dentist,

journalist, and Muslim thought leader. In
2003, he completed a Masters in Public
Health at the Harvard School of Public
Health and was a California Endowment
Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard
University. As an undergraduate in 1993,
Masood created cybermuslim, the first
Islamic-oriented site on the Internet.
Currently he is a contributing editor at
Fellowship magazine and a columnist for
altmuslim.com. He has written on interfaith
relations, current events, and policy issues
for various publications including the
Buddhist journal Turning Wheel,
Fellowship, counterpunch.org, Minaret,
Adbusters, Beliefnet.com, and Britains QNews. A board member of the Muslim
Peace Fellowship, Masood also serves as a
senior member of the Muslim Public Affairs
24

Council, and has served on several other
boards including the National Council of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, the nations
oldest and largest interfaith peace and justice
organization. He continues to advise various
community, media, and philanthropic
organizations in the United States and
abroad. Having visited 45 states and over 25
countries on four continents, Masood now
resides in northern California with his wife
and two sons.
AndrCarson
Congressman Andr Carson is a 34-year-old

native of Indianapolis, Indiana. Raised and
mentored by his grandmother,
Congresswoman Julia Carson, he learned
from a young age the values of compassion,
integrity and determination. He went on to
obtain a Bachelors degree in Criminal
Justice Management from Concordia
University-Wisconsin and a Masters in
Business Management from Indiana
Wesleyan University.
For almost a full decade, Andr devoted
himself to law enforcement and the
protection of Hoosiers across Indianapolis.
He first served as a Local Board
Investigative Officer for the Indiana State
Excise Police for nine years before being
detailed to the Indiana Department of
Homeland Security's Intelligence Fusion
Center in 2006. Congressman Carson
currently serves on the prestigious Financial
Services Committee, which oversees all
components of the nation's housing and

financial services sectors including banking,
insurance, real estate, public and assisted
housing, and securities. His ambitious
agenda includes working to create economic
opportunity for Hoosiers, pushing forward
comprehensive affordable healthcare
legislation, working to responsibly bring an
end to the war in Iraq and to restore
Americas role as a respected global leader.
SamiCatovic
Sami Catovic is a NewJersey attorney; Phd
Student at Temple University - Department
of religion; Adjunct Professor - Temple
University, Department of Religion; Board
member of New Jersey Muslim Attorneys;
Member of ISNA Executive Council - EZ
Representative; Co-Chair of 2009 National
Convention Program
RobertChase
In September 2007, The Rev. Robert Chase

was called to be the Founding Director of
Intersections, a new justice-based global
initiative of the Collegiate Church of New
York. Previously, Chase served as Director
of Communication for the 1.2 million
member United Church of Christ. At the
United Church of Christ, he was responsible
for the denomination's efforts in public
relations; marketing and education through
print, radio, video and emerging electronic
technologies. He also served as Executive
Director of the UCC's Office of
Communication, Inc., the church's historic
25

media justice agency, was responsible for
the UCC's multiple web sites and served as
publisher of United Church News with its
circulation of more than 200,000.
Among other marketing efforts for the UCC,
he was a principle architect of the church's
award winning "God is still speaking,"
identity campaign. Chase has served
congregations in New York and New Jersey
and was founder and President of Creative
Connections in Media, a full-service
communications company. He is an awardwinning video producer with more than 100
productions to his credit and he has standing
as an ordained minister in the United Church
of Christ.
OwaizM.Dadabhoy
Owaiz M. Dadabhoy, Investment Manager,

California, joined Saturna Capital in August
of 2008. Raised in Southern California, he
earned a BA in Business Administration
from California State University at
Fullerton. Mr. Dadabhoy spent over 15 years
at Wells Fargo and was most recently a
District Manager in Long Beach. Prior to
that, he was Senior Sales Director for Wells
Fargos Wealth Management group in Los
Angeles where he managed six Sales
Directors and led a team of over 200
licensed bankers. Mr. Dadabhoy is active
with charitable and community activities,
co-founding the UPLIFT Charitable
Corporation in 2006. He is married with two
children and enjoys spending time with his
family in various outdoor activities.
YusufTalalDeLorenzo
Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo is currently the

Chief Shariah Officer and Board Member at
Shariah Capital.
Shaykh Yusuf is a well-known and
respected Shariah advisor and Islamic
scholar whose career spans more than 30
years. Based in the Washington, DC area, he
serves as a Shariah advisor to over 20 global
financial entities, including index providers,
banks, mutual funds, real estate funds,
leasing funds, institutional investors, home
finance providers, alternative asset managers
and others.
Shaykh Yusuf is the author of A
Compendium of Legal Opinions on the
Operations of Islamic Banks, the first
English reference on the fatawa issued by
Shariah boards. His three-volume
publication has become the standard
reference for Islamic financial institutions.
In addition, Shaykh Yusuf wrote the
introduction to Islamic Bonds, the 2003
book that introduced Sukuk and transformed
the worlds Islamic capital markets. His
written work has appeared in journals and
newsletters and as chapters in books,
including Euromoneys Islamic Asset
Management, Islamic Retail Finance and
Islamic Finance: Innovation & Growth. His
entries on the terminology of Islamic
Finance appear in The Oxford Dictionary of
Islam.
Shaykh Yusuf is also a special consultant,
appointed by the Asian Development Bank
and the Islamic Development Bank in
Jeddah to the International Financial
26

Services Board (IFSB) on the subject of
Sukuk. IFSB is the international standardsetting body of regulatory and supervisory
agencies that have a vested interest in
ensuring the soundness and stability of the
Islamic financial services industry, broadly
defined to include banking, capital markets
and insurance.
NAACP Criminal Justice Conferences

(Jamaica, New York), and others; as well as
co-authoring a paper presented at the Annual
Conference of the American Public Health
Association (1995).
SusanDouglass
MikailDeVeaux
Mikail DeVaux has over 25 years of

experience working with men incarcerated
in New York State maximum-security
prisons and many who released following
long periods of confinement. DeVeaux
received a Bachelors of Business
Administration degree from Bernard M.
Baruch College (CUNY), a Masters of
Professional Studies degree from the New
York Theological Seminary, and a Masters
of Arts degree from The College at New
Paltz (SUNY). DeVeaux has published
papers in New Directions in Evaluation: a
Publication of the American Evaluation
Association, The Journal of Offender
Rehabilitation, and Crescent International.
Other writings include You Are Almost
There, a small narrative that focuses on
incarcerated Muslims, Imagine This, a
chapbook of poems and has had several
other poems featured in various
publications. He has presented papers and
made presentations at a variety of venues
including: the 45th and 46th Annual
Meeting of the American Society of
Criminology, Muslim Alliance in North
America (1st and 2nd) Annual Conference,
Susan Douglass has an M.A. in Arab Studies

from Georgetown University, a B.A. in
History from the University of Rochester,
and is currently in the doctoral program at
George Mason University. During 2006, she
was Senior Researcher for the United
Nations Alliance of Civilizations. She
served as an Affiliated Scholar with the
Council on Islamic Education for over a
decade, reviewing over a dozen commercial
textbooks in development, reviewing state
standards, and developing instructional
resources.
Major publications include World Eras: Rise
and Spread of Islam, 622-1500
(Thompson/Gale, 2002), teaching resources
for the Council on Islamic Education and the
National Center for History in the Schools, a
childrens book Ramadan (Carolrhoda
Books, 2002), Teaching About Religion in
National and State Social Studies Standards
(Freedom Forum First Amendment Center
and Council on Islamic Education, 2000),
and many articles and book chapters. She
contributed to online teaching resources
such as the IslamProject.org, the
Smithsonian Freer Gallery teaching guide
Arts of Islam, and the online curriculum
World History for Us All, and designed The
Indian Ocean in World History online
27

resource. For the past three years she has
conducted the educational outreach program
at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for
Muslim Christian Understanding.
JeanF.Duff
Jean Duff is a seasoned management

professional with broad experience in the
start-up of non-profit social enterprises, and
for-profit businesses, and in the management
of their growth. She is the Executive
Director of CIFA (Center for Interfaith
Action). She brings experience developing
all aspects of service and policy
organizations, including building cross
sector collaborations, program development
and evaluation, strategic planning and
marketing, public and community relations,
and fundraising. For the past 17 years she
has worked exclusively with organizations
serving the poor and advocating for social
justice.
A.J.Durrani
A.J. Durrani is a grassroots political activist

in the greater Houston area, and was
recently elected to the Texas State
Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC)
as the male representative of the Asian
American Democrats of Texas (AADT). He
is presently Vice President of AADT and the
Primary Coordinator/Spokesperson for the
Coalition of New American Communities

(CONAC), which is a non-profit political
action group, established to improve and
increase political awareness in "new
Americans". CONAC efforts have led to
thousands of new registered voters, over 70
Precincts Chairs in the Houston area, and
recently culminated in a historic first -- the
election of three Muslims to the Texas
SDEC. A.J. has been active in local Islamic
Community organizations for over 25 years
having held Shura (Board of Director)
positions with the Islamic Society of Greater
Houston and in Denver and New Orleans.
One of his primary areas of focus has been
full-time Islamic Education, and he has been
instrumental in the creation and
establishment of five Islamic schools. He
has also led the efforts to establish Islamic
Boy Scouts troops in the local communities.
Besides Islamic-related community
activities, A.J. has held leadership positions
in mainstream civic and local community
organizations like charitable institutions,
school district committees, and homeowner
associations. He has a BS in Petroleum
Engineering from Milan, Italy and an MS
from Penn State Univ.
BobEdgar
Rev. Dr. Robert William (Bob) Edgar is

president and CEO of Common Cause, a
nonpartisan government watchdog
organization, effective May 2007. He served
as a Democratic member of the United
28

States House of Representatives from 1975
to 1987, representing the 7th district of
Pennsylvania.
Prior to his position as president and CEO of
Common Cause, he came from the post of
general secretary of the National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the U.S. (NCC),
the leading U.S. organization in the
movement for Christian unity. n May 2007,
Bob Edgar was named president and CEO of
Common Cause, a national nonpartisan,
non-profit "citizens" lobby working to make
government at all levels more honest, open
and accountable, and to connect citizens
with their democracy.
Bob arrived at Common Cause with a long
history of leadership and public service that
included 12 years in Congress. He was the
general secretary of the National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the USA for seven
years immediately before arrivingg at
Common Cause.
(BAHCIA). She is the recipient of

numerous civil rights awards which include
the Civil Rights Leadership Award from
the California Association of Human
Relations Organizations, the Human
Relations Award from the Santa Clara
County Human Relations office, and the
"Citizen of the Year" Award from the Santa
Clara County Board of Supervisors. Ms.
ElGenaidi has spoken to hundreds of
schools, churches, police departments,
corporations and other public institutions,
has appeared on numerous television and
radio programs, and is author of seven
training handbooks on outreach for
American Muslims, as well as eight training
modules for public institutions on
"developing cultural competency with the
American Muslim community". Ms.
ElGenaidi is currently ING's CEO.
KeithEllison
MahaElGenaidi
Maha ElGenaidi is the Founder and

President of Islamic Networks Group (ING).
She is a former commissioner on Lt.
Governor Cruz Bustamante's "Commission
for One California", Commissioner on Santa
Clara County Human Relations
Commission, and Advisor to California's
Commission on Police Officers Standards &
Training (POST) for hate crimes and
cultural diversity training, and former Cochair and Vice-chair of the Bay Area Hate
Crimes Investigators Association
Keith Ellison has represented the Fifth

Congressional District of Minnesota in the
U.S. House of Representatives since taking
office on January 4, 2007. The Fifth
Congressional District is the most vibrant
and ethnically diverse district in Minnesota
with a rich history and traditions. The Fifth
District includes the City of Minneapolis
and the surrounding suburbs. Representative
Ellison's philosophy is one of "generosity
and inclusiveness." His roots as a
community activist and his message of
inclusivity through democratic participation
29

resonates throughout the Fifth District. His
priorities in Congress are: promoting peace,
prosperity for working families, and
promoting civil and human rights.
JohnEsposito
GaziErdem
Dr. Gazi Erdem has a BS Degree in

Religious Studies from the Divinity Faculty
of Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey. He
holds Two MA degrees; first one is Islamic
History from Uludag University, Bursa
Turkey where he studied The Knowledge at
the era of Memun the Abbasid Caliph and
the other degree is in Islamic Studies from
Selly Oak College of Birmingham
University, UK where he studies Orthodox
Church under Ottoman Empire in the
Sixteenth Century. He completed his Ph.D
degree in Islamic History from Ankara
University, Ankara, Turkey where he
studied Christians under Ottoman Empire
between 1856 and 1876.
After serving as an imam and preacher
(Vaiz) in Bursa, Turkey for many years, he
has hold for various managerial positions at
the Religious Affairs of Turkey (Diyanet).
He has been the Attache for Religious
Affairs to the NY Consulate General of
Turkey.
Dr. Erdem is expert in many areas such as
Islamic History, Islamic Cililizations,
Religious leadership, Interreligious Dialogue
in Islamic Sources and History, Ottoman
History and Christians under the Ottoman
Empire.
John Esposito is a University Professor as

well as Professor of Religion and
International Affairs and of Islamic Studies
at Georgetown University, Dr. Esposito is
Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed
Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding.
A consultant to the Department of State as
well as corporations and the media
worldwide, Esposito specializes in Islam,
political Islam, and the impact of Islamic
movements from North Africa to Southeast
Asia. He is currently a member of the World
Economic Forum's Council of 100 Leaders
and a recipient of the American Academy of
Religion's 2005 Martin E. Marty Award for
the Public Understanding of Religion.
Esposito is Editor-in-Chief of the 4 volume
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic
World. His more than 30 books include:
Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (a
Washington Post and Boston Globe best
seller), What Everyone Needs to Know
About Islam, The Islamic Threat: Myth or
Reality?; Islam: The Straight Path; Islam
and Politics; Islam and Democracy and
Makers of Contemporary Islam (with John
Voll); and Who Speaks for Islam: What a
Billion Muslims Really Think: With Dalia
Mogahed.
30

SaleemahAbdulGhafur
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur is an author and
activist (faith-based initiatives and gender
equality in Islam). She works with Malaria
No More, a leading non-profit formed to
advance the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals by ending malariarelated deaths by 2012. She also consults on
a variety of interfaith projects and
volunteerism efforts.
ImanFaris
community project to help with and to learn

from whether it was a relief effort, a youth
activity, or mosque building.
Today, Iman continues his involvement as a
leader and organizer. He is extensively
involved in youth work; managing youth
camps, delivering lectures to high school
students and training youth leaders. He has
also been involved with local projects,
including: annual festivals on the occasion
of Eid, as board member of several local
organizations, including Abraar School,
host of the local Muslim radio show, and
coordinator and contributor to a variety of
local, regional and national Muslim
community lectures, conferences, and
working groups. Iman is supported by his
wife Zameela, daughter Ayesha, and the rest
of his community-minded family.
ManzoorGhori
Mr. Iman M. Faris is a senior management

consultant, with a career spanning multiple
industries from training and political
advocacy to technology and construction.
Through his decades of experience in a
diversity of organizations and industries, he
brings his clients a global awareness of best
practices, change management principles,
and proven coaching methods.
Iman grew up in the North American
Muslim community; his family was one of
the pioneers that helped establish the
community. From his formative years,
Imans parents drove home a sense of
community and imparted to him and his
siblings a rigorous sense of duty to give
back to society. There was always a
Manzoor Ghori is the founder and chairman

of the Indian Muslim Relief & Charities
(IMRC). IMRC has been working since
1982 to provide education, humanitarian and
health care services to the orphans and the
needy in India. IMRC also provides medical
and emergency aid during natural disasters
and man made disasters such as riots.
He has been active in Muslim community in
North America since the early 70s. He was
the founding member of Muslim
31

