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Topics and Speakers

Iraq’s Democratic Prospects

Kanan Makiya

The Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Brandeis University

Kanan Makiya was born in Baghdad, left Iraq to study architecture at MIT, and left the practice of architecture in 1981 to write a book about Iraq - "Republic of Fear" (1989) - published under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil. The book became a bestseller after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. His later book "Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World" (1993) won the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on international relations in English in 1993. His most recent book, The Rock: A Seventh Century Tale of Jerusalem (2001) is a historical novel about the interplay of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). He recently returned to Brandeis after spending the last two years in Iraq working on political reconstruction.

Islam vs. Islamism

S. Abdallah Schleifer, Director, Washington News Bureau, Al-Arabiya

Abdallah Schleifer recently retired as Distinguished Lecturer in Mass Communications at the American University in Cairo, where he was also Director of the Adham Center for Television Journalism. He is a veteran journalist who covered the Middle East for American and Arab media for more than 20 years, serving as NBC News radio correspondent and TV producer/reporter from 1970 to 1983 and as NBC News Cairo Bureau Chief from 1974 to 1983. He is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and an Associate Scholar of FPRI. He has been a guest on CNN, PBS, BBC, and other European as well as Japanese television news programs.

Understanding the Shia

Yitzhak Nakash, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Brandeis University

Yitzhak Nakash is the author of the just published "Reaching for Power: The Shi'a in the Modern Arab World" (Princeton University Press and "The Shi'is of Iraq" (Princeton University Press, 2003). His essays have appeared in Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Dissent, the New York Times, al-Hayat, and other publications.

Islam, Democracy and the West

Barry Rubin, Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs

Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center of the Indterdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. His recent books include The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (John Wiley and Sons, 2006) and Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (Oxford University Press). He has appeared on national media, including Nightline, Face the Nation, The Lehrer NewsHour, and the Larry King Show, and has published in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow of FPRI.

Asian Islam and Arab Islam: Is There a Difference?

Robert W. Hefner, Professor of Anthropology, Boston University

Rober Hefner is Associate Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and world Affairs at Boston University, where he directs the program on Islam and civil society. He has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past 28 years, and has conducted comparative research on Muslim culture and politics since the last 1980s. He is currently directing a project for the Pew Charitable Trusts on “Madrasas, Modernity, and the Future of Muslim Higher Education,” and directed an earlier project for Pew on “Civil Democratic Islam.” His books include Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000) and, as editor, Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, 2005).

Islam and Politics in Europe

Jyette Klausen, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics, Brandeis University
Michael Radu, Co-Chair, FPRI Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security

Jyette Klausen is author of The Challenge of Islam: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 2005). She was a British Academy Visiting Professor at Nuffield College, Oxford University and received a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research and from the University of Aarhus (Denmark).

Michael Radu is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a student of terrorist movements worldwide for over twenty years. The author of eight books on international affairs, he is currently writing a book on Islam in Europe. For the secondary school audience, he wrote a book on Islamism and Terrorist Groups in Asia as part of the Mason Crest series on The Growth and Influence of Islam in Asia. He appears regularly in national and international media.