Dale F. Eickelman

"Who Speaks for Islam Today? Mass Higher Education, Democracy and the Religious Imagination"

Dale F. Eickelman is Ralph and Richard Lazarus Professor of Anthropology and Human Relations at Dartmouth College. Since the late 1960s, he has conducted extensive field research in the Middle East and elsewhere. His publications include The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 4th ed. (Simon and Schuster, 2002); New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere, 2nd ed., co-edited with Jon W. Anderson (Indiana University Press, 2003); Muslim Politics, co-authored with James Piscatori (Princeton University Press, 1996); Russia’s Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis, editor (Indiana University Press, 1993); Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination , co-edited with James Piscatori (University of California Press, 1990); Knowledge and Power in Morocco (Princeton University Press, 1985); Moroccan Islam (University of Texas Press, 1976); and numerous scholarly articles and contributions to edited books. A former President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, he is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden.

Aziz Talbani

"Islam, Modern Education and Information Technology"

Dr. Talbani obtained a Ph.D from McGill University in Education and Masters degrees from McGill (Islamic Studies), University of London (Education), and University of Karachi (Arabic). His specializations are in curriculum studies and educational leadership education. Dr. Talbani’s research interests include education and development, gender issues, postmodernism, diversity, and Islamic education. Currently, he is Senior Program and Research Officer at United Nations University, International Leadership Academy, Amman, Jordan.

Minoo Derayeh

"Issues of Equality and Gender"

Dr. Minoo Derayeh received her MA degree in Islamic Studies at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. She earned her Ph.D. degree in 2002 at the Faculty of Education of McGill University, Department of Culture and Values in Education. Her dissertation was nominated for four awards, results pending. Currently Dr. Derayeh teaches in the Department of Education at Concordia University. Among the courses she offers are: Diversity in the Classrooms, Minority Status and Learning, Current Issues in Education, Philosophy and History of Education, Women in Judaism and Islam, and so on.

Dr. Derayeh's research interests lie in the fields of religion and gender, Islam and women, women and gender in the Quran, comparative women studies, gender and globalization, and gender in multicultural societies.

Mansoor Moaddel

"Recent World Events and Their Impact on Attitudes in Islamic Societies"

Mansoor Moaddel (PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1986) is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, Eastern Michigan University. Professor Moaddel's areas of teaching and research include political sociology, social change, culture and ideology, and mathematical and statistical applications in social-scientific research. Dr. Moaddel has carried out national value surveys in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Morocco. These surveys were supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Bank of Sweden's Tercentenary Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. The post 9/11 survey was supported by NSF. His collaborators include, among others, Ronald Inglehart (University of Michigan), Saad ed-Din Ibrahim (Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, Cairo), Abdul H. Safwat (Suez Canal University, Egypt), Hamid Latif (Ain Shams University, Egypt), Taghi Azadarmaki (University of Tehran), and Mustafa Hamarneh and Tony Sabbagh (both at the University of Jordan in Amman), and Tony Proudian at Pan Arab Research Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Professor Moaddel has also been involved in a comparative historical project on the determinants of ideological production in the Islamic world. In this project, he has analyzed Islamic modernism in India, Egypt, and Iran in the second half of the nineteenth century; liberal-nationalism in Egypt, Syria, and Iran in the first half of the twentieth century; and Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria from 1930s to 1980s.

Dr. Moaddel's manuscript on The Islamic World in Search of a Sociopolitical Community is under review. His publications include Contemporary Debates in Islam (Saint Martin Press, 2001); Jordanian Exceptionalism: A Comparative Analysis of State-Religion Relationships in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria (Palgrave, 2002); Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (Columbia, 1993); and "The Study of Islamic Culture and Politics: An Overview and Assessment," Annual Review of Sociology (2001). Dr. Moaddel's article on "Conditions for Ideological Production: The Origins of Islamic Modernism in India, Egypt, and Iran," Theory and Society (October 2001) won the 2002 best article award from the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Finally, with a grant from the NSF, Dr. Moaddel is carrying out a national value survey in Saudi Arabia.

Henry P. Habib

"Islam and the Nation State"

Dr. Henry Habib graduated with a BA (with distinction) in Political Science from the American University of Beirut. He then received a scholarship from the Institute of International Education in New York to study at Princeton University and later completed an MA in Political Science at Fordham University. He taught for a few years at the American University of Beirut and at Saint MaryÕs University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received his PhD from McGill and then founded and chaired the Political Science Department at Loyola College and Concordia University respectively until his retirement. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Concordia University. In 1999 he was appointed Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Concordia University.

Dr. Habib has written two books on Libya, several articles on Arab unity, the Palestinian question and other related Mid-East topics. He is often consulted by the media on current issues dealing with the Mid-East. Since 1998, he has taught courses on the history of the Middle East at the Institute of Islamic Studies of McGill University.

Houchang Hassan-Yari

"Islam and Human Security"

Dr. Hassan-Yari was born in Iran and is now Professor and Head of the Department of Politics and Economics Science at Royal Military College of Canada. He received his BA at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad (Khorassan province). Dr. Hassan-Yari’s MA topic was The role of Shiism in Iranian Revolution of 1979 and his Ph.D. (Universite du Quebec a Montreal, UQAM) thesis was entitled Canadian Foreign Policy and Arab-Israeli Conflict. He has taught at UQAM (Montreal); Shahid Beheshti (National) University, Tehran, Iran; and is now at Royal Military College of Canada (Kingston). Professor Hassan-Yari’s publication and research interests are on Arab-Israeli conflict; Security in the Persian Gulf; Human security and civil-military relations in Middle East; and Impact of militarization and social programmes.