Community Association, Santa Clara, CA
and Islamic Society of East Bay, Fremont,
CA.
Manzoor Ghori founded Ameen Housing
Cooperative Inc. in 1994. This organization
provides an alternative for home buyers
looking for ways to avoid interest-based
bank loans.
He is the founder and board member of
North American Islamic Shelter for the
Abused (NISA) that supports victims of
domestic abuse.
Manzoor was also on the advisory board of
Council of American Islamic Relations
(CAIR), an advocacy group for justice and
mutual understanding and Islamic Network
Group (ING) which delivers educational
programs relating to Islam and Muslims.
He is the founder & chairman of
Jahangirabad Education Trust, India. This
trust launched Jahangirabad Media Institute
in 2005 and is about to launch a university Jahangirabad Institute of Technology - in
2007.
GhulamNabiFai
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is the Executive
Director of the Washington-based Kashmiri
American Council /Kashmir Center. He is
the founding chairman of the San Francisco
based Global Peace Forum and the
Chairman London-based Justice Foundation.
Dr. Fai is also the Member of the Board of
Director of Istanbul-based the Union of the
NGOs of the Islamic World.
participated in the 41st thru 57th Sessions of

the United Nations Sub - Commission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection
of Minorities at Geneva. He attended the 1st,
2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th sessions of the United
Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in
2006 & 2007. He was invited to attend the
3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Summit of the
Head of the States of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference in January 1981 in
Makkah, Saudi Arabia; December 1992 in
Dakar, Senegal; in December 1994 in
Casablanca, Morocco; in December 1997 in
Tehran, Iran; in November 2000 in Doha,
Qatar; and in October, 2003 in Putrajaya,
Malaysia respectively. He addressed the
preliminary session at the Centennial
Conference of Parliament of the World's
Religions in Chicago in August 1993. He
participated in the 42nd Session of the
United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women in New York in March 1998. He
addressed the 14th International Conference
on Conflict Resolution in St. Petersburg,
Russia in May 2006. He also addressed the
Fourth International Conference on Global
Good in Honolulu, Hawaii in June 2006.
Dr. Fai has been a leading spokesman for
the Kashmir cause for over three decades
and has traveled to over forty countries
lecturing on the subject. His articles
appeared in The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Washington Times,
Chicago tribune, Wall Street Journal,
Financial Times, Plain Dealer, Baltimore
Sun and many other foreign policy journals
in the United States and around the world.
He has been living in exile since August
1980 for his political beliefs. He is married
and has two children.
He addressed the 46th thru 61st Sessions of

the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights (UNCHR) at Geneva; and also
32

MaryamKabeerFaye
Sheikha Maryam Kabeer Faye was guided

from a young age to make the journey in
search of Truth. At twelve, she was given a
scroll with a painting of an ancient man
walking through mountains, upon which,
were the words: SEEK AND THE TRUTH
SHALL MAKE YOU FREE.
From that moment on, her life became a
journey in search of the liberating Truth.
Born Jewish, she embraced Islam in El
Khalil, ten minutes away from the burial
place of the Prophet Ibrahim (a.s.) at the
hands of an ancient Sufi Sheikh. Since then,
she has studied with Sufi Masters
intensively around the world, on a journey
of transformation culminating in West
Africa.
Her book, JOURNEY THROUGH TEN
THOUSAND VEILS, The Alchemy of
Transformation on the Sufi Path, which
documents both the inner and outer journey,
is a revealing social commentary, dispelling
many stereotypes such as the proposition,
that women are inevitably oppressed in
Islam. On the contrary, it is by entering into
the heart of Islam that the author was
liberated, elevated, and guided to realize the
true purpose of her existence.
Sheikha Maryam Kabeer Faye is a teacher,
speaker and writer on Islam and spirituality.
She travels extensively throughout the
world, building bridges of light, knowledge,
and understanding.
FatemehFakhraie
Fatemeh Fakhraie is an editor, writer, and

blogger who writes about issues related to
Muslims, feminism, race, and politics in
several print and online outlets, including
Racialicious, ReligionDispatches, and Bitch
magazine. She founded and currently serves
as editor of Muslimah Media Watch, a
website dedicated to analyzing
representations of Muslim women in global
media. She is also an associate editor of the
new online magazine Altmuslimah.
JessGhannam
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of

Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at the
University of California, San Francisco and
Adjunct Professor of Ethnic Studies at San
Francisco State University. He is a
Psychoanalyst and practices in San
Francisco and the East Bay.
Dr. Ghannam specializes in working with
chronic illness, including chronic pain and
cancer. He also works and does research in
the area of Global Health and Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Ghannam is
33

also a Qualified Medical Examiner (QME)
for the State of California.
Region Religious Campaign Against Torture

and is an attorney.
SafiyaGhori
SteveGutow
Safiya is currently the Muslim Public

Affairs Council Program Director in the
Washington DC office. She earned a joint
Juris Doctor and Master of Arts in May
2006 from the University of Arkansas.
Safiya clerked for the Arkansas Attorney
General in the Public Protection Division
where she focused on fraud and
discrimination cases. As an Equal Justice
Works Fellow she worked at the Tahirih
Justice Center in Falls Church, VA where
she researched and administered VAWA
(Violence Against Women Act) and asylum
cases for Muslim women who were victims
of domestic violence.
While completing her M.A., Safiya taught
Introduction to Comparative Politics at the
University of Arkansas for two years. Safiya
was also the student editor of the Journal of
Islamic Law and Culture for two years. She
has studied and worked in many countries
including India, Morocco and Russia. Safiya
is fluent in Hindi and Urdu and was born in
Little Rock, Arkansas.
Rabbi Steve Gutow is Executive Director of

the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. After
working for nearly 30 years as an attorney
and in Jewish and political activities, Gutow
focused his career on his faith and
community and attended the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where
he received his ordination in 2003. Gutow,
who spent more than a decade practicing
law in Texas, served as chair of the Dallas
Jewish Community Relations Council and
then went on to serve as the founding
regional director of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee's Southwest
Region, where he forged alliances with
Republicans and Democrats. He also
organized the pro-Israel lobby's efforts in six
southwestern states and helped create
chapters in nearly 40 cities.
Gutow went on to become the founding
executive director of the National Jewish
Democratic Council, where he led national
groups in formulating strategies to maintain
First Amendment religious freedoms.
Following his ordination, Gutow became the
first full-time rabbi at the Reconstructionist
Minyan of St. Louis where he served as the
St. Louis Rabbinical Association
representative to the Jewish Community
Relations Council of St. Louis.
LindaGustitus
Linda Gustitus serves as President of the
National Religious Campaign against
torture. Linda is the past board chair of the
River Road Unitarian Universalist
Congregation and lives in Washington, DC.
She is the founder of the Washington
34

SaraHakeem
Sara Hakeem has recently matriculated from

Teach for America Chicagos 2007 corps.
For the past two years, she has taught 7th
grade Language Arts at Gary Elementary
School in Chicago. She received her
Bachelor of Arts in English and Linguistics
from the University of Texas at Austin in
May 2007. This fall, she will begin a PhD
program in Comparative Literature at the
University of Michigan Ann Arbor.
RabiaTerriHarris
Rabia Terri Harris is an essayist, editor,

peace activist, public intellectual, practicing
chaplain, freelance theologian, sometime
translator, and aspiring servant of Allah. She
founded the Muslim Peace Fellowship in
1994 and serves as its Executive Director.
Harris received her Bachelors degree from
Princeton University in the field of Religion,
her Masters from Columbia University in
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and

holds a Graduate Certificate in Islamic
Chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary. After
two decades of general spiritual studies,
Harris has spent the last fifteen years
concentrating on the theory and practice of
Islamic nonviolence. She is presently
organizing the Muslim "house" of a tripartite
Abrahamic peace community centered
around an organic gardening project at the
Stony Point Conference Center in Stony
Point, NY.
MohamedHagmagidAli
Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali is the Vice

President of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA) and also serves as the
executive director of the All Dulles Area
Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling,
Virginia. He was born in Sudan, the son of a
leading Islamic Scholar and the Mufti of
Sudan. Imam Magid studied at the hand of
his father and other notable scholars, gaining
ijaza in several disciplines, including
Ghazali's Ihya-Uloom-al-Deen. Imam
Magid is also well known as an effective
communicator to our youth and for work
with other organizations and interfaith
dialogue. Imam Magid is also well known
for his counseling and family counseling
expertise. His other Islamic activities and
responsibilities include: East Zone
Representative on ISNA Executive Council
from 2001 to present; Chair, Fairfax (VA)
Faith Communities in Action; Member,
Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan
Washington Assembly; Member of the
Arab, Muslim Sikh Advisory Committee to
35

the FBI Washington Field Office; Board,
Fairfax Youth Partnership.
MarkHanson
AsmaHanif
She has been a practicing Muslim for over

25 years, graduated from Howard
University, and the Medical University of
South Carolina. She is a Certified Nurse
Midwife, Naturopathic Physician, Clinical
Herbologist and Natural Childbirth
Instructor. She teaches workshops on
How To Prevent Breast Cancer Through
Diet and Self-Breast Exams, Fertility
Awareness How To Achieve or Avoid
Pregnancy, Maintaining Vaginal Health
Naturally, as well as authored a rape
prevention pamphlet entitled, What A
Woman Doesnt Know Can Hurt Her. In
1995, she established Al-Nisaa, Wholistic
Health, Education and Social Services
Center, a faith-based practice, in order to
provide health services for underserved and
uninsured women and children.
Sister Asma Hanif is presently operating a
holistic health center, teaching at Coppin
State University, providing, and organizing
volunteer health services in public schools,
providing health services to the homeless, to
women in shelters, to those in group homes,
and to those in foster care, as well as
organizing community based outreach
programs which include, adolescent health
services/AIDS prevention program,
performing physicals to the mentally and
physically challenged - allowing them to be
able to participate in the Special Olympics,
providing free blood pressure screenings in
community centers for the elderly.
Mark S. Hanson is the third, and current,

Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America. In 2003,
Hanson was elected President of the
Lutheran World Federation, a role which he
serves concurrently with his role as ELCA
Presiding Bishop. He serves on the
executive council on the executive board of
the National Council of Churches of Christ
in the U.S.A. Hanson is author of Faithful
Yet Changing: The Church in Challenging
Times (Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis:
2002). In 2007 Hanson was reelected on the
second ballot, thus will become during this
term the longest-serving Presiding Bishop in
the ELCA's history. (The ELCA's first
Presiding Bishop, Herbert W. Chilstrom,
served two 4-year terms.)
AzizaHasan
Aziza Co-Directs NewGround: A MuslimJewish Partnership for Change. The program

is a joint endeavor between the Muslim
Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the
Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and
brings members of both faith communities
together for frank, substantive dialogue.
Facilitated conversations, explore issues at
36

the personal, local, national and global
levels. New Ground doesn t shy away from
discussing the tough topics such as, identity,
gender, pluralism and Israel/Palestine.
Dialogue sessions are based on the premise
that honest communication forges
meaningful relationships; from these grow
camaraderie and genuine friendship.
Aziza also coordinates inter-faith relations
for MPAC by working with religious
leadership in Southern California in the
areas of social justice, community education
and outreach, and youth engagement. She
has led numerous workshops for
international scholar forums, at conferences,
university/college campuses, civic and
religious groups on inter-faith dialogue,
community organizing, and youth leadership
training. Aziza has given various speeches
to audiences across the country that included
introductions to Islam, forgiveness and
peace in Islamic tradition, and conflict
resolution in Muslim communities.
Council on International Policy, the western

partner of the Council on Foreign Relations,
and sits on the Board of Directors of the
Interfaith Alliance. Dr. Hathout has been
invited to Capitol Hill and the State
Department several times to address a
variety of topics such as "Islam and U.S.
Policy," "Islamic Democracy," "Emerging
Trends in Islamic Movements," and "the
Future of the Middle East." He has traveled
to Australia, Egypt, Kuwait, Malaysia,
Pakistan, and South Africa to lecture on
Islam and Muslims. Dr. Hathout has written
extensively on Islam, human rights,
democracy, Middle East politics, and
Bosnia. His articles and interviews have
appeared in such prominent newspapers as
The Los Angeles Times, The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal and The
Christian Science Monitor. He appears
frequently on national television and radio
talk shows.
AbidaK.Haque
MaherHathout
Maher Hathout is a leading spokesperson for

the American Muslim community, is a
retired physician best known for his tireless
commitment to public service. He is an
international figure who is highly regarded
as a positive voice of Islam offering a
unique and valuable perspective on national
and international issues involving Muslims.
Among the numerous offices he holds, Dr.
Hathout is MPAC's Senior Advisor. He is
also a Charter Member of the Pacific
Abida K. Haque, MD is Professor of

Pathology at Cornell Weill Medical School,
New York, and Attending Pathologist at the
Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX
She graduated from Osmania Medical
College, Hyderabad, India, and underwent
postgraduation training in Obstetrics &
Gynecology in Hyderabad, India. Dr.
Haque emigrated to Canada, and had
postgraduation training in Pathology at the
Ottawa Medical College, Ottawa, Canada.
She then moved with her family to USA in
1979, and attained the rank of full Professor
at The University of Texas Medical School
at Galveston, TX.
Currently she is Professor and Attending
Pathologist at The Methodist Hospital,
Houston, TX.
Dr. Haque has more than 100 peer-reviewed
papers and presentations, Co-Edited 5 books
37

on Pulmonary Pathology, and contributed
approximately 50 book chapters on
Pulmonary Pathology in these texts.
NajiyahDianaHelwani
Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, TX;

Artists Space in New York, NY; Sculpture
Center in New York, NY; Project Row
Houses in Houston, TX; The Wadsworth
Athenaeum in Hartford, CT, LAXART in
Los Angeles, CA, DAmelio Terras in New
York; Arndt & Partner in Zurich,
Switzerland and Thomas Dane in London,
England. Additionally Hewitt has received a
2008 Art Matters Grant and a 2009-2010
Radcliffe Fellowship Residency at Harvard
University.
AltafHusain
Najiyah Diana Helwani is a home-grown
Kansas girl who feels blessed to be Muslim
and of Midwestern heritage. Readers of her
novels, poems and short stories will be
delighted to see how well the two value
systems compliment each other. Currently
at work on Sophias second adventure,
Najiyah invites readers to share their time
travel wish lists on her website http://najiyahhelwani.wordpress.com.
Najiyah lives in Damascus, Syria, where she
teaches English at Yarmouk University and
is collaborating on writing the history of
Kansas Citys Muslims and Arabs with her
husband Bassam. Her six children remind
her whats important in life, and she is also
blessed to have a wonderful co-wife and
three co-kids in Damascus.
LeslieHewitt
Leslie Hewitt was raised in New York City
and studied at the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art (2000), the
Yale School of Art (2004) and at New York
University as a Clark Fellow for
Africana/Cultural Studies (2001-02). She
was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
Recent and forthcoming exhibitions also
include The High Museum in Atlanta, GA;
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The
Altaf Husain is a native of Cleveland, Ohio,

and his research interests include the
integration of immigrant and refugee
families, and especially Muslim adolescents,
in the United States. Dr. Husain is a former
two-term national president of the Muslim
Students Association (MSA), a current
executive committee member of the Muslim
Alliance in North America, a faculty
member of COMPASS - the state of the art
management training program of MSA
National, chair of the Leadership
Development Committee of the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA) and the
Peaceful Families Project - dedicated to the
prevention of domestic violence.
38

LubnaIsmail
Lubna Ismail, founder and president of

Connecting Cultures, Inc., is a training
specialist with over fifteen years of
experience in the areas of cross-cultural
communication, cultural competency, Arab
and American cultures, Islamic awareness
and religious diversity. She is the author of
Doing Business in the Middle East and
North Africa and Finding Diversity. She
is frequently used as an expert by national
media and major international news
programs and recently received press in
Associated Press, The Washington Post,
BBC World News and PBS Religion and
Ethics NewsSelected as a Peace Fellow for
Seeds of Peace and a Malone Fellow in
Middle East and Islamic Studies by the
National Council for U.S. and Arab
Relations, Luby participated in a study visit
to Saudi Arabia. She has been selected to
present at Iraqi Reconstruction conferences,
the Arabian Society for Human Resource
Management conference in Bahrain and the
Society for Human Resources Workplace
Diversity and annual conference as a
professional on the cutting edge of emerging
cultural and religious diversity issues and
Islamic awareness. Luby has been providing
training for hundreds of law enforcement
and military officers on Arab and Muslim
Americans and on Iraq and Iraqi cultural

considerations.
AmeenaJandali
Ameena Jandali is a founding member of
Islamic Networks Group where she works as
Content Development Director and
volunteers as long time speaker and trainer.
Through ING she has delivered hundreds of
presentations in schools, colleges,
universities, churches, and other venues on
Islam and related subjects, and has appeared
on numerous television and radio programs.
Ameena is an editor of ING training
handbooks on outreach for American
Muslims, as well as author and editor of
training modules for public institutions on
developing cultural competency with the
American Muslim community. She currently
team teaches a class on Islam at San
Francisco City College. She received her
M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the
University of California, Berkeley, and B.A.
in History from the University of Illinois.
RizwanJaka
Rizwan O. Jaka Mr. Jaka's community

involvement includes: Board Member of
ADAMS(June 2008- May 2009); Past
President of ADAMS(2002-2008); Past Vice
President of ADAMS(2000-2002); Chair of
the Board of the Interfaith Conference of
Metropolitan Washington, Cub/Boy Scout
Chartered Organizational
Representative(2004-Current); Member of
39

