Genevieve Abdo is former Tehran correspondent for The Guardian (London) newspaper and past Neiman Fellow at Harvard University. She has just completed her latest book, Answering Only to God, a study of the role of Islam in contemporary Iran, due to be published in the winter by Henry Holt. She is also the author of No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Leila Ahmed is Professor of Women's Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Her publications include the books Women and Gender in Islam - The Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Edward William Lane - A Study of His Life and Work and of British Ideas of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century and A Border Passage. Other articles written by Professor Ahmed, include "Arab Culture and Writing Women's Bodies" and "Between Two Worlds: the Formation of a Turn of the Century Egyptian Feminist."

Jon Anderson is Professor of Anthropology at the Catholic University of America. He is currently doing research on the communications and information revolution in the Arab world, transnational cultures and the social organization of international "cyberspaces." His recent publications include New Media in the Muslim World (co-edited with Dale F. Eickelman); “Arabizing the Internet” (http://www.ecssr.ac.ae/periodicals/ 03uae. occpap30.htm), and "Globalizing politics and religion in the Muslim world," Journal of Electronic Publishing (September 1997).

Talal Asad is Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a sociocultural anthropologist of international stature specializing in the anthropology of religion with a special interest in the Middle East and Islam. He earned his M.A. at Edinburgh University and B.Litt. and D.Phil. at Oxford and is the author of Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Also, Dr. Asad has served on the Economic and Social Research Council in England and the Social Science Research Council in the United States.

Juan R.I. Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has written extensively about modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia and his current research focuses on the history of al-Qaida and Egyptian groups such as al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah and al-Jihad, as well as groups in Pakistan such as Jama`at-i Islami, the Neo-Deobandis and the Taliban. . He also has an expertise in Shi`ite Islam, the subject of his forthcoming Sacred Space and Holy War. His other publications include his co-edited book, Shi`ism and Social Protest, Roots of North Indian Shi`ism in Iran and Iraq, Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth Century Middle East, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's `Urabi Movement and his edited Comparing Muslim Societies (Michigan, 1992).

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, the Chair of the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. His research interests include the comparative study of cultures, the Islamic intellectual history, and the social and intellectual history of Iran, both modern and medieval. Dabashi’s publications include “Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads”, “Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran”, “Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn Al-Qudat Al-Hamadhani”, “Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (with Peter Chelkowski), and most recently, “Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future”.

Assia Djebar is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at New York University, a filmmaker, and one of North-Africa's best-known and most widely acclaimed writers. In her books Djebar has explored the struggle for social emancipation and the Muslim woman's world in its complexities. Her publications include Ces voix qui m’assiègent: En marge de ma francophonie, So Vast the Prison, and Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. Her novel, Strasbourg Nights, is due Fall 2002.

Nilufer Gole is Professor of Sociology at Bogazici University in Istanbul and a leading authority on the political movement of today's educated, urbanized, religious Muslim women. Through personal interviews, Gole has developed detailed case studies of young Turkish women who are turning to the tenets of fundamental Islamic gender codes. Her sociological approach also has produced a broader critique of Eurocentrism with regard to emerging Islamic identities at the close of the 20th century. She is the author of The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling.

Baber Johansen is the Directeur d’etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, where he teaches at the Centre d’etude des normes juridiques. He is co-executive editor of the journal “Islamic Law and Society” (Brill, 1994), and area editor for “Islamic Law in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Legal History”. His publications focus on the history and the present of Islamic Law.

Mohsen Kadivar is a philosopher, theologian, and dissident. Mr. Kadivar is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tarbiat Modares University in Iran and Visiting Scholar, Islamic Legal Studies, Harvard Law School. He was the Director of the Department of Islamic Thought, Center for Strategic Research from 1991 until 1999. He has published over 100 papers in various Iranian journals and his first book, Theories of State in Shiite Fiqh, came out in 1998 in Tehran and was translated into Arabic and published in Beirut in 2000. Altogether, he has published 12 books. Kadivar was arrested for the first time in May 1978 – the last year of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Shah's reign in Iran – in Shiraz during the Islamic uprising which later led to the overthrow of the monarchy. 20 years later, the unconstitutional Cleric Court of Iran found him guilty of campaigning against the Islamic Republic because of the statements he had made in an interview with the banned Khordad Daily in which he reviewed the achievements of the Islamic Republic (1979-99) and a speech in Isfahan's Hosseinabad Mosque where he argued that acts of terrorism are condemned in the eyes of the Shiite faith; he was sentenced to spend 18 months in Evin Prison, Tehran, and was released on July 17, 2000. He is still campaigning for the reform of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Mehrangiz Kar is an Iranian human rights lawyer, writer, and former editor of the now-banned Zan literary review. Her work as an activist for women's rights often put her in conflict with Iranian authorities and led to her imprisonment. Kar has published widely on women's issues in Iran. Her publications include Children of Addiction: Social and Legal Position of the Children of Addicted Parents in Iran; Quest for Identity: the Image of Iranian Women in Prehistory and History Vol.1 and 11, which she co-edited with Shahla Lahiji, Iran's first woman publisher; Angel of Justice and Patches of Hell, Women in the Iranian Labor Market (1994); and Legal Structure of the Family System in Iran.

