Moderators
Herbert I. London
Herbert I. London is the president of the Hudson Institute, a post he assumed on September 1, 1997. He has been a member of the Hudson Institute Board of Trustees since 1974 and has been a senior fellow for more than thirty years, founding Hudson’s Center for Education and Employment Policy. He is the former John M. Olin University Professor of Humanities at New York University, responsible for creating the Gallatin School in 1972, where he served as dean until 1992. He is a tenured professor of social studies at New York University. London is a noted social critic whose work has appeared in many major newspapers and journals. He is a contributing editor for Saint Croix Review and American Arts Quarterly, and is the author and editor of 21 books.
Brigadier General (Ret.) Russell D. Howard
Brigadier General (retired) Howard is the Founding Director of the Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism studies at The Fletcher School. Prior to assuming his current responsibilities, General Howard was the Head of the Department of Social Sciences and the Founding Director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. His previous positions include Deputy Department Head of the Department of Social Sciences, Army Chief of Staff Fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and Commander of the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, Washington.
General Howard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management from San Jose State University, a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies from the University of Maryland, a Master of Arts degree in International Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a Masters of Public Administration degree from Harvard University. General Howard was an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy, and a Senior Service College Fellow at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Zeyno Baran
Zeyno Baran is currently a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Center for Eurasian Policy at The Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. Previously, she served as Director of the International Security and Energy Programs at The Nixon Center (2003-2006) and as Director of the Caucasus Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (1999-2002). Ms. Baran has authored monographs, articles, and policy studies, and her work has been featured in various publications, including Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and The International Herald Tribune.
Hussain Haqqani
Hussain Haqqani is the Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University. Professor Haqqani is a journalist, a scholar, and a diplomat. He served as an advisor to Pakistani Prime Ministers Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Nawaz Sharif, and Benazir Bhutto, and he was Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka (1992-1993). In 2002 he came to the U.S. as Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. His recent publications include: America's New Alliance with Pakistan: Avoiding the Traps of the Past (Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief, October 2002); “The Gospel of Jihad” (Foreign Policy, September/October 2002); “Islam's Weakened Moderates” (Foreign Policy, July/August 2003); and “Political Islam Beyond the Middle East: Pakistan and Afghanistan” (in Political Islam: Challenges for U.S. Policy). In 2005 he published the book, Pakistan Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).
Zuhdi Jasser
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and served in the U.S. Navy as a medical officer from 1988 to 1999.In 2002, Dr. Jasser noted the obvious increasing American attention to Islam and Muslims and their role in the national and international war against Islamism and “Islamo-fascists.” As a result of what he felt to be a paucity of Muslim scholarship demonstrating the synergy of American democracy and its founding principles with the religion of Islam, he set out to form American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). He felt that many Muslims came to America for similar reasons to our founding fathers and so many others—seeking freedom, liberty, and the American dream in order to escape religious persecution, in this case from so-called “Islamic” lands. Jasser felt that AIFD could formally articulate in commentary and scholarship the fact that many Muslims believe that they are able to practice their faith more freely and more “Islamically” (in a personal and secular fashion which is most suited to preserve one's faith) in America than in any other place in the world. AIFD was formed to begin to build a body of Islamic opinions which discussed the synergy of American principles of pluralism and the faith of Islam. It was Dr. Jasser's opinion that it is the responsibility of Muslims in America and worldwide to lead the global effort to combat Islamism and the ideologies which feed the terrorism committed by Muslims in the name of Islam.
Story about Zuhdi Jasser by Katherine Kersten in the Minnesota-St.Paul Star Tribune.
Naser Khader
Naser Khader is a member of the Parliament of Denmark for Radikale Venstre and is one of the country's most popular politicians. A leading proponent of peaceful co-existence of democracy and Islam, he established a new movement, Moderate Muslims (later renamed to Democratic Muslims), in response to the controversy surrounding cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.Khader pleads for an uncompromising comittment to democracy, which forms the basis of the Democratic Muslims movement in Denmark.Pledging the"ten democratic commandments" is a requisite for membership in the organization.
Irshad Manjii
Irshad Manjii is a Canadian and Muslim author, journalist, and
activist. She is the best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam
Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, published in 25
languages, and is currently a senior fellow with the European
Foundation for Democracy. Her columns are distributed world-wide by
the New York Times Syndicate. Ms. Manjii launched Project Ijtihad, an
initiative to develop the world's first leadership network for
reform-minded Muslims. Her numerous awards and recognitions include
the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader, Oprah Winfrey's first
annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness, and conviction"
and
Ms Magazine's "Feminist for the 21st Century."
Mateen Siddiqui
Mateen Siddiqui is Vice President of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, a religious educational organization dedicated to working for the cause of traditional Islam and opposing extremism in every aspect of the faith, and Director of ISCA's publication department. Mr. Siddiqui served three years as Editor-in-chief of the popular and highly acclaimed The Muslim Magazine, which explored issues of fiqh, tasawwuf, tafsir as well as aspects of Islamic history, life and thought. Mr. Siddiqui managed three international Islamic conferences under the chairmanship of Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani.
Mohammed Sifaoui
Mohammed Sifaoui is a French-Algerian journalist and author of Inside Al-Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World's Deadliest Terrorist Organization, describing his work to infiltrate an Algerian jihadist cell in Paris. Recently, Sifaoui published the book L'Affaire des caricatures: Dessins et Manipulations (The Caricatures Affair: Drawings and Manipulations) on the Danish cartoon controversy.