Goose Creek District(Loudoun County) Boy
Scouts of America Committee(200 A
National Convention 2009(Washington 6current); Board Member, Islamic Society of
North America(ISNA)(2008-Current); ISN
DC) Steering Committee Chair(2009);
Chair of DC Area Eid Committee(1997Current); CCMO Election Committee
Chair(2003-2007); ISNA National
Convention 2002(Washington DC) Steering
Committee Chair(2002); ISNA Youth
Strategic Planning Committee(2004); ISNA
East Zone Conference Steering Committee
Chair(2006 and 2007); ISNA Election
Committee(2005-2008); Ashburn Soccer
Club Coach(2003-2005); Dulles little
League Baseball Manager/Coach(20042008); University of Texas Student
Government Representative(1992); Citizens
Affairs Committee Co-Chair, University of
Texas Student Government(1993); Board
Member, of University of Texas, Texas
Student Publications(1995); Editorial
Columnist, University of Texas Daily
Texan(50,000 circulation -1994/1995). Mr.
Jaka graduated with Bachelors of Science in
Computer Science from University of Texas
at Austin in 1995, and presently works as a
Manager of Technology Sales Consulting in
the Technology Industry.
ShaikJeelani
Dr. Shaik Jeelani is professor of Mechanical

Engineering, Vice President for Research
and Sponsored Programs, Director of Center
for Advanced Materials at Tuskegee
University, Tuskegee, AL, and Director of
Ph.D. Program in Materials Science and
Engineering at Tuskegee University
JamillahKarim
Jamillah Karim is Assistant Professor in

religion at Spelman College. She obtained
her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at Duke
University. She specializes in Islam in
America, women and Islam, and race and
immigration. She is author of the book
American Muslim Women: Negotiating
Race, Class, and Gender within the Ummah,
which explores relations between African
American and South Asian immigrant
Muslims in the United States. Karim has
presented her research to several scholarly
communities including Harvard and
Princeton. She lectures frequently within
Muslim communities. In her spare time, she
contributes to Azizah, an American Muslim
40

womens magazine. Jamillah is originally
from Atlanta, GA where she was raised in
an active Muslim community in association
with Imam W.D. Mohammed.
MerveKavakci
MohammadKarim
Mohammad Karim is Vice President for

Research of the Old Dominion University.
He is North American Editor of Optics and
Laser Technology, an Associate Editor of
IEEE Transactions of Education, a Member
of the Editorial Board of Microwave and
Optical Technology Letters and of World
Journal of Modeling and Simulation. He has
served as guest editor of 16 technical journal
issues. Karim is author of 15 text books and
over 325 research papers. He is an elected
fellow of the Optical Society of America,
the Institute of Physics, the Society of
Photo-Instrumentation Engineers, the
Institution of Engineering & Technology,
and Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.
Mohammad Karim serves on the boards of
North American Bangladeshi Islamic
Community (NABIC) and Virginia
Coalition for Community and Justice
(VCCJ); and has served in the past on the
boards of Center for Christian, Jewish, and
Muslim Understanding in New York;
Dayton Islamic School, Inc., in Ohio;
Islamic Council of Ohio; Islamic Education
Foundation of Knoxville in Tennessee;
National Conference of Christians and Jews
in Ohio; and Avicenna Academy in Bronx.
Dr. Merve Kavakci is a Lecturer of

International Affairs at George Washington
University. She is a consultant for US
Congress Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe and a columnist for
Turkish daily Vakit newspaper. Prior to her
academic career she served as the head of
foreign affairs of Welfare-Virtue Partys
Womens Commission. Kavakci was elected
to the Turkish Parliament, the Grand
National Assembly of Turkey in 1999.
However she was prevented from serving
her term by the secular fundamentalists due
to her headscarf.
She took her case to European Court of
Human Rights and won in 2007.
Kavakci holds a Ph. D in political science
from Howard University, an MPA from
Harvard University where she was
recognized as Edward Mason Fellow and a
Bachelor of Science in Computer
Engineering from University of Texas at
Dallas.
She is hafiz-al Quran. Kavakci sits at the
Editorial Board of academic journal,
Mediterranean Quarterly. She is the author
of five books among which are Basortusuz
Demokrasi (Turkish), translated to Arabic
and Persian and forthcoming in English,
French and Italian.
41

YusufKavakci
Dr. Yusuf Ziya Kavakci was born on June

22, 1938 in Hendek, Sakarya, Turkey. At an
early age (8-9 years) he accomplished
memorizing whole Qur'an (Hifz al-Qur'an),
graduated from Hasircilar Qur'anic School
(Adapazari) with a training in Tajwid,
Qira'ah, Arabic (Sarf and Nahw), Tafsir,
Hadih, Fiqh, and allied Islamic Sciences. He
passed national Exams for Waiz (Preacher
and lecturer in Islamic Sciences) and Mufti
(ordained and authorized to give Fatwa and
religious verdict in Islamic field) and
qualified for those jobs. He worked as
Muadhdhin (Professional caller to prayer,
Hirka-i Sharif Mosque), Imam (Kara Ahmed
Pasha Mosque in Topkapi), and Waiz in the
governorships Fatih and Beyoglu in
Istanbul.
Dr. Kavakci received a bachelor's degrees in
Law from The College of Law of Istanbul
University and also in Islamic Studies from
the Institute of Higher Islamic Studies, got
his Ph.D. in Islamic History and Culture
from Faculty of Arts, Istanbul University.
After working as Assistant Professor and as
Associate Professor in the Institute of
Islamic Research, Istanbul University, he
helped to establish the first college of
Islamic Studies in modern Turkey. The
College of Islamic Studies is now a part of
Ataturk University, Erzurum where Dr.
Kavakci worked as senior faculty. He

chaired Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh and other
departments and got full professorship in
Islamic Law and worked as Dean of the
College. His professorship in Islamic Law
was the first such position in Turkey after
the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He was
educated in the traditional Ottoman way of
Islamic Studies as well as in modern
methods of teaching in today's universities.
He is a board certified attorney in Turkey
and practiced Law in Libya, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia and attended numerous International
Conferences on Islam. He was involved in
the activities of the Islamic Conference and
was in charge of the Muslim Minority
students sponsored by Islamic Development
Bank in Turkey.
AsmaKhalid
Asma Khalid is an aspiring international
correspondent. She is a Reporter for the
National Public Radio, National desk. She
was born and raised around Chicago, but has
spent the past few years studying in and
exploring parts of Europe and Asia. Asma
recently graduated from the University of
Cambridge with an M.Phil (don't ask her to
explain what that means) in Middle
Easters/Islamic Studies.
Though most of her journalism experience
stems from print, she's increasingly
fascinated with radio and its power to
convey people's emotions in a way that's
physically impossible in other types of
media.
42

HenaKhan
Hena Khan is a Pakistani-American writer

who lives in Rockville, MD with her
husband and two sons. She is the author of
nine childrens books for Scholastic Book
Clubs, including several titles from the
popular Spy University series. Night of the
Moon, published by Chronicle Books, is her
first picture book, and her first book on a
Muslim theme. Hena was moved to write the
book by a desire for Muslim-American
children, including her own, to identify with
the story of Yasmeen and her family as they
celebrate a very special time of the year
Ramadan. She also hoped to share some of
the cultural traditions of Ramadan and Eid
with people from other backgrounds, and to
foster understanding of the MuslimAmerican community. Night of the Moon
has received very positive reviews from the
industry, including a starred review from
Booklist, and it was selected to be a Parents
Choice Approved Book.
Science Degrees in Physics, Mathematics

and Engineering from the Universities of
Sind and Karachi, Pakistan; he went on to
earn two Masters Degrees, a Master of
Science in Civil Engineering from the
University of Illinois, and a Masters of
Business Administration from Rice
University.
Councilman Khan was elected to Houston
City Council, District F in December 2003.
He currently serves on several local boards
as well as seven City of Houston committees
including the International Liaison and
Protocol Committee and the Flooding and
Drainage Committee both of which he
chairs.
Known for his leadership in the community,
Council Member Khan has been honored by
the City of Houston and other prestigious
organizations. In April of 2007, USCIS-U.S.
Department of State honored Council
Member Khan with the Outstanding
American by Choice Award in Washington,
D.C. Secretary Condoleezza Rice,
Department of State (DOS), gave the
keynote address to the recipients. In 2008,
Council member Khan received the Asian
American Leadership Award from Asia
Society Texas Center and the Leadership
Award for Outstanding Community Service
from the Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA).
MuqtedarKhan
M.J.Khan
MJ Khan is a living example of the

American Dream. Earning two Bachelor of
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor in

the Department of Political Science and
International Relations at the University of
Delaware. He is also the Director of the
43

Islamic Studies Program. He earned his
Ph.D. in International Relations, Political
Philosophy, and Islamic Political Thought,
from Georgetown University in May 2000.
Dr. Khan is a Fellow with the Institute for
Social Policy and Understanding. He was a
Senior Nonresident Fellow with the
Brookings Institution [2003-2008] and a
Fellow of the Alwaleed Center at
Georgetown University [2006-2007]. He has
been the President, Vice President and
General Secretary of the Association of
Muslim Social Scientists.
He is the author of American Muslims:
Bridging Faith and Freedom (Amana, 2002),
Jihad for Jerusalem: Identity and Strategy in
International Relations (Praeger, 2004),
Islamic Democratic Discourse (Lexington
Books, 2006) and Debating Moderate Islam:
The Geopolitics of Islam and the West
(University of Utah Press, 2007).
Dr. Khan frequently comments on BBC,
CNN International, FOX and VOA TV,
Bridges TV, NPR and other radio and TV
networks. His political commentaries appear
regularly in newspapers in over 20
countries. He has lectured in North
America, East Asia, Middle East and
Europe. Dr. Khan is from Hyderabad in
India. He is married to Reshma and has a
son Rumi, and a daughter Ruhi.
ZebaKhan
Zeba Khan is Founder and Director of

Muslims Americans For Obama, 2008. Born
and raised in Ohio by civically minded
Indian-Muslim immigrants, she learned
early on that giving back to her community
was her duty as an American and as a
Muslim whether that was going door-todoor with her father collecting money for
the homeless in her city or pitching in with
an interfaith Habitat-for-Humanity home
with her mother. Her parents, as progressive
as they were religious, sent her to a Jewish
day school for nine years, where she learned
about Judaism how to speak Hebrew. On the
weekends, she attended Sunday school at
her local mosque, learning Arabic and about
Islam. Her parents made sure that she knew
the differences between Islam and Judaism,
explaining the Islamic perspective on every
topic she was taught at school. At the same
time, they were ever careful to explain the
respect Muslims should have for their
Abrahamic brothers and sisters in faith. She
truly believes that her own adherence to
Islam as an adult is in part credited to her
religious Jewish friends from her youth who
welcomed her into their homes and
community and shared with her the joy and
spiritual fulfillment they felt from practicing
their faith. Their commitment to their faith,
encouraged her to explore and appreciate her
own.
SuhailKhan
Suhail A. Khan is the Senior Fellow for
Christian-Muslim Understanding at the
Institute for Global Engagement. He is a
Washington, DC based attorney and has
previously held many government
positions. Khan served as Policy Director
and Press Secretary for U.S. Congressman
Tom Campbell (R-CA) where he worked
closely on a variety of legislative initiatives,
including religious freedom. More recently,
44

Khan served as a senior political appointee
with the Bush administration. He served in
the White House Office of Public Liaison
assisting in the President's outreach to
various faith communities. Khan also
served as Assistant to the Secretary for
Policy under U.S. Secretary Mary Peters at
the U.S. Department of Transportation.
While at the Department of Transportation,
Khan was awarded the Secretary's Team
Award in 2005 and the Gold Medal for
Outstanding Achievement in 2007.
Khan serves on the boards of the American
Conservative Union, the Islamic Free
Market Institute, the Muslim Public Service
Network, and the Indian American
Republican Council. He has spoken at the
Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC), the Council for National Policy
(CNP), the Harbour League, and the
National Press Club. He has written opinion
pieces for various publications including the
Washington Post/Newsweek Forum On
Faith.
He was born in Boulder, Colorado to parents
who emigrated to the United States from
southern India. Khan is the oldest of five
children, grew up in California, earned his
high school diploma from St. Lawrence
Academy, a private Catholic college
preparatory school in Santa Clara, in 1987.
He earned a B.A. in political science from
University of California at Berkeley in 1991
and a J.D. from University of Iowa in 1995.
FarhanaKhera
Farhana Khera is the first Executive Director

of Muslim Advocates and the National
Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML).
Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and
NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to
the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee,
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil
Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate,
she worked for six years directly for Senator
Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), and was the
Senator's lead staff member in developing
anti-racial profiling legislation and
organizing subcommittee hearings on racial
profiling.
Prior to her service with the Senate Judiciary
Committee, Ms. Khera was an associate
with Hogan & Hartson, specializing in
commercial and administrative litigation.
She also worked with Ross, Dixon &
Masback, serving as the lead associate on
several pro bono employment discrimination
cases, which resulted in the firm being
honored with the Outstanding Achievement
Award by the Washington Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights and Urban
Affairs.
Ms. Khera received her B.A. with honors in
political science and economics from
Wellesley College in 1991 and her J.D. from
Cornell Law School in 1994. At Wellesley,
she served as president of the student body
and co-founded the first Muslim students
45

organization, al-Muslimat ("The Muslim
Women"). At Cornell, and was an editor
with the Cornell Journal of Law and Public
Policy.
RiazKhokher
Ambassador Riaz Khokher is considered

one of the most seasoned and experienced
diplomat of Pakistan. He was the former
Foreign Secretary of Pakistan serving from
June 2002 to February 2005. Ambassador
Khokher also served as Pakistan's
ambassador to India, the United States and
China before taking the top post of foreign
ministry.
Riaz Khoker and the Indian ambassador to
the United States were both interviewed by
Michael Moore to highlight the fact that
both countries have levels of extreme
poverty yet spend 60% or more of their
budgets on defense related assets and
program which in turn will become obsolete
anyway
RichardL.Killmer
Reverend Richard L. Killmer, a Presbyterian
minister, is the Executive Director of the
National Religious Campaign Against
Torture an interfaith organization of over
250 religious organizations committed to
ending U.S.-sponsored torture. He was
appointed to that position on May 2007.
Previously, he had served as the program
director of the Churches Center for
Theology and Public Policy located at

Wesley Theological Seminary in
Washington, DC. He served there from June
2002 to May 2007. While in that position, he
founded the Greater Washington Interfaith
Power and Light and co-founded the
Muslim-Christian Initiative on the Nuclear
Weapons Danger.
From 1996 to May 2002, Mr. Killmer was
the director of Environmental Justice and
director of the Economic Justice and
Domestic Hunger Program Ministry of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ
in the USA. He received the Climate
Protection award from the United States
Environmental Protection Agency for his
work while at the National Council of
Churches.
From 1980 to 1996, he served as the first
director of the Presbyterian Peacemaking
Program working first in the national
headquarters of the United Presbyterian
Church in New York and then moving to
Louisville, Kentucky after the merger of the
Presbyterian Church US and the United
Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Killmer worked for the National
Council of Churches previously from 19701980. During that period he directed the
Special Ministries/Vietnam Generation,
Domestic Hunger and Poverty, and codirected the Child and Family Justice
Project.
He is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall
College and has two degrees from Princeton
Theological Seminary. He has also served
as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton
Theological Seminary from 1985-1988. Mr.
Killmer has written many articles and
resources for publication and co-authored
two books.
46

NsengaKnight
JohnKiser
John Kisers books have a contrarian flavor:

Profiles of entrepreneurial scientists
(Communist Entrepreneurs: Unknown
Innovators, 1988) when the popular view of
Russia was one of technological
incompetence in the communist world;
Muslim-Christian harmony (Monks of
Tibhirine: Faith Love and Terror in Algeria,
2002) when people were touting
irreconcilable differences between Islam and
the West, and now Commander of the
Faithful: A Story of True Jihad. Abd elKader was a man of deep faith combined
with chivalrous humanity, intellectual
openness and warrior courage, making him a
hero in the Muslim and Christian worlds of
the 19th century. Commander of the Faithful
is the third book of a trilogy that began with
Stefan Zweig: Death of a Modern Man
(1995). Popular in 1930s and 40s, Zweigss
works are being revived by NY Times
Books. Kiser was perplexed by Zweigs
suicide in 1942, living safely in Brazil,
wealthy, world famous and with young new
wife. This led to a reflection on Zweigs life
built on faith in humanism and
individualism. Underlying these books is an
inquiry into what guides and sustains people
in difficult times.
Through Photography, video and oral

history, Brooklyn-based artist Nsenga
Knight, explores the spiritual and
community lives of Black women who
converted to Islam prior to 1975 and
pioneered Brooklyns oldest Muslim
communities. Knight chose women because
their stories were seldom told, and because
"who these women are have a very direct
effect on who I am. Reared in the
indigenous Muslim communities of
Brooklyn, Nsenga has experienced the
transition, expansion and diversity of the
Muslim community in New York City.
KasimKopuz
Shayk Kasim Kopuz was born in Rize,

Turkey. He is the Imam of Islamic
Organization of the Southern Tier at
Binghamton, New York. Kopuz has studied
traditional Islamic sciences starting at a very
early age. He has memorized the entire
Qur'an, which earned him title of Hafiz and
then he learned Arabic and traditional
Islamic Sciences in traditional Islamic
School in Rize and then continued his
traditional as well as modern education at
Istanbul Imam Hatip Lisesi, a religious
47

seminary in Istanbul. He moved to Cairo,
Egypt, to continue his higher Islamic studies
at Al-Azhar University, which is renowned
world famous oldest Islamic University.
There he studied five years of Islamic Law
as well as Modern European Law. Then
studied towards MA in Islamic Law at
Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey, and
earned his Law Degree at Istanbul
University School of Law, Istanbul Turkey,
in 1992. He moved to Binghamton as Imam
in 1993 and joined Graduate Program at
SUNY Binghamton. He earned MA in
Middle East History at Binghamton
University in 1999. He is currently working
on his PhD. in Middle Eastern History,
specializing on the Islamic Scholars and
Knowledge Production in Ottoman History.
He has taught, with Professor and Rabbi
Lance Sussman, classes on World Religions
and Biblical History at SUNY Binghamton,
Sufism at Broome Community College, and
he has give lectures on Islam and Muslim
Societies at various public forums, churches,
schools and clubs in and around our locality.
He is member of Broome County Council of
Churches Interfaith Committee. He has
been Imam of the Islamic Organization of
the Southern Tier since 1993. He is married
and has three children, named as Hafsa
Nihal, Zehra Betuland Hamidullah Eren
Kopuz.
mercy and love of God. Radwan acquired

his early religious education in the old city
of Damascus, his birthplace. He moved to
the USA in 1987, graduated in 1991 with
honors from the University of Central
Florida with a B.S.B.A. with a major focus
in marketing, and became a US citizen in
1999. To Radwan, seeking knowledge is a
lifelong journey. Some of the areas that were
covered during his journey of seeking
knowledge are: the Science of Hadeeth
(Prophetic Narrations), Usual al-Tasfeer
(Quranic Hermeneutic), Usul-al Fiqh
(Science of Exegesis), Fiqh (Islamic
Jurisprudence) and Aqeedah (Theology).
Since 1997, he served as imam with several
congregations and delivered lectures and
sermons in mosques, universities and places
of worship. He is the founding imam of
Love God Congregation at al-Wadood
mosque in Norfolk, NE where he lives and
serves as the teaching imam. Radwan is also
the author of Live Your Life on Purpose.
Imam Radwan is married. He and his wife
Hollie have four beautiful children.
MuratKose
RadwanKouatli
Imam Radwan Kouatli is the founder of

Love God institute, a non for profit
educational ministry dedicated to share the
Murat Kose is Founder and President, Nurtel

Telecom, New Castle, DE
He has performed extensive
multidisciplinary research and founded
several successful start-up companies , has
BS in Chemical Engineering from Istanbul
Technical University, Istanbul Turkey and
MS in Chemical Engineering and
Microelectronics from University of
48

Rochester, Rochester NY. He also
completed all the requirements except
dissertation for the PhD in Chemical and
Biomedical Engineering in Syracuse
University, Syracuse NY.
He was the president of MSA both at the
University of Rochester and Syracuse
University. The first (in the USA) Halal
Meal Plan was implemented during his
presidency at Syracuse University. He has
always being active at local community at
various capacities as teacher/principle of
Sunday School, board member etc. He also
coordinated settlement of Kosovo Refuges
in the Syracuse Area.
He along with his wife currently runs a
volunteer tutoring program for elementary,
middle and high school students at the
Islamic Society of Delaware. Mr. Kose is
married with five children and lives in New
Castle DE.
AlexanderKronemer
He has lectured to the National Council on

U.S.-Arab Relations, Harvard, Nike, Aetna,
and Disney.
He has appeared as a CNN commentator on
several occasions, including during CNNs
historic live coverage of the Hajj in 1998.
In 2000, Mr. Kronemer served a one-year
appointment at the Bureau of Human Rights
in the U.S. State Department focusing on
U.S. foreign policy and Islam.
Mr. Kronemer is the Co-Executive Producer
of the UPF films: Muhammad: Legacy of a
Prophet, Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall
of Islamic Spain, A Prince Among Slaves:
The True Story of an African Prince
Enslaved in the American South, Allah
Made Me Funny: The Official Muslim
Comedy Tour, On a Wing and a Prayer: An
American Muslim Learns to Fly, Talking
through Walls: How the Struggle to Build a
Mosque United a Community, and Who
Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims
Really Think.
OlaLanke
Alexander Kronemer, co-founder of Unity

Productions Foundation (UPF) is a frequent
writer and lecturer on religious diversity,
Islamic awareness and cross-cultural
communication.
He has a Masters in
Theological
Studies
from
Harvard
University.
Mr. Kronemer has published essays in
numerous newspapers and journals,
including the Christian Science Monitor and
the Washington Post.
Ola Torgeir Lnke is a Norwegian politician for

the Christian Democratic Party.
He was elected to the Norwegian Parliament
from Sr-Trndelag in 1993, and has been reelected on three occasions. On the local level
Lnke was a member of Trondheim city council
from 1991 to 1993. He was the chairman of the
Youth of the Christian People's Party, the youth
wing of the Christian Democratic Party, from
49

1975 to 1976. Since 1997 he is a member of the
national Christian Democratic Party board.
EdinaLekovic
Outside of politics he has worked as a priest,

having graduated from the MF Norwegian
School of Theology as cand.theol. in 1977.
BruceLustig
Rabbi Bruce Lustig, M.A.H.L., Senior
Rabbi is senior rabbi at Washington Hebrew
Congregation. Along with the daily
responsibilities of leading a 3,000 member
Congregation, he has shown community
involvement in the Jewish Council for
the Aging, the Executive Board of Israel
Bonds of the Greater Washington
Area, the UAHC Rabbinic Network on
Youth Suicide, the Mayors Faith Advisory
Board, the National Liaison for National
Day of Prayer, and the Board of
Directors of the American Cancer Society,
District of Columbia Division. He
is a pro-active leader of Washington's
Interfaith Community and organized
the nation's first Abrahamic Summit
bringing together Christians, Jews and
Muslims for dialogue.
Rabbi Lustig received a Bachelor of Arts
degree (with honors) from the
University of Tennessee. He holds a Master
of Arts in Hebrew Letters and was
ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion.
As MPAC's Communications Director,

Edina acts as a spokeswoman for the
American Muslim community to media
outlets, government officials, interfaith
leaders, academic institutions, and
community groups. Edina has appeared on
national media outlets, including CNN,
BBC, MSNBC, and the History Channel.
Since joining MPAC, Edina's work has also
been featured in several leading newspapers,
including the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Times, Associated Press,
Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times.
Edina has also participated in numerous
national and international conferences and
interfaith dialogues speaking on a variety of
issues related to American Muslims. In
December 2004, Edina represented MPAC
at a United Nations seminar on "Confronting
Islamophobia." In 2003, Edina was invited
by the Malaysian government to be one of
two U.S. representatives to the International
Conference of Muslim Young Leaders,
which served as a precursor to the annual
conference of the Organization of Islamic
Conference (OIC). In all settings, Edina
works to enhance the political and social
participation of the American Muslims by
sharing tools and avenues for engagement
that will lead to a future in which Muslims
are a positive, contributing part of the
American fabric.
50

MahmoodA.Madani
of North America and Fiqh Council of North

America. Dr. Mokhtar Maghraoui is a Hafiz
and is best known for his Tazkiyat al-Nafs
(Purification of the Soul) retreats and
thought-provoking seminars that empower
Muslims in their spiritual quest.
JohariAbdulMalik
Maulana Mahmood A. Madani is an Islamic
scholar from a long line of Islamic scholars.
He is a graduate from Deoband and is
currently a member of the Parliament of
India representing Uttar Pradesh. An
enthusiastic social worker, he has a long
track record of providing relief and
rehabilitation to the victims of man-made or
natural disasters; undertook several
rehabilitation projects in earthquake affected
areas in Gujarat and Kashmir Valley,
tsunami affected areas in Andhra Pradesh,
and flood affected areas in Assam, Bihar and
Orissa. He is also the author of Composite
Nationalism.
MokhtarMaghraoui
Johari Abdul Malik is the President of the

Coordinating Council of Muslim
Organizations, Head of the National
Association of Muslim Chaplains in Higher
Education, President of the Muslim Society
of Washington, Inc., and a founding member
of the Muslim Advocacy Commission of
Washington, D.C. He served as Muslim
chaplain of Howard University in
Washington, D.C.. Currently he works as the
outreach director for the Dar Al Hijrah
Islamic Center in Northern Virginia and
serves as the chair of government relations
of the Muslim Alliance of North America.
SakilMalik
Originally from Algeria, Sheikh Maghraoui
holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science and a master in Physics.
He taught at Syracuse University, Union
College and St. Rose, Graduate School of
Islamic & Social Sciences. He is currently a
resident Scholar at the Islamic Center of
Boca Raton (Florida) and counselor to many
National Islamic Organizations. Previously
he served at the Shari'a Scholars Association
Sakil Malik is the Director, International

Development Division at the International
Reading Association. He manages multimillion dollar grant funded projects around
the world. Previously, he served as a
Program Manager for Capacity Building and
Advocacy at World Learning for
International Development, Program
Coordinator for Child Welfare League of
America's International Office in
51

Washington, D.C. He also worked for SITBRAC Global Partnership and TAF
Democracy Partnership Program, CARE
International, PRIP Trust (Former
PACT/USAID Project) in Bangladesh, and
the Advocacy Institute, Washington D.C.
Sakil, a native of Bangladesh, holds a
Master of Arts degree from the Aligarh
University, India, a Bachelor's degree in
Commerce from Dhaka University,
Bangladesh and an International Diploma in
Peace and Conflict Studies from the
European Peace University in Austria. He
has recently started his PhD Coursework at
University of Maryland, College Park. Sakil
is a development worker, manager, trainer,
and facilitator with extensive experience in
international and development management
in the areas of NGO and socio-cultural
development, project design and planning,
policy advocacy, organizational
development, gender, small-enterprise
development and micro credit, cultural
competence and workforce development. As
a development worker, he has a thorough
understanding of cultural, political,
economic and social issues in developing
countries. Sakil is fluent in five languages,
Bengali, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic.
Sakil has published his articles in
international newsletters and journals. Sakil
lives in Laurel, Maryland with his son
Shafin, daughter Samreen
Columbia University in the United States.

He is also the Director of Columbia's
Institute of African Studies. He is a former
President of the Council for Development of
Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA)
Dakar, Senegal.
Mamdani's reputation as an expert in
African history, politics and international
relations has made him an important voice
in contemporary debates about Africa. His
book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary
Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
won the 1998 Herskovits Award of the
African Studies Association of the USA.
In 2001, he was one of nine scholars to
present at the Nobel Peace Prize Centennial
Symposium.[2] He has been named as one
of the top 100 public intellectuals in the
world by the US magazine Foreign Policy in
May 2008.
SalamS.AlMarayati
MahmoodMamdani
Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman

Professor of Government in the Departments
of Anthropology and Political Science at
Mr. Salam S. Al-Marayati was born on

September 2, 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq. His family
left Iraq and immigrated to the United States in
1964. He is now an American citizen.
52

Mr. Al-Marayati earned a bachelors of science
degree in Bio-Chemistry from the University of
California (UCLA). He then received an
executive masters degree in Business
Administration from the University of
California-Irvine (UCI).
Mr. Al-Marayati worked as a process chemical
engineer in the semiconductor industry for two
years. He later changed careers and served as a
liaison to the Muslim community for Los
Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrel.
Mr. Al-Marayati is the director and one of the
founders of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
(MPAC), a public service agency aimed at
disseminating accurate information about Islam
to the American public. He has been director of
MPAC for the past ten years. At his present
position, Mr. Al-Marayati has had the
opportunity to speak to congregations at
community-sponsored events, temples,
synagogues, churches, high schools, and college
campuses. Also, Mr. Al-Marayati served as a
Board member of the American committee to
Save Bosnia, a committee formed to lobby
Congress and the Administration to end the
genocide in Bosnia. Mr. Al-Marayati serves as a
commissioner of the Human Relations
Commission in Los Angeles, a commission
formed to improve access to city government,
reduce discrimination, and promote respect,
tolerance and justice.
He has written extensively on Islam, human
rights, democracy, Middle East politics, the
Balkan Crisis, and the Transcaucus conflict. His
articles and interviews have appeared on such
prominent newspapers as The Wall Street
Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian
Science Monitor, The LA Daily News, The
Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle
and USA Today. He has appeared on radio and
TV talk shows including C-SPAN and NBC.
PriscillaMartinez
Priscilla Martinez is a homeschooling

mother of six children in metropolitan
Washington DC. She was elected to the
Board of Directors of The Organization of
Virginia Homeschoolers in 2004 and also
served as the Chair of the Boards Public
Relations Committee. Martinez is the
founder of the Ashburn-Sterling
Homeschoolers group, co-owner of the LIFE
Homeschool group, and founder of the
ADAMS chapter of Homeschoolers
Educating Assisting and Reaching-out
Through Service (HEARTS). She volunteers
for the National Capital Area Council of the
Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts
Council of the Nation's Capital, the
Interfaith Council of Metropolitan
Washington, the All Dulles Area Muslim
Society, Lououn Youth Soccer Association,
and Upper Loudoun Little League. She has
written for Islamic Horizons and Educating
the Muslims of America (ed. Dr. Yvonne
Haddad and Dr. Jane Smith). Martinez
frequently delivers seminars and workshops
designed to help parents new to home
schooling.
IngridMattson.
53

Ingrid Mattson is the current President of the

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
and served as ISNA Vice-President from
2001 to 2006. Dr. Mattson also currently
serves as Director of Islamic Chaplaincy and
Professor at the Macdonald Center for
Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim
Relations at Hartford Seminary in
Connecticut. She earned her Ph.D. in
Islamic Studies from the University of
Chicago in 1999; focusing on Islamic law
and society. Her publications include studies
on slavery, poverty, and Islamic legal
theory. Prior to her Ph.D., Dr. Mattson
obtained her B.A. in Philosophy from the
University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and

Senior Scholar in Africana Studies at
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and
Chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University
of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi,
Kenya. In 1999, Mazrui retired as the
inaugural Walter Rodney Professor at the
University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana.
Mazrui has also been a Visiting Scholar at
Stanford University, The University of
Chicago, Colgate University, McGill
University, National University of
Singapore, Oxford University, Harvard
University, Bridgewater State College, Ohio
State University, and at other institutions in
Cairo, Australia, Leeds, Nairobi, Teheran,
Denver, London, Baghdad, and Sussex,
amongst others.
AliAlaminMazrui
BonitaMcGee
Ali Al'amin Mazrui is an academic and

political writer on African and Islamic
studies and North-South relations. He is an
Albert Schweitzer Professor in the
Humanities and the Director of the Institute
of Global Cultural Studies at the State
University of New York at Binghamton.
In addition to his appointments as the Albert
Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities,
Professor in Political Science, African
Studies, Philosophy, Interpretation and
Culture and the Director of the Institute of
Global Cultural Studies (IGCS), Mazrui also
holds three concurrent faculty appointments
as Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the
Humanities and Development Studies at the
University of Jos in Nigeria, Andrew D.
Bonita R. McGee received a Masters in

Islamic Sciences from the School of Islamic
and Social Sciences in 2004. Previously Sr.
Bonita worked at a full service Domestic
Violence Shelter in Columbus, OH. Sr.
Bonita is also the Board member and Cofounder of the Muslim Family Services
(formerly the Muslim Womens Network
and Community Services), a social service
organization serving the Muslim community
in Greater Columbus and surrounding areas.
Muslim Family Services offers support,
referral, and training to both Muslim and
Non-Muslim in an effort to bridge gaps to
address the social issues in the community
effectively. Sr. Bonita began her efforts to
stop violence against women and antioppression work in her years as an
undergraduate at The Ohio State University.
She participated in the Rape Education and
Prevention Program and later volunteered
with Choices- a domestic violence shelter in
Columbus. Other volunteer efforts include
being a volunteer with SARNCO (Sexual
54