Farhad Kazemi is Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University.

Saba Mahmood received her Ph.D, Anthropology, at Stanford University, 1998, and currently teaches in the History of Religions Program, Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Her work explores dynamics of religious practice in post-colonial societies, with a particular focus on Islam. Her work has appeared in journals such as Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, and Cultural Studies. She is currently working on a book entitled “Pious Transgressions: Embodied Disciplines of the Islamic Revival” (Princeton University Press, 2003).

Brinkley Messick is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Hafez Al-Mirazi is the Washington Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera Television. Previously, he was correspondent for BBC Arabic/World Service in Washington and talk show host for the Arab News Network and Arab network of America in Washington. He also held positions as writer, editor, and broadcaster for Voice of America in Washington. Mr. Al-Mirazi started his career as a radio journalist and broadcaster with Voice of the Arabs (Sawot Al-Arab) on Cairo Radio in Egypt in 1980. He holds Masters in World Politics from the Catholic University of America in Washington and a Bachelor in Political Science from Cairo University. Mr. Al-Mirazi has lived in Washington and covered US politics since 1983.

Hassan Mneimneh is a journalist and co-director of the Iraq Documentation Project based at Harvard.

Roy Mottahedah is Gurney Professor of Islamic History at Harvard University. His major work is on the pre-modern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East. His publications include Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society and The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. He is currently working on the medieval Middle Eastern literature on "marvels” and is the faculty adviser of a new journal, The Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review.

Amir Naderi is a world-renowned Iranian filmmaker currently living in New York City. He is one of the greatest self-educated Iranian filmmakers and a poet. Naderi started out as a still photographer and is among the first founders of Iran's cinema industry. He has a significant effect on creating Iran’s new cinematic genre. His films have received critical acclaim throughout the world. Among his films are The Runner; Water, Wind, Dust; Manhattan by Numbers; A, B, C…Manhattan; and Waiting, a film rarely released.

Azar Nafisi is Visiting Professor and Director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. She served on the faculty at Tehran University and later Allemeh Tabatabai University; as visiting fellow at Oxford University, taught on the interactions between Western and Iranian culture; has earned international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran’s intellectuals; She earned her Ph.D. in English literature at Oxford University. She is the author of numerous chapters and articles on issues related to promotion of democracy and human rights in Muslin societies, on women’s rights and on literature and culture; Anti-Terra: A Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels (1994). Her next book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, is forthcoming.

Orhan Pamuk is one of Europe's most prominent novelists and has been the recipient of major Turkish and international literary awards. Among his novels are My Name is Red, The New Life, The White Castle, and The Black Book. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. His writing provides an antidote to those who see Turkey as caught in a war to the death between Islam and secularism, East and West. “That Turkey has two souls is not a sickness,” he says. He does worry that a Turkey mesmerized by itself is becoming isolated from the world. He is an outspoken critic on issues like human rights. He currently lives in Istanbul.

Kian Tajbakhsh is Senior Research Fellow in the Milano Graduate School, New School University, New York City and Affiliated Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, Tehran University, Iran. From 1994 until 2001, he was Assistant Professor of Urban Policy and Politics at the New School. He has spent the last two years (2000-2002) in Iran conducting research. Dr. Tajbakhsh’s two main research areas (with publications) are: Decentralization Reforms and the Creation of Local Government in Iran: “Political Decentralization and the Creation of Local Government in Iran,” Social Research, vol. 67, no. 2 (Summer 2000), and Urban Social Theory: the role of cities and urbanism in shaping citizenship in cosmopolitan urban societies.The Promise of the City: Space, Identity and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2000).

Frank E. Vogel is the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Adjunct Professor of Islamic Legal Studies and Director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. His writings include “Islamic Law and Legal System: Studies of Saudi Arabia” (Boston: Brill, 2000), and, with Samuel L. Hayes III, “Islamic Law and Finance: Religion, Risk and Return” (Kluwer Law International, 1998).