Reformers of Islam
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Akyol is a Turkish journalist and the deputy editor of the Turkish Daily News. He is the author of Islam Without Extremes, which calls for “an interpretation of Islam that synthesizes liberal ideas and respect for the Islamic tradition.” |
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Iranian-American writer and scholar of religions, Aslan is the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization. He is “one of the top spokespersons for progressive Islam in America” and a strong advocate of Islamic reformation. |
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Zayno Baran Baran is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute and editor of The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular. In an interview with Pajamas Media (July 2010), she defines “moderates” as those who not only oppose violence, but who fully support both universal human rights and the teachings of the Islamic faith |
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Hassan Butt was born and raised in England to Kashmiri parents. In 2000, at age 20, he moved to Pakistan where he joined the Taliban and recruited British volunteers launch terror attacks in the U.K. In a 2005 interview, he said that he was a radical and hoped to be called a terrorist. More recently, however, Butt has renounced extremism and violence and called for a new theology, one that pronounces “that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.” |
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Fatah, a Pakistani-Canadian secular Muslim, is the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. He is an advocate for gay rights, separation of religion and state, opposition to Sharia law, and a “liberal, progressive form” of Islam. Mr. Fatah is the author of The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism and Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and an outspoken critic of political Islam (see video). |
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Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family, as a teenager Hamid joined Jammaa Islameia, a terrorist organization led then by Ayman al Zawahiri (today Al Qaeda’s number 2). Dr. Hamid later questioned the hatred and violence of extremist Islam and began to preach in Mosques to promote a message of peace. Dr. Hamid is an advocate of Islamic reformation and the author of The Roots of Jihad and Mr. Tolerance. See this video of Dr. Hamid (Oct. 2009) |
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Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch politician and writer, an active critic of fundamentalist Islam, an advocate for women’s rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. She is also the author of Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey. |
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An expert on Islamic history and doctrine, Ibrahim is the associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, a guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College, and deputy publisher of the Middle East Quarterly. |
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Dr. Jasser is the Chairman of the Board, founding member, and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). He is the son of Muslim-Syrian immigrants and is a native of Wisconsin. As a devout practicing Muslim, Dr. Jasser has always been very active in the study of Islam and its intersections with American culture. He is one of the moderate, anti-Islamist Muslims featured in the controversial PBS film, Islam v Islamists produced by ABG Films, Inc. in 2007. See also his Internet film, The Third Jihad, and podcast of a March 2011 conference call. |
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Muhammad Hisham Kabbani Hisham Kabbani is a prominent American Sufi Muslim who advocates an understanding of Islam as based on peace, tolerance, respect and love. Shaykh Kabbani has been an outspoken critique of extremism as well as the Wahabi doctrine. |
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Manji is an advocate for the liberal reformation of Islam, a Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, frequent public speaker, syndicated New York Times columnist, and best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. |
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Salim Mansour Professor Salim Mansur is a Muslim writer and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. Professor Mansur is also a Senior Fellow at the Canadian Coalition for Democracies. His articles have appeared in the London Free Press, the Toronto Sun, the National Post, Middle East Forum, the National Review, and other newpapers and journals. He teaches in the fields of comparative politics, developing areas and international relations. |
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Imam Khaleel Mohammed is a professor of Religion at San Diego State University (SDSU), in San Diego, California, and a core faculty member of the university’s Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies. Dr. Mohammed has studied in Mexico, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Syria and Yemen, at both traditional Islamic institutions and Western universities. An advisor to the anti-terrorism Free Muslims Coalition, he has stated that the Koran says that Israel belongs to the Jews. |
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Hala Mustafa Hala Mustafa is an Egyptian “New Liberal,” director of the political department at the Center for Political and Strategic Research at Al-Ahram, and chief editor of Al-Dimuqratiya, the only periodical in the Arab world dedicated to the analysis of worldwide democratic developments and Arab liberal thought. She has been described by the Middle East Forum as “anathema to the forces of radical Islam and traditionalism… a symbol of what liberalism means for Egypt and the wider Arab world.” |
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Nawaz is Director of the Quilliam Foundation and former leader of the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in the UK, Denmark and