Assault Response Network of Central Ohio)
as patient advocate for rape survivors. Sr.
Bonita served as Program Chair for ISNAs
Domestic Violence Awareness Activities
and developed a website on domestic
violence for ISNA. She continues to
provide trainings and assessments for
communities in need to address the issue of
domestic violence and serves on the board
of the Islamic Social Service Association, a
national organization addressing social
issues and promoting social work and
related fields in the Muslim Community.
HadiaMubarak
Jack Moline has been the rabbi of Agudas

Achim Congregation in Alexandria since 1987,
and he has been a respected advocate for
tolerance and understanding in the City of
Alexandria for 20 years.
Hadia Mubarak is a full-time doctoral

student at Georgetown University's Islamic
Studies department. Her research interests
include the development of Islamic family
law, Islamic reform and gender issues in
Islam. Mubarak previously worked as a
Senior Researcher with the Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at
Georgetown University, a researcher with
the Gallup Organizations Center for
Muslim Studies and a researcher with
American Universitys Islam in the Age of
Globalization project. In 2004, Mubarak was
the first female to be elected as president of
the Muslim Students Association National
(MSA) since its establishment in 1963.
Mubarak received her Masters degree in
Contemporary Arab Studies with a
concentration in Women and Gender from
Georgetown University. She received her
Bachelors degree in International Affairs
and English from Florida State University.
Jack Moline has supported many city programs

and activities that focus on education and the
greater needs of the Alexandria community, and
over the years, he has been a valuable advisor to
city managers and the Alexandria City Council
on many public issues and has participated in
numerous civic events and activities, including
the Call to Community, Days of Remembrance,
9 - 11 Remembrance, and Martin Luther King
Day.
NasreenMustafa
JackMoline
Jack Moline partners with other Alexandria

clergy in their mission to increase tolerance and
understanding of all faiths and peoples; he has
been an effective member of the Interfaith
Counci, and he was instrumental in launching
Operation Understanding, which encourages
respect, understanding, and cooperation between
the African-American and Jewish communities.
55

Nasreen Mustafa Sideek was born in Baghdad in
1967, and became a political prisoner at age 14.
She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in
architectural engineering at the University of
Baghdad in 1991. Fleeing Iraq in the wake of the
failed Kurdish uprising in 1991, Nasreen
returned upon the creation of the safe-haven,
finding work as an administrative officer for the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
She continued working in various UN capacities
in northern Iraq, eventually becoming head of
the United Nations Center for Human
Settlements (Habitat) field office in 1997. In
1999, after completing a Master's Degree in
Public Administration at Harvard University, the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
appointed Nasreen Minister of Reconstruction
and Development
MikalN.Nash
Mikal N. Nash (formerly Michael Nash) is a

native Newarker and a pioneering researcher
on the history of Islam in the Greater
Newark, NJ community. He is a full-time
faculty member in the Division of
Humanities/Department of History at Essex
County College. He is a part-time lecturer
at Rutgers University and has taught Islam
in the Black Experience and related courses
in the Department of African-American and
African Studies on the Newark campus and
the Department of Africana Studies on the
New Brunswick campus. In 2005-2006, he
was a participant in the American Cities and
Public Spaces Project, a research institute at
the Library of Congress sponsored by the
Community College Humanities Association
and funded in part by the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
GhulamN.Mir
Dr. Mir is the President

of World Kashmir Awareness. He also
serves as the President of the World
Kashmir Freedom Movement, an
independent advocacy organization working
towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict
over Kashmir, with offices in London,
Washington D.C., and Akron, Ohio. Dr.
Mir has spoken widely regarding the options
for peacefully resolving the Kashmir
conflict, including at conferences across the
United States and in London, Brussels, and
Islamabad.
Professionally, Dr. Mir practices as a
Gastroenterologist in Northeastern Ohio.
Dr. Mir is the Medical Director of the
Center for Digestive Diseases and
Endoscopy at Summa Barberton Hospital,
Barberton, Ohio. He is also a member of the
Board of Trustees of Summa Barberton
Hospital; Medical Director of the Digestive
Wellness Center in Norton, Ohio; and
President of Summit Gastroenterology
Associates in Norton, Ohio. Dr. Mir is a
Fellow of the American Gastroenterology
Association and Clinical Assistant Professor
of Medicine at the Northeastern Ohio
Universities Colleges of Medicine
(NEOUCOM) in Rootstown, Ohio.
Dr. Mir previously also served as the Chief
of Gastroenterology, Chief of the
Department of Medicine and Chief of Staff
at Barberton Citizens Hospital and the CoChair of the Physician Leadership Group for
56

the Barberton Campus of the Triad Hospital
System.
Dr. Mir was born in 1947 in Kashmir.
AsmaMirza
UzmaMirza
Uzma Mirza is a registered and licensed
Architect, LEED certified with the US
Green Building Council. Originally hails
from Canada, a graduate of Carleton
University in Ottawa. She has been
practicing for 13 years in the USA, with
three internationally distinct firms. She is a
member of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities,
the AIA, NCARB and the US Green
building Council. Presently, she is principal
and founder of a Sustainable and green
Architecture practice called, AYN Architect.
She is also president and founder of The Pen
and Inkpot Foundation. In addition she is an
Artist and a writer. Her Art is a spiritual Art
called Pen and Inkpot. Her Art and
Architecture are compliments, of each other
with the thread of philanthropy and her
written work, pending publication the
weave. Her spiritual Art, Architecture,
writing and Philanthropy celebrate, as she
phrases: the stitching of a Sustainable
human. She is a Muslim woman business
owner building a social entrepreneurship of
profit, non-profit with the environment,
people and spirituality, in mind. She is
presently working on a Library for the Lost
Boys of Panyijiar, South Sudan. One of her
visions is a Green Mosque for the 21st
century, with woman in mind.
Sr. Asma Mirza served as President of the

Muslim Students Association (MSA)
National for two terms from 2007-2009.
Previously she served as Georgetown MSA
President (2004-2005), MSA National East
Zone Rep (2005-2006), Treasurer (20062007) and founder and Director of the MSA
Legacy Fund (2006-2007). Currently she
serves on the MSA National Board as Exofficio while working as an Organizational
Strategy Consultant for Booz Allen
Hamilton. Sr. Asma holds an MBA from
the University of Maryland and Bachelors in
Management and Operations Information
Management from Georgetown University.
At the University of Maryland, Sr. Asma
was Vice President of the MBA Consulting
Club and was nominated by her classmates
to speak at the MBA Graduation Ceremony.
Previously, Sr. Asma was a member of the
ISNA Shura and MYC, the MYNA
Advisory Board. She was also a member of
the ADAMS Center Girls Scouts for 12
years, the DC Eid Committee, and an active
participant in the ADAMS Center Sisters
Youth Group. She currently lives with her
family in Herndon, VA.
57

YaqubMirza
Dr. M. Yaqub Mirza has been President and

CEO of Sterling Management Group, Inc.
(SMG) since 1998, of Sterling Advisory
Services, Inc. since its inception, and
President and CEO of MarJac Investments,
Inc. (Mar-Jac) since 1995. From 19871995, he served as Executive Vice President
of MarJac. MarJac makes proprietary
investments in U.S. and foreign securities
and provides international business
management services. MarJac and its
affiliates operated in the United States,
Canada, Chile, Egypt, Malaysia, Turkey and
Zimbabwe.
Dr. Mirza also served as Vice President
(1984-1994) and President (1995-2000, the
year it was dissolved) of the Saar
Foundation, a Virginia not-for-profit
corporation. Since 1984, Dr. Mirza has been
actively negotiating mergers, acquisitions
and sales of various sized companies and
real estate projects located in different parts
of the world. After many of the acquisitions,
Dr. Mirza is involved as director and officer
in the development of the acquired company
or real estate project by evaluating top
management to maximize efficiency and
profitability and then restructuring,
streamlining or expanding the same. In
addition, Dr. Mirza has more than 20 years
of experience in stock investments and
portfolio management involving assets
ranging from $1-$10 million.
Dr. Mirza has served as a Trustee and
Treasurer and later as Chairman (1987February 2003), and is now an Advisor to
the Board of Trustees of the Amana Mutual
Funds, which are registered with the

Securities & Exchange Commission as an
open-end investment company and managed
by Saturna Capital Corporation. In addition,
Dr. Mirza currently serves as Chairman of
the Board of Directors of Jugos
Concentrados, S.A. (Jucosa), a Chilean
producer of juice concentrates, traded on the
Santiago Stock Exchange. He also serves on
the Board of numerous other companies. He
served on the Board of Mylex Corporation, a
NASDAQ listed, world leader of RAID
technology and network management
products from December 1988 until
September 1999 when Mylex was acquired
by IBM for $240 million.
Dr. Mirza holds a M.Sc. from University of
Karachi (1969), a Ph.D. in Physics (1974)
and M.A. in Teaching Science (1975) from
University of Texas at Dallas.
DaliaMogahed
Dalia Mogahed is a Senior Analyst at Gallup

and Executive Director of the Gallup Center
for Muslim Studies. She is coauthor of the
book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion
Muslims Really Think (Gallup Press, March
2008).
Mogahed provides leadership, strategic
direction, and consultation on the collection
and analysis of Gallup's unprecedented
survey representing the opinions of more
than 1 billion Muslims worldwide. She also
directs the Muslim-West Facts Initiative
(www.muslimwestfacts.com), through
which Gallup, in collaboration with the
58

Coexist Foundation, is disseminating the
findings of the Gallup World Poll to key
opinion leaders in the Muslim World and the
West.
SultanMuhammad
HaroonMoghul
Haroon Moghul is Director of Public
Relations for the Islamic Center at New
York University. He is a Ph.D. candidate at
Columbia University.
Haroon has spoken at numerous Muslim,
Christian and Jewish institutions, and has
led educational and interfaith workshops to
advance understanding and dialogue. His
speaking engagements include the
University of Pennsylvania, the University
of Michigan and the University of
Minnesota, as well as guest appearances on
CNN and NPR. He has been interviewed on
Voice of America, al-Hurra and The
National (Abu Dhabi) among others.
A contributing editor and end-page
columnist for Islamica, Haroon also
maintains a popular blog, Avari, which won
several Brass Crescent Awards (in 2004 and
2005), including wins for Best Muslim Blog
and Best Writing. His essays have been
published in a variety of media, including
Dawn, The Friday Times and Tikkun. His
first novel, "The Order of Light," was
released by Penguin in 2006. A French
translation arrived in 2007.
Haroon has been selected as one of 300
Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow and
participated in the Third Annual Muslim
Leaders of Tomorrow Conference in Doha,
Qatar (2009).
Sultan Muhammad is a native Chicagoan, is

a community organizer with a background in
strategic communications and multimedia
production. Sultan is IMANs (Inner-city
Muslim Action Network) Lead Organizer on
Chicagos South-side and works around
human rights issues facing marginalized
communities. He publishes educational
resources and is co-founder of a Chicagobased multi-media production company.
His early experiences abroad and family
tradition of activism have contributed to his
focus on building bridges between
communities by promoting common
understanding, cultural engagement, and
social transformation. At an early age,
Sultan studied Arabic and Islamic sciences
on scholarship abroad and is the son of the
late Imam Sultan Muhammad, nephew of
Imam W. Deen Muhammad, and greatgrandson of the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad.
AbdulMalikMujahid
Haroon is married and lives in New York

City.
59

RayyanNajeeb
Abdul Malik Mujahid is the Chairman of the
Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater
Chicago, is founder of Sound Vision, and an
award winning author. As the national
coordinator of Bosnia Task Force, USA he
successfully led efforts to declare rape as a
war crime. He is also a board member of the
Parliament of the World Religions.
NasreenC.Mustafa
Nasreen C. Mustafa earned a Bachelor of

Science in accountancy and a minor in
sociology at the George Washington
University, where she also served in the
Americorps and on the board of the GW
Muslim Students Association. After
college, she went on to live in the
Philippines for nine months as a U.S.
Fulbright Scholar and a research associate at
the Economics Research Center of the
University of the Philippines. During her
grant, she studied a community-based,
interest-free microcredit program for Metro
Manila Muslims who have fled conflict in
Mindanao.
Starting September 2009, insha Allah, she
will be working as an auditor for
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Nasreen
currently resides with her loving family in
her hometown of Arlington, Virginia.
Rayyan Najeeb will be attending

Northwestern in the fall. Between 20052008, Rayyan was a member of Strive
Media Institute, creating national webcasts
and tv shows/specials. After this period,
Rayyan continued to produce media for nonprofit organizations as a volunteer service.
In 2007, he was introduced to MYNA for
the first time and became the
Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana regional
representative. After establishing a MYNA
chapter in Milwaukee, Rayyan concentrated
his talents as PR chair producing media and
promoting MYNA among the chapters.
HusainNagamia
Dr. Husain Nagamia is Chief Emeritus of

Department of Cardio Vascular and
Thoracic Surgery and Cardiac Transplant
Center at Tampa General Hospital Tampa,
Florida. He is currently Clinical Assistant
60

Professor of Surgery at the University of
South Florida Medical School, Tampa, FL.
Dr. Nagamia has been actively involved in
establishing and volunteering for a number
of Islamic Organizations locally, nationally
as well as Internationally. He is a member of
Founders Committee for Islamic Society of
North American (ISNA). He has been a past
president of Islamic Medical Association of
North America (IMANA), past Editor-inChief of Journal of the Islamic Medical
Association of North America (JIMA), and
is the founder/chairman of International
Institute of Islamic Medicine (IIIM) a
organization of IMANA dedicated to
research in History of Islamic Medicine. He
serves as Vice Chairman of International
Society of History of Islamic Medicine
(ISHIM) based in Doha, Qatar. Dr. Nagamia
has published and presented numerous
articles and papers on the History of
Islamic Medicine, and is authoring a book
on this subject. He has lectured all over the
world on Islamic Medicine including: USA
(many cities), U.K., Qatar, UAE, Libya,
Tehran, Pakistan, India, South Africa,
China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Canada.
PervezNasim
inception in 1980 in Toronto, and Ansar Cooperative Housing Corporation, first

Interest-Free Home Ownership and
Investment projects in North America. He is
also the Chair of the Canadian Islamic Trust
Foundation (CITF) that is the Trust wing of
ISNA Canada.
Br. Pervez Nasim is also Chairman & CEO
of a number of Ansar Financial Group of
Companies that organized the 3rd
International Islamic Banking, Finance &
Insurance (Takaful) Conference held in
Ottawa, Canada in May 2007. Ansar
Financial Group Companies are managing
investments on Interest-free basis in various
Projects and Joint Ventures in excess of $80
Million in Canada.
Br. Pervez Nasim was employed by the
Ministry of Finance in Canada from where
he retired in 2004 after twenty-seven years
of service so that he can devote more time to
the various Islamic Financing & Investment
Projects. During the past twenty years he has
made a number of presentations on
ISLAMIC FINANCE in various
INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC BANKING
AND FINANCE conferences held in
Chicago, Houston, Los Angles, Toronto,
Khartoum, Kuala Lumpur, Trinidad,
Chittagong, Riyadh, Monterrey Mexico,
Brunei Darussalam and at Harvard
University, London School of Economics in
England and at Crans Montana Forum in
Geneva, Switzerland.
AymanNassar
Br. Pervez Nasim is a Bachelor of
Commerce and a Certified Management
Accountant. He is a founding member and
Chair of the Board of the Islamic Cooperative Housing Corporation Ltd. and he
has been volunteering his time since its
61

Ayman Nassar works for IBM leading endto-end next generation BSS/OSS application
development for a global service provider.
He also teaches project management and
systems engineering courses, and is an
author of several books in the area of project
management and leadership.
SayedA.Nassar
Dr. Sayed A. Nassar is a Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at Lawrence
Technological University and the director of
the Fastening and Joining Research Institute
(FAJRI). Dr. Nassar is a Fellow of
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME).
DaoudNassimi
the community in various capacities,

including as an Imam, counselor,
marriage celebrant, teacher, board member,
and chairman.
He is originally from Afghanistan. He is a
frequent and passionate speaker in
different Muslim Satellite TV shows on the
subjects of Quran and Islamic Thought.
Dr. Nassimi has a unique and combined
educational background in engineering and
Islamic studies.
Besides his BS and MS in electrical
engineering and working in the fields of
telecommunications and satellite
communications in the last 20 years,
he has also studied the Arabic language,
finished a second Masters degree in Islamic
studies and recently earned his Ph.D. in
Islamic studies.
His PhD Thesis was on a comparative
review of some English translations of the
Quran.
ZarqaNawaz
Dr. Daoud Nassimi lives in Northern

Virginia and he is the vice-chairman of the
Council of Muslim Organizations in Greater
Washington, DC (CCMO).
He has been an activist and a student of
Islam in the last 22 years in the United
States.
He gives Juma Khutbahs in various
Masajid, and lectures on
Islamic topics at various forums in the DC
area. He has been volunteering to serve
Zarqa Nawaz is the driving force behind

Fundamentalist Films and the creator of
Little Mosque on the Prairie, which debuted
to large audiences and tremendous acclaim
in 2007.
Nawaz, born in Liverpool and raised in
Toronto, had a Bachelor of Science degree
from U of T in her hands when she realized
that staying out of the medical school would
be her greatest contribution to Canadas
62

health care system. Unfazed, she coolly
switched career plans and received a
Bachelor of Applied Arts in Journalism from
Ryerson in 1992. Nawaz worked as a
freelance writer/broadcaster with CBC
radio, and in various capacities with CBC
Newsworld, CTVs Canada AM, and CBCs
The National. She was an associate producer
with a number of CBC radio programs
including Morningside and her radio
documentary The Changing Rituals of Death
won first prize in the Radio Long
Documentary category and the Chairmans
Award in Radio Production at the Ontario
Telefest Awards.
Other short film credits include Freds
Burqa and Random Check. In 2005,
Nawazs documentary entitled Me and the
Mosque, a co-production with the National
Film Board and the CBC, was broadcast on
CBCs Rough Cuts.
MuhammadNinowy
Shaykh Muhammad has authored many

books, some of which are being translated
into English and published, such as:
Hadithi commentary on the Shamaael of
Imam Tirmithi, Explanation of the
Bayquni Text in Hadith, Imam Nasaiys
Khasaaes, Imam Muslims methodology
in Hadith, and many others.
AshrafNubani
Ashraf Nubani is an attorney and Managing
Partner of Busch & Nubani, P.C. in
Annandale, Virginia.
He received his law degree (J.D.) from
Indiana University Law School Bloomington, IN. Mr. Nubani also has a
Masters degree in History from Southern
Illinois University -Carbondale, IL. He
received his bachelors in History from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI. Mr.
Nubani is licensed to practice Law in New
York and Virginia, and specializes in
immigration law.
SulaymanS.Nyang
Dr. Muhammad bin Yahya Al-Husayni AlNinowy began his study under his father,
Sayyed Yahya, memorizing the Glorious
Qur'an and acquiring knowledge in many of
the Islamic disciplines, such as Tawheed,
Hanafi/Shafii Fiqh, Usool, and Ihsaan. He
delved further into the fields of Hadeeth and
Ihsaan on the hands of various expert
scholars of both fields worldwide.
Dr. Muhammad is the director of the
American Islamic Institute, and senior Imam
of Al Madina Masjid in Atlanta, Georgia
.
Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang is professor and

chairman of the African Studies Department
at Howard University in Washington, D.C.,
and co-principal investigator of Project
MAPS. A former deputy ambassador and
head of chancery of the Gambia Embassy in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Nyang has served as
consultant to several national and
international agencies and on the boards of
63

the African Studies Association, the
American Council for the Study of Islamic
Societies, and the Association of Muslim
Social Scientists. [1] He has written
extensively on Islamic, African and Middle
Eastern affairs. He holds a masters degree
in public administration and a Ph.D. in
government from the University of Virginia.
SerbanPopescu
Mr. Popescus main duties include

collection, review, and submission of family
reunification sponsorship documents from
USCRI network agencies participating in the
U.S. State Department Reception &
Placement program, liaising with the
Refugee Processing Center, Overseas
Processing Entities, and affiliates, and
processing assurance forms. Mr. Popescu
began employment with USCRI as an
Administrative Assistant, coordinating
human resources for USCRI headquarters
and field offices, and providing primary
support to the Vice President and Chief
Operating Officer. Prior to joining USCRI,
he worked as a Research Assistant at Streit
Council for a Union of Democracies in
Washington, DC. Serban received his M.A.
in Nationalism Studies from the Central
European University, and B.A. in
Philosophy from the University of
Bucharest. He speaks French and
Romanian.
YasirQadhi
Shaykh Yasir Qadhi was born in Houston,

Texas, in 1975, to parents who were of the
first emigrants to Houston from Pakistan
(his father came to America in 1963 and is
an Islamic activist and author as well).
He completed a Bachelor of Science in
Chemical Engineering from the University
of Houston. After working for Dow
Chemical for a short stint, he decided to
pursue an education in Islamic studies, and
left for the Islamic University of Madinah,
where he spent ten years. There, he
completed a second bachelor's degree,
specializing in hadith studies, and then went
on to complete an M.A. in Theology.
Currently, he is completing his PhD in
Islamic studies at Yale University in New
Haven, Connecticut, where he lives with his
wife and four children.
In addition to his studies, he is also the Dean
of Academic Affairs of AlMaghrib Institute,
one of the largest advanced Institutes of
Islamic Studies in North America.
64

engineer/project manager for Cyborg
Systems, now owned by Hewitt
Associates. Amjad's first foray into Islamic
finance was as a field
sales consultant for Guidance Financial
Group. In his spare time,
among other things, he has served as Vice
President of one of the
largest Mosques in the US.
AmjadQuadri
KhurshidQureshi
Amjad Quadri is currently the Assistant

Vice President of Business
Development and New Markets at
University Islamic Financial. Before
moving into his current role at University
Islamic Financial Corp.,
Mr. Quadri helped form advisory councils of
local imams and community
leaders in three states and started two new
offices, the latter which
he currently supervises. Mr. Quadri
graduated from the University of
Illinois with a degree from the college of
Business in Information
Decision Sciences. Before entering the
world of Islamic finance, he
worked in the information technology
industry. He worked on Y2K
conversion projects for several large
corporations, including IBM,
McKinsey & Company, and CNA. He then
spent three years as a release
Dr. Khurshid Qureshi is the past the

president of the Association of Muslim
Scientists and Engineers (AMSE). In
addition, he served as the member the board
of directors of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), and is the past chairman of
Society of Automotive Engineers Rocky
Mountain Area, and the past president of
Colorado Engineering Society. He is a
frequent speaker on Islamic & geo political
issues on international circuit.
He is graduate of Oklahoma State University
and Stuart School of Business (IIT
Chicago). He has also completed Executive
Management program at UCLA.
In the early days of the MSA, he helped to
establish chapters in Texas, Oklahoma,
Arizona, Kansas and Arkansas. He also
founded the first regularly scheduled Islamic
youth camp in the USA, Al Hilal Youth
Camp, which recently observed its 27th
anniversary. He served as a member of
board of Directors of Islamic Association of
Greater Detroit.
65

SaifurRahman
Dr. Saifur Rahman professor of electrical

and computer engineering and the director
of the Advanced Research Institute at
Virginia Tech. He is a Fellow of the Institute
of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), and a director of the IEEE Board of
Governors, and Vice President of the IEEE
Publications Board in 2006. Dr. Rahman is a
member of the Editorial Board of the
Proceedings of the IEEE.
ZeybaRahman
executive on Wall Street, to bear on projects

with cultural and educational organizations
both nationally and internationally. These
have included Asia Society, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World
Banks World Faiths Development Dialogue
at Canterbury Cathedral in England, The
World Millennium Peace Summit for
Spiritual and Religious Leaders at the
United Nations, and the Moroccan world
music festivals in Essaouira and Rabat
among others.
In film, as a producer and partner for Jungli
Billi Productions, she has completed
production of Sawt-e-Sarmad: The Sound
that Intoxicates Man (2004) and is in
production with the documentaries NYC
(2003-04) and Early Cabbage (2002-04).
Dramatic feature film projects in
development for Jungli Billi include Noor
and a 14-part television series titled The
Wandering Minstrel, a travel series
exploring world music.
As Chairwoman of World Music Institute,
Director-North America, Fs Festival of
World Sacred Music and its Giving A Soul
to Globalization Colloquium, a public
speaker and a producing partner for Jungli
Billi Productions, Zeyba is deeply
committed to the advancement of human
rights and respect for cultural diversity.
SabeehaRehman
Zeyba Rahman has been a producer/artistic

director of live performances, television,
film and forums for dialogue for more than
sixteen years. She brings project
management experience, gained as an
Sabeeha Rehman is the President and cofounder of the National Autism Association
- New York Metro Chapter. She is a Fellow
66

of the American College of Healthcare
Executives and is a Board Certified
Healthcare Executive. She has 25 years
experience as a healthcare executive. Most
recently, she held the position of Executive
Consultant, Medical & Clinical Operations,
King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia. Previously, she was the
Director of Compliance and Managed Care
Operations at University Hospital of the
University of Medicine and Dentistry of
New Jersey, U.S.A. Ms. Rehman has had
15 years experience in health planning at
major academic health centers, community
teaching hospitals, and in the largest
municipal hospital system in the U.S. She
has published in leading national journals
and presented at national and international
conferences.
Subsequent to the diagnosis of her
grandson for autism, Ms. Rehman has
devoted her time to autism awareness,
advocacy, and parental support. As
President of the National Autism
Association - New York Metro Chapter, she
is leading the grassroots efforts in New York
to educate parents, caregivers and educators
in managing children with Autism. The
chapter has established a Parent-Mentoring
Program to assist parents in coping with the
circumstance and in navigating the system to
get timely help for special needs children.
She is leading the effort to develop the
legislative agenda for advocacy, and is
involved at the national level in the strategic
planning for children with Autism. She is a
member of the American Society for Autism
(ASA), and is actively involved in
supporting the activities of the Autism
Research Institute, Autism Speaks, NAA,
and ASA.
she volunteers in promoting awareness and

building bridges with the American nonMuslim community at large.
FatimaRahmatullah
Fatima Rahmatullah- As MPAC's

Hollywood Liaison, Fatima facilitates
connections between the American Muslim
community and Hollywood's film industry,
both on the artistic side and business end.
She works with writers, directors, producers,
movie studios, and media outlets on
improving the images of Muslims in
America. Fatima started her career, working
for ABC 7 in Los Angeles, where she
refined her communication skills and
contacts. Her work as a writer, field reporter
and producer has been featured on many
websites and newspapers throughout
Southern California. Fatima has also
participated in conferences for journalists
across the nation. She is excited about her
new position and feels it is extremely
important for MPAC to have a major role in
how Hollywood shapes their messages about
Muslim Americans.
HusseinRashid
Ms. Rehman is currently the Director of

Interfaith Programs at the American Society
for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), where
67

Hussein Rashid is a PhD candidate in
Harvard University's NELC focusing on
South Asian immigrant communities in the
US. He has an MTS from Harvard Divinity
School and a BA from Columbia College.
In 1996 he aided Estonia in trying to
establish commercial relations between
Estonia and India, Pakistan, and Iran.
During 2003 he worked with the Harvard
ILSs to create position papers on the draft
Afghan constitution. He also advised a 2004
Democratic Presidential candidates foreign
policy team on the religious issues in Iraq
before consulting for a South Asia PAC.
He researched the impact of 9/11 on Muslim
adolescents throughout the US and Muslim
blogs. In 2006 he became one of the Muslim
Leaders of Tomorrow. His current research
interests include the representation of
Muslims in graphic novels. He is an
occasional speaker for the Interfaith
Alliance, Faith in Public Life, and a teacher
at the Center for Religious Inquiry. He is
currently a visiting faculty member at
Hofstra University. His media appearances
include Air America Radio and CBS
Evening News. He writes for Religion
Dispatches, AltMuslimah, Talk Islam,
Change the Story, and at his own blog
islamicate (islamicate.com).
HafizRehman
Br. Hafiz Rehman was born and raised in

Nairobi, Kenya. He is a pediatrician by
profession. He serves as the senior Pediatric
attending in two Long Island Hospitals and
Chairman of the Performance Improvement
Committee. He has been the Adjunct
Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at New York
Institute of Technology, NY College of
Osteopathic Medicine -- 1966
He has served as the Clinical Assistant
Professor of Pediatrics New York College of
Osteopathic Medicine --- 1999
He is the President of IMANA --- Islamic
Medical Association of North America --2008-2009. He is a life Member of APPNA.
He has been the past President of Masjid
Darul Quran in Bay Shore. NY
He has served as a past President of Council
of Masajid and Islamic Organizations of
Long Island. He is a member of Bay Shore
Interfaith council. He is an Honorary
Trustee Suffolk County Coalition against
Domestic Violence. He is part of the
Trustee Foundation of the Faithful, NY. He
is a member of the Anti-bias Task Force of
Town of Islip, Long Island, NY.
SabeehaRehman
Ms. Sabeeha Rehman is the Director of

Interfaith Programs at the American Society
68

for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). As a
professional, Ms. Rehman has had a 25-year
career as a Healthcare Executive and has
served as a hospital administrator in New
York, New Jersey, and overseas. Ms.
Rehman has dedicated many years to the
teaching of Islam to the Muslim youth. As
a Sunday School teacher for several years,
she taught Level 1 through Senior Level,
including Contemporary Issues in the Young
Adults Forum. As a member of the
Education Committee for the Sunday
School, Ms. Rehman was involved in the
design of the Islamic curriculum of the
Sunday School, selection of faculty,
establishment of Muslim Summer Camp,
and planning special events for young
Muslims. She developed the first newsletter
for the mosque, served as its Editor, and
chaired the Editorial Board.
NadiaRoumani
Nadia Roumani is the Director of the

American Muslim Civic Leadership
Institute, a faith-based leadership training
and civic engagement program that
strengthens young leaders in the Muslim
community who are working towards the
full participation of Muslims in American
public life. AMCLI is housed at the USC
Center for Religion and Civic Culture, and
works in partnership with Georgetowns
Alwaleed bin Talal Center for MuslimChristian Understanding.
In addition to her work with AMCLI, Nadia
is the consultant program officer for the
Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts
Building Bridges Program, and the Principal

of Roumani Consulting LLC. Nadia consults
regularly for several international
organizations, foundations, and nonprofit
organizations. Among others, she has
consulted for the World Bank, UNDP, UN
Alliance of Civilizations, the Brookings
Institution, the Four Freedoms Fund, the
Carnegie Corporation, the Rothschild
Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund.
Nadia was the interim director for the
Women Leaders Intercultural Forum, and a
Senior Associate at the Carnegie Council on
Ethics and International Affairs, where she
co-founded the Global Policy Innovations
Program. Between 2000 and 2004, Nadia
was the Assistant Director of the Initiative
for Policy Dialogue, a project directed by
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and a junior
associate in Stiglitzs office at the World
Bank from 1999-2000.
Nadia is the President of the Board of
Directors of the Muslim Public Service
Network; a Member of the Pacific Council
on International Policy; and a Term Member
of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Nadia received her masters degree from
Columbia Universitys School of
International and Public Affairs, and her
bachelors degree in economics and
international relations from Stanford
University.
WalterRuby
Walter Ruby has served as Muslim Jewish
Relations Officer with the Foundation For
Ethnic Understanding in New York since
March 2008. A strong advocate of MuslimJewish communication and reconciliation,
he organized The Foundation-sponsored
First National summit of imams and rabbis
in November 2007 in New York. As a career
reporter, Ruby covered President Anwar
69

Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem and the
breakup of the Soviet Union. He has served
as New York and United Nations
correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and
Moscow correspondent for The Jerusalem
Post and The Forward. Today, Ruby writes
for many newspapers including the New
York Jewish Week, and the New York Daily
News.
AghaSaeed
Dr. Agha Saeed is the Founder and

Chairman of American Muslim Alliance and
a lecturer in the Program in Asian Studies at
California State University, East Bay. Dr.
Saeed earned his B.A. in Political Science
from University of Punjab, Pakistan and
M.A. and Ph.D. in Rhetoric from University
of California at Berkeley. Dr. Saeed
spearheaded the campaign against the USA
Patriot Act that led to the California State
Resolution SJR10 against the USA
PATRIOT act. In 2000 and 2004, Dr. Saeed
was strategic force behind the creation of a
first and second Muslim Bloc vote. He is the
currently chair of American Muslim
Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections
(AMT), which is the nationwide coalition of
Muslim Organizations. Dr Saeed is the
producer and host of Global Forum TV
which is focused on examining major world
issues from a Muslim perspective
LouaySafi
Louay Safi is the Executive Director of

ISNA Leadership Development Center
(ILDC), Plainfield, Indiana. He also serves
on the board of several leading Muslim
organizations, including the Center for the
Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), the
Islamic Horizons, and the Association of
Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS). He is
fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and
Understanding and serves on the steering
committee of the Muslim-Christian Initiative
on the Nuclear Weapons Danger.
PatriciaZ.Salahuddin
Patricia Zahirah Salahuddin has been an
educator for the past 23 years. She taught
students of various grade levels and age
groups. For the last four years of her
teaching career she has been in an Islamic
school. Since Ms. Salahuddins relocation
to the South Florida area with her family,
she has given many volunteer hours,
organizing community workshops and
training opportunities for teachers in Muslim
Schools. She initiated the formation of the
Muslim Teacher Association (MTA) along
with other concerned Muslim Educators in
2003. Since its establishment, MTA has
sponsored five conferences for teachers.
In 2000, she earned the National Board
Certification. Current she is pursuing a
doctoral degree at the Florida International
University (FIU) and serving on the Board
70

of the Council of Islam Schools in North
America (CISNA) as the secretary.
RashidAbdulSalaam
Rashid Abdul-Salaam is owner and

president of Rasheed & Associates,
specializing in federal and state criminal
defense investigations. Mr. Abdul-Salaam
has provided investigatory services for the
Law Office of Dennis R. Scheib for more
than 5 years, and among other achievements,
was instrumental in locating the witness
whose testimony led to Gucci Manes
acquittal. He was also the investigator for
NFL player Ray Lewis murder defense and
was a consultant in the New York World
Trade Center bombing case.
Mr. Abdul-Salaam was a Presidential
Ceremonial Guard in the US Navy, a deputy
sheriff in Littleton, Colorado, and has been
involved in criminal defense investigation
for more than 20 years.
Raised in Texas, Mr. Salam received his

degrees from the University of Texas: BA
(Austin) and MBA (Dallas). He worked as
Chief Investment Officer for ITG &
Associates (Dallas) until 1999, then as a
representative with Morgan Stanley
(suburban Dallas) until joining Saturna
Capital in June 2003. Monem is active with
the Muslim community in North America
through ISNA, as there WZ rep,
Boardmember of the Muslim Public Service
Network, Boardmember of CAIR-WA and
current Chairman of Peaceful
Communications, a non-profit organization
which complete a documentary called On
A Wing and A Prayer. In 2008, Monem
received the 20 Rising Stars Award from
Institutional Investor News. The award is
given to 20 leaders in the mutual fund
industry, under 40, who the magazine feels
will change in the industry in a positive way
in the next 10 years. Monem is also the coauthor of a new book called A Muslims
Guide to Investing And Personal Finance.
JihadF.Saleh
MonemSalam
Monem Salam, Saturna Capitals Director of

Islamic Investing and Deputy Portfolio
Manager, was born in Pakistan in 1972.
Jihad F. Saleh is the Education and Judiciary

Legislative Assistant for Congressman
Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY). Along with his
legislative duties, he is also the Programs
Associate for the Congressional Muslim
Staffers Association. Since 2007, Jihad has
been an adviser to the IIC Summer
Internship Program and a consultant on IIC
projects to increase civic engagement within
the American Muslim community. Prior to
moving to Washington, DC, Jihad was an
71

inner-city high school teacher for four years.
He has earned graduate degrees from
Stanford University's School of Education
and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson
School of Public Affairs. Jihad is originally
from Los Angele
AkoAbdulSamad
AchmatSalie
Imam Achmat Salie, a native of Cape Town,

South Africa, is an avid traveler and reader.
He has degrees in Islamic jurisprudence
(alim fadil), education, Arabic and Islamic
Studies, and a doctorate in business
administration. Imam Salie has successfully
organized an international conference on
Religion, Peace, and Conflict, and spoke at
the Parliament of World Religions in
Barcelona, Spain. Salie will speak at
Melbournes PWR on the intra-faith code of
conduct in Michigan, and will join the weeklong Oxford Round Table panel at Oxford at
the end of July. In addition to his title as
Imam, Achmat Salie is a counselor,
interfaith and youth coordinator, peace and
eco-justice advocate, and university
professor.
Ako Abdul-Samad is the Iowa State

Representative from the 66th District. He
has served in the Iowa House of
Representatives since 2007. Previously, he
had been a member of the Des Moines
school board.
Abdul-Samad is the founder and CEO of
Creative Visions Human Development
Institute, a non-profit organization in Des
Moines.
Abdul-Samad currently serves on several
committees in the Iowa House - the
Education committee; the Labor committee;
the State Government committee; and the
Human Resources committee, where he is
vice chair. He also serves on the Health and
Human Services Appropriations
Subcommittee.
Abdul-Samad also serves on the Health and
Human Services Committee of the
Midwestern Legislative Conference of the
Council of State Governments.
72

CoreySaylor
Corey Saylor is legislative director for the

Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR). Saylor has more than a decade of
nonprofit political communications,
legislative advocacy, and media relations
experience. Saylor played a role in advocacy
campaigns drawing concessions from
corporate giants such as Burger King and
Bell Helicopter-Boeing. News outlets such
as the New York Times, Washington Post,
Newsweek, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and
NPR have sought Saylors opinions. The
Philadelphia Inquirer named a Saylormaintained blog focused on the 2005-2006
reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT ACT,
a Web Winner. Saylor has conducted
dozens of civic empowerment, advocacy and
media relations trainings across the United
States.
MarcSchneier
Rabbi Marc Schneier is a leading personality

and spokesperson for the Jewish community.
As one of the leading voices in the field of
intergroup and race relations, reconciliation
and understanding, he is at the forefront of
the strengthening ties among the Jewish,
African-American, Latino and AsianAmerican ethnic communities as well as
promoting dialogue and cooperation among

the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faith
communities.
Rabbi Schneier is President and Founder of
the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding
(FFEU) and serves as Chairman of the
World Jewish Congress American Section,
as well as its Commission on Intergroup
Relations.
BeverlySchwartz
Beverly joined Ashoka as the Vice President

of Global Marketing from Fleishman
Hillard, an international communications
agency. At Fleishman, she built and helped
manage their social issues portfolio, using
her expertise in "social marketing" as the
foundation for the portfolio.
Beverly's interest in social issues spans most
of her career. In the mid-seventies she was
Executive Director of the Minnesota
Association for Non-Smoker's Rights and
was instrumental in passing the nation's first
non-smoking in public places state law.
Subsequently, at the U.S. Center for Disease
Control, she helped design and manage the
first U.S. education/prevention campaign for
HIV/AIDS, "America Responds to AIDS"
and simultaneously directed the Office on
Smoking and Health's public information
function. In other lives, Bev developed an
eye care project while at the American
Academy of Ophthalmology, with the
Reagan White House, Apple Computers and
73

the Mitre Corporation which supplied free
eye care to indigent elderly (the project is
about to mark its 20th year of operation).
She has worked globally on the problem of
education reform, with an emphasis on
getting and retaining girls in school in
developing countries, on civil society issues
and changing health and environmental
behaviors when at the Academy for
Educational Development.
At Fleishman Hillard International
Communications she developed and directed
their domestic and international social
impact portfolio and was Project Director of
the non-advertising portion of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy's "Youth AntiDrug Media Campaign". Beverly has
published articles and given numerous
presentations around the world on social
marketing and is dedicated to promoting the
field. She is an Associate Editor of the
Social Marketing Quarterly and a Steering
Committee Member of the annual
"Innovations in Social Marketing
Conference".
The focus of Beverly's Master of Science
degree while at the University of Minnesota
and the City University of New York was
behavioral science.
GeorgeSelim
(NSI), an intensive nine-week summer

program that combines language, Middle
Eastern studies, homeland security and
intelligence seminars, and on-the-jobtraining at DHS or the FBI. Through this
internship, Selim helping to build the next
generation of Americans trained to combat
terrorist activities. He isn't doing it by
training soldiers, but instead by tapping into
a group of Arabic-speaking college students
who want a career in public service.
ZakiaImanShahbaz
Zakia Iman Shahbaz, an American, is a
retired elementary and art school teacher,
with a Masters degree in Education and a
Major in Art. She has taught in public and
private schools in USA, Bahrain, and
Sharjah, UAE, and has traveled to many
countries in the Middle East, meeting and
befriending people of diverse backgrounds.
Her dream of writing and illustrating stories
for children was awakened with the birth of
her grandsons. She wants to present stories
that illustrate the everyday lives of Muslim
children and families, the problems they
have to confront, and present possible
strategies for resolving them in a way that
both Muslms and non-muslims alike can
appreciate. She is realizing this goal with the
publication of her first book, A Trophy for
Bilal, and is looking forward to the release
of her next book, A Medal for Nabila.
Zakia founded the (Muslim Women Writers'
Workshop )MWWWI, in Sharjah, UAE in
2005. She realized that Muslims need to
write their own stories. MWWWI is a
networking, nurturing organization that
conducts monthly writing workshops,
newsletters, and an annual folio.
George Selim is a policy advisor at the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Office of
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. He cofounded the National Security Internship
74

GerrySerotta
Rabbi Gerald Serotta has been involved in

interfaith work through the Fellowship of
Reconciliation (beginning with a
reconciliation mission in 1975 to Cairo,
Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Palestine, and
Israel) and the Interfaith Committee for
Peace in the Middle East. He has a decades
long record of activism in seeking solutions
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning
in 1973 when he co-founded Breira; in 1980
he was the Founding Co-Chair of New
Jewish Agenda.
Rabbi Serotta has been very active in
community affairs throughout his career. He
currently serves as Co-Chair of Rabbis for
Human Rights, North America. He is also a
Board Member of the Faith and Politics
Institute, an interfaith, bi-partisan effort to
bring spiritual reflection to the work of the
US Congress. He has served on a numerous
other Boards including those of Aleph:
Alliance for Jewish Renewal and Tikkun
Magazine.
Gerald Serotta is the Associate Rabbi at
Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland
and served as Campus Rabbi at The George
Washington University, where he directed
the Hillel Foundation Director for 20 years.
He recently completed a Sabbatical
assignment as Senior Rabbinic Scholar-inResidence at the Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism. Rabbi Serotta served as a
university chaplain for 27 years. He is a past
chair of the Board of Chaplains at The
George Washington University and a pastpresident of the Association of Jewish
Campus Professionals.
His undergraduate degree is from Harvard

and he has an honorary Doctorate (Doctor of
Divinity) degree from Hebrew Union
College, where he was ordained Rabbi in
New York in 1974. He holds Masters
degrees from Hebrew Union College in
Hebrew Literature, and from New York
Theological Seminary in Pastoral
Counseling. He also did graduate work at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has
been an instructor in the International
Conflict Resolution program at Eastern
Mennonite University.
ZulfiqarAliShah
Zulfiqar Ali Shah serves as the Director of
Religious Affairs at the Islamic Society of
Milwaukee. He has a Ph. D. in Theology
and Religious Studies, from the University
of Wales, UK. He has memorized the entire
Arabic text of al-Quran since childhood.
He has taught as the full time faculty at the
International Islamic University, Islamabad,
Pakistan and, adjunct faculty at the
University of Wales, University of North
Florida, St. Thomas University and Florida
Community College. He is the current
Executive Director of the Fiqh Council of
North America, which serves as the highest
Muslim jurisprudential body in North
America. He has been active in the
Interfaith Council, NCCJ and many other
ecumenical forums since 1992.
AhmedShaikh
Ahmed Shaikh is an attorney and principal
at Ahmed Shaikh, a professional law
Corporation based in Southern California.
Aside from his traditional practice focusing
on estate planning, trust and probate matters
in Southern California, Mr. Shaikh speaks
regularly throughout the country on the issue
of Islamic inheritance and Sadqa Jaaria.
75

ZaidShakir
was concerned about crime and its costs in

human suffering. In addition, he was
concerned about the extremely
disproportionate number of African
American men who were/are arrested,
prosecuted and imprisoned for crimes. He
worked as a police officer in both African
American and European communities. In
1995, he and his wife Esther established the
South Shore Islamic Community Center
Imam Zaid Shakir was born in Berkeley,

California and accepted Islam in 1977 while
serving in the United States Air Force. He
graduated Summa Cum Laude and earned a
BA in International Relations at the
American University in Washington, D.C.
and an MA in Political Science from
Rutgers University. While overseas in
Egypt, Syria, and Morocco, he studied
Arabic and traditional Islamic sciences
including Islamic law, Qur'an, and Islamic
spirituality. He co-founded Masjid Al-Islam
in Connecticut and taught Political Science
at Southern Connecticut State University.
He has written numerous articles for various
magazines, journals, newspapers, and author
of the groundbreaking books "Heirs of the
Prophets", "Scattered Pictures", and
"Treatise For The Seekers of Guidance".
Imam Zaid Shakir currently teaches fulltime at the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward,
California as a scholar- in - residence.
Since 1975, he has taught Islamic principles,

and the history and life of Prophet
Muhammad. He also currently conducts
Islamic prison ministry at Wilmot Arizona
State prison in Tucson. He is President and
Founder of the Islamic Inmates Correctional
Association of America. The mission of this
organization is to Reduce prison violence,
and recidivism.
In the spirit of the great scholars of the past,

the Imam embodies the rationality,
spirituality and breadth of traditional
knowledge, as well as cutting-edge
academic intellect. Imam Shakir leaves a
lasting impression; his ability to move hearts
and minds enlightens all walks of life.
SidneyRahimSharif
Sidney Sharif worked as a police officer in
the City of Chicago for 28 years from 1959
through 1988. Throughout his career, he
He is a graduate from the University of

Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus, BA.
Majored in Administration of Criminal
Justice; and Chicago State University, M.S.
Majored in Corrections and Criminal
Justice.
ZakiSherif
Dr. Sherif was born in Ethiopia and came to

the USA as a young teen on a full academic
university scholarship. His professional
career begins in the medical field as a
renowned scientist specializing in cancer
genetics and molecular medicine; as a
medical doctor with a keen interest in
oncology and cancer research; and as a
professor, teaching biochemistry, molecular
biology and cancer biology to medical and
76

graduate students at three top tier
universities in the Washington DC area.
Professor Sherif received numerous
scientific awards and recognitions for his
academic work including induction into the
Science and Technology Hall of Fame for
the discovery of two novel breast cancer
genes. He has been awarded research grants
from national funding agencies including the
National Institutes of Health, the National
Science Foundation, the American Cancer
Society, the American Heart Association,
the American Leukemia Society and
numerous other agencies. Dr. Sherif also
received post-doctoral fellowships from
Stanford, Georgetown and John Hopkins
Universities.
Professor Sherif served as a medical and
health consultant for the United Nations as a
visiting scholar in Ethiopia, India, and
Thailand. He is well published and served
on the editorial board of many scientific
journals. He also sat on a number of
committees that reviewed grant applications.
Dr. Sherif was president of the Muslim
Students Association (MSA) at three
different universities as an undergraduate
and graduate student. He currently heads
Badr International Ethiopian Muslim
organization headquartered in Washington
DC. In his position as a leader in the
Muslim community, he has given numerous
speeches, delivered countless Friday
Qhutbas and conducted copious Daawa
activities.
OsmanA.Shinaishin
O. A. Shinaishin is the Senior Program

Manager, for North Africa, Near East and
South Asian the Office of International
Science and Engineering at the US National
Science Foundation. He was born in Egypt,
graduated with a B.Sc. in Agricultural
Sciences from Cairo University in 1952,
received a M.S. degree in Agricultural
Engineering from Michigan State University
in 1960, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of
California, Davis and Berkeley in 1965. He
held positions at NSF since 1976 managing
programs with India and South Asia and
then with the North Africa, Near East and
South Asia. Prior to that he was Program
Manager, Acoustics Unit at Mechanical
Technology Inc. Albany, NY, and Program
Coordinator, Research & Development
Directorate, Environmental Protection
Agency. Earlier he worked as a Research
Acoustics Engineer at the General Electric
Company R&D Center in New York and at
the Boeing Company in Seattle,
Washington. He has also taught at Egyptian
Schools before going to the U.S.
Much of his publications is on dynamics,
acoustics, and since joining the NSF on the
status of scientific research in the
developing world.
77

MuzammilSiddiqi
Siddiqi served as the President of ISNA

from 1996 - 2000.
ShaziaSiddiqi
Muzammil Siddiqi received his BA in

Islamic and Arabic Studies from the Islamic
University of Medina, Saudi Arabia and MA
in Theology from Birmingham University,
England and later went on to complete a
degree in Comparative Religion at Harvard
University. Currently, Dr. Siddiqi works as
an Educator and Religious Director of the
Islamic Society of Orange County where he
has served since 1981. Dr. Siddiqi also
serves as a member of the ISNA Majlis AshShura and Chairman of the Fiqh Council of
North America. He has served as chairman
of the Religious Affairs Committee and has
been a member of the Board of Trustees of
the National American Islamic Trust
(NAIT). As a member and now Chairman
of the Executive Board of Majlis al-Shura of
Southern California, Dr. Siddiqi has
organized and participated in several
national and international Islamic
conferences on Sirah, Fiqh and Da'wah.
Because of his devotion to the preservation
of Islam in America, he has organized
numerous training programs for Muslim
adults and youth. He also lectures on Islam
and interfaith dialogue in North America
and abroad. He is the Vice President of the
Academy of Judaic Christian and Islamic
Studies at UCLA. Dr. Siddiqi has authored
books on Hajj & Umra, Ramadan and has
published many academic papers and
articles in encyclopedias and journals, as
well as his weekly column in Pakistan Link.
Since 1982, he has provided Qur'an
commentary in a weekly radio program. Dr.
Shazia Siddiqi is an MA candidate in Art

Therapy and Community Counseling at
Wayne State University. She is a member
of the ISNA Majlis Youth Committee,
National Executive Director of the Muslim
Inter-Scholastic Tournament (MIST), and
Chair of the Islamic Association of Greater
Detroit (IAGD)'s Community Affairs
Committee.
AbdulkaderSinno
Abdulkader Sinno is an Assistant Professor

of Political Science and Middle Eastern
Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington,
and a 2009 Carnegie Scholar. He received
his PhD from UCLA and was a CISAC
Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
His is author of Organizations at War in
Afghanistan (2008) and Beyond and editor
of Muslims in Western Politics (2009). He
is a fluent speaker of Arabic and French and
has knowledge of Hebrew. He has
researched and traveled extensively in the
Middle East, Europe and North Africa. He
teaches graduate and undergraduate courses
on Middle Eastern politics, politics of
78

Muslims in the West, conflict processes and
state building, research design, and
comparative politics.
TabassumSiraj
Ms. Siraj provides support to USCRI as an

officer in USCRI's Matching Grant
Program. She supervises USCRIs
volunteer and financial literacy programs.
She began at USCRI as a refugee protection
researcher and writer for the 2008 World
Refugee Survey. Ms. Siraj earned a double
Master's in Public Policy and Arab Studies,
along with a certificate in Refugee Studies
from Georgetown University. As a former
English instructor, Ms. Siraj taught collegelevel as well as Advanced Placement
English in the United States and Saudi
Arabia. Ms. Siraj has lived in India and
Saudi Arabia and speaks, reads, and writes
Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu.
bombs and only returned to the United

States in 1983. Cathys memoir of her 14
years in Beirut, A Beirut Heart: One
Womans War, was published by Scarletta
Press in November 2005. USA Book News
awarded it Best Autobiography of 2006.
In March 2002, Cathy traveled to Jerusalem
and the West Bank to better understand the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. She interviewed
Palestinians in refugee camps, teenagers,
teachers, businessmen, peace activists and
Israeli soldiers. Her collection of interviews
was published in December 2003. A second
edition of Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A
Dialogue with Both Sides was published in
April 2006.
In May 2008 Scarletta Press published
Cathys latest book Tragedy in South
Lebanon: The Israeli-Hezbollah War of
2006. Sultan sits on the Executive Board of
the National Peace Foundation. On behalf of
NPF she co-leads trips to Israel/Palestine
with Interfaith Peace Builders once a year.
SaminaF.Sundas
CathySultan
Cathy Sultan was born, raised and educated

in Washington, D.C. In 1969 she moved to
Beirut, Lebanon with her Lebanese husband
and two small children. She led a tranquil
life, immersed in Lebanese culture, until
civil war began in April 1975. She and her
family spent the next 8 years under the
Samina F. Sundas is the founder and

Executive Director of the American Muslim
Voice Foundation
(www.amuslimvoice.com). Her focus is in
youth leadership development, civic
engagement through volunteerism,
immigration reform, protecting civil liberties
and constitutional rights for all, and
community and peace building. She is
committed to fostering friendships among
79

all Americans by bridging cultural and
religious gaps. Her dream is to creating a
culture of peace, acceptance, mutual respect
and harmony. She believes through
education and interaction we can build an
inclusive and beloved nation where all of us
feel safe and at home. Sundas, who has
received over a dozen awards for
community and peace building, is a resident
of Palo Alto, California .She is the proud
mother of two young adults, Misbah and
Saqib.
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

(AJISS), served as its Editor-in-Chief (19841994).
SayyidM.Syeed
Professor Taher is the President of North

American Educational Foundation (a notfor-profit organization). He is the chief
architect of Babul-Ilm project - A Web
Resource for Weekend Islamic School. He
has served as the Principal of the Weekend
Islamic School, for last 17 years, at the
Islamic Foundation, Villa Park, Illinois.
Presently, he is the curriculum director and
has successfully developed and implemented
the curriculum for grades Pre-school
through 11, for the Weekend Islamic School.
He is a Senior Professor in the College of
Engineering & Science at DeVry University,
Addison, Illinois. He received his B.S. in
engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru
Technological University, Hyderabad, India,
and his M.S. in Computer
Science/Networking from Northeastern
University, Chicago. His doctoral thesis is
on, Impact of using computer simulation on
students learning in a Technology based
course. He is the author of a popular book,
A Guide to Reading Quran. He is a
member of Phi Theta Kappa.
Sayyid M. Syeed resumed responsibilities as

National Director of ISNAs Office of
Interfaith and Community Alliances, in
Washington, DC, from March 2006. A
naturalized American citizen, Dr. Syeed
obtained his Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from
the Indiana University at Bloomington,
Indiana, in 1984. As President of the
Muslim Students Association of USA &
Canada (1980-1983), he pioneered its
transformation into the Islamic Society of
North America (ISNA). During 1984-1988,
he was Secretary General of the
International Islamic Federation of Student
Organizations (IIFSO) in which capacity he
traveled widely through the former Soviet
Union, and Europe, Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean, and South America. Dr. Syeed
has been General Secretary of the
Association of Muslim Social Scientists
(AMSS), a national professional
organization founded 31 years ago. Dr.
Syeed, one of the founders of the quarterly
MohammedT.Taher
80

MobinTawakkul
Mobin Tawakkul is a national board

member of the Association for Muslim
Health Professionals(AMPH) and the
AMHP Foundation as well as the creator of
the Disability Needs & Awareness Working
Group. Mobin is on a mission to teach
health professionals about the importance of
disability needs and awareness. As a science
professional and Muslim who happens to be
deaf, Mobins mission reflects the words of
the Quran that say all people are equal in the
eyes of God, whether they are in good
health, or disabled or sick.
Mobin was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He
received his bachelors degree in chemical
engineering in 2002 and his masters degree
in pharmaceutical engineering in 2003, both
from the University of Michigan. Today, he
spends his days researching drug product
quality issues at the Food and Drug
Administration in metropolitan Washington,
D.C.
As a deaf person, Mobin has had to
overcome many obstacles, yet he credits the
diverse and welcoming community in Ann
Arbor as an aid to his success. The citys
special education program allowed Mobin to
excel as a student alongside his non-deaf
peers and eventually earn his master's.
AsmaMobinUddin
Dr. Asma Mobin-Uddin is a pediatrician,

community activist, and award-winning
author of childrens books about the
Muslim-American experience. Her first
book, My Name is Bilal, won the Paterson
Prize for Books for Young People and it was
recognized in Best Books of the Year
listings from the Bank Street College of
Education and Cleveland Public Libraries.
Her second book, The Best Eid Ever, won
the 2008 Skipping Stones Honor Award, the
2008 Middle East Outreach Council Book
Award Honorable Mention, and was a 2009
Storytelling World Resource Awards Honor
Book.
Her third book, A Party in Ramadan, was
published in 2009 and is the story of a
Muslim American girl who attends a
classmates party during Ramadan while she
is fasting so she has the challenge of
participating in the fun while not being able
to share in the food and desserts.
Currently serving her second term as
President of CAIR-Ohio, Asma frequently
writes about topics related to Islam and
Muslims. Her op ed columns have been
published in newspapers locally, across the
United States, and internationally.
OmarUddin
Omar Uddin serves as President of Muslim
Youth of North America Northwest
University medical school; originally from
Columbus, OH.
81

WarithDeenUmar
Later he served successively as Regional

Representative, Vice President, and
President (in 1975) of the Muslim Students
Association of the United States and Canada
(MSA).
BurtonL.Visotzky
Imam Umar, ranking Chaplain for New
York's prison system for 25 years, founded
the National Association of Muslim
Chaplains. In 1975 he became one of the
first two Muslims hired as full time Imams
in prisons in America. He helped build New
York's Imam council. Umar advocated the
hiring and assignment of Muslim religious
workers throughout the U.S. He traveled to
Mecca, Egypt, South Africa, Senegal,
Turkey, Cyprus and Europe in his sojourn to
study history, investigate world events first
hand, and spread the teaching of Islam. He
worked with rabbis, priests, ministers, and
imams to improve the life of our time.
IqbalUnus
Iqbal Unus is the Headquarters Director of

the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (IIIT), Director of Child
Development Fund (CDF), and Director of
IIFTIHAR-USA. He is the former Dean of
Students/Registrar at the School of Islamic
and Social Sciences (SISS) in Leesburg,
Virginia. His volunteer involvement in
Islamic work began in North America as the
President of the Muslim Students
Association of Atlanta, Georgia in 1970.
Burton L. Visotzky, is a Conservative Rabbi

and professor at the Jewish Theological
Seminary (NY), who also studied moral
development at Harvard University under
Lawrence Kohlberg.
He later applied the moral reasoning and
ethical relationship approach pioneered by
Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan to Ethics in the
Bible in his book The Genesis of Ethics,
1997. This explored a modern incarnation of
the Jewish theological traditions of midrash,
and built on Visotzky's experience leading
seminars in Manhattan with a mixed group
of students, businessmen and professionals
of various religious backgrounds.
Visotzky served as collaborator and onscreen participant in Bill Moyers' ten-hour
series, "Genesis: A Living Conversation"
(PBS, 1996). He also served as a principal
consultant for DreamWorks 1998 film,
"Prince of Egypt."
He is engaged in Jewish-Christian-Muslim
dialogue internationally, in capitals such as
Washington; Warsaw; Rome; Cairo; Doha,
Qatar (where he was in the first group of
Jews invited to dialogue by the Emir); and
Madrid, Spain (where he was in the first
group of Jews invited by King Abdullah of
Saudi Arabia).
82

MiroslavVolf
Miroslav Volf is an influential Christian

theologian and currently the Henry B.
Wright Professor of Theology at Yale
University Divinity School and Director of
the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He
has been a member in both the Episcopal
Church (USA) and the Evangelical Church
in Croatia. He is widely known for his
works on systematic theology, ethics,
conflict resolution, and peace-making.
Recently he contributed the essay,
"Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Justice" to
a new text on the atonement, Stricken by
God? Nonviolent Identification and the
Victory of Christ.
Volf was born in Osijek, Croatia, and
studied at Evangelical-Theological Faculty,
Zagreb (B.A), Fuller Theological Seminary
(M.A) in Pasadena, California, and
University of Tbingen, where he studied
under Jrgen Moltmann.
His book Exclusion and Embrace, was
selected as among the 100 best religious
books of the 20th Century by Christianity
Today. Volf is formerly a professor at
Fuller Theological Seminar
SirajWahhaj
Imam Siraj Wahhaj is the current Imam of

Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brooklyn, New York.
He received his training from Ummul Quran
University in Mecca and has become a
world-renowned speaker on Islam. Imam
Wahhaj has been on the ISNA Majlis AshShura since 1987 and has also previously
served as ISNA Vice-President. He has been
a member of ISNA's Planning Committee
and served as a member of the Board of
Advisors for North American Islamic Trust
(NAIT) from 1989 to 1993. He is also a
member of the Board of Advisors for the
American Muslim Council (AMC). Imam
Siraj has appeared on several national
television talk shows and interviews;
especially about his anti-drug campaigns in
his native Bedford-Stuyvesant. He received
high praises from the media and NYPD for
initiating his anti-drug patrols in Brooklyn in
1988. Among other achievements, Imam
Wahhaj was the first person to give an
Islamic invocation to the United States
Congress in 1991.
83

KhurrumWahid
and Kay Warren give away 90 percent of the

profits from their books to charitable causes,
including their global P.E.A.C.E. plan and
Acts of Mercy, which services those
infected with and affected by AIDS. Warren
gave the invocation at President Barack
Obamas inauguration in January 2009.
MohammedYousuf
Khurrum Wahid is an attorney and founding
partner in the law firm of Wahid, Vizcaino
& Maher LLP; a civil and criminal litigation
firm based in Florida. He has defended
individuals and organizations, including
successfully defending three innocent
Muslim medical students falsely accused of
terrorism in Florida on the anniversary of
the tragic events of 9/11. Khurrum has
testified on civil rights issues several times
before various government organizations,
including twice before the United States
Commission on Civil Rights.
Mohammed Yousuf is President and

Founder of Help the Handicap Foundation.
Mr. Yousuf is a social entrepreneur who has
developed several educational and
humanitarian programs that address the
needs of Muslims with disabilities.
HamzaYusuf
RickWarren
Rick Warren is often called "America's most

influential spiritual leader." He founded
Saddleback Church in Orange County,
California, which is now one of the largest
and best-known churches in the world. He
also founded the Purpose Driven Movement,
a network of tens of thousands of churches
from all denominations in 160 countries. He
has trained over 350,000 pastors worldwide.
Calling him a "spiritual entrepreneur,"
Forbes magazine said, "If Warren's ministry
was a business it would be compared with
Dell, Google, or Starbucks in impact." Rick
Shaykh HamzaYusuf was born in

Washington State and raised in Northern
California. In 1977, he became Muslim and
subsequently traveled to the Muslim world
and studied for ten years in the U. A. E.,
Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West
Africa. He received teaching licenses in
various Islamic subjects from several wellknown scholars in various countries. After
ten years of studies abroad, he returned to
the USA and took degrees in Religious
Studies and Health Care. He has traveled all
over the world giving talks on Islam. He
also founded Zaytuna Institute which has
established an international reputation for
presenting a classical picture of Islam in the
West and which is dedicated to the revival
of traditional study methods and the sciences
84

of Islam. Shaykh Hamza is the first
American lecturer to teach in Morocco's
prestigious and oldest University, the
Karaouine in Fes. In addition, he has
translated into modern English several
classical Arabic traditional texts and poems.
Shaykh Hamza currently resides in Northern
California with his wife and five children.
SafaaZarzour
Safaa Zaraour is the President of the Council

of Islamic Schools in North America
(CISNA) and an associate attorney at the
law firm of Odelson & Sterk. A well-known
Muslim activist, he has served as the
Principal of Universal School in Chicago for
over 10 years, is the Program Chair for the
ISNA Education Forum, serves as the
Chairman for CAIR-Chicago and has
spoken at a number of national and regional
conferences. He is a Member of the Village
of Bridgeview Zoning Board and was
elected as a member of the Bridgeview
Public Library Board of Trustees. He is
active with the Catholic-Muslim Education
Project and Play for Peace. He is also the
Vice-Chairman of the Universal School
Board of Directors.
He is a frequent speaker at local and national
Muslim events and has emerged as one of
the nations top Islamic scholars and a voice
of conscience for American Muslims and
non-Muslims alike.
85

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July36

Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Sarah Cady ............................................ 24

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Ayman Nassar ....................................... 61

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Sheikh Mohammad Nur Abdullah, Imam

Zerqa Abid is a social/political activist,

organized international trade and consumer

Salma Elkadi Abugideiri is a licensed

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Swami Agnivesh, is a prominent Arya

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Mansur Ahmad, BDS, PhD, is an Associate

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is currently the

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Lord Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed (born

took his oath on the Qur'an. At the age of

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Her work history spans beyond US

Saquiba Ahmed is Connecting Cultures'

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Sufiya Ahmed set up her own company,

Assad R. Akhter currently serves as

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on Islam, Gender Equity, Conflict

Aisha Al-Adawiya is the Founder and

Dr. Mohammad S. Alam is a Professor and

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Abdalla Idris Ali is a public speaker and

Saqib Ali is a State Delegate in the

South Asians to the state legislature. This

Shariq Ali, LEED AP, EIT is a Mechanical

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Wajahat Ali is a playwright, journalist,

Salam Al-Marayati serves as the Executive

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Iyad Alnachef earned his Masters in Youth

Iyad joined ISNA since August 2006 as the

Shahed Amanullah is an award-winning

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Originally from Medina, Ohio, Patricia

Speakers Accumulated Bios

ensure appropriate transmission of

Br. Moutasem Atiya, an IT professional and

Azhar Azeez was born in 1971 in

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Founder and President of Yawar Baig and

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Owais Balti was born in Buffalo, NY. His

Asad M. Ba-Yunus is an Associate at the

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Dr. Hatem Bazian, received his Ph.D. in

Currently, Dr. Bazian is working on two

Hazami Barmada is Executive Director for

Speakers Accumulated Bios

Islamic Movements, Current Affairs,

David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S.

He served as President of the Muslim

Mr. Beckmann earned degrees from Yale,

Dr. Barzinji served as advisor and consultant

Speakers Accumulated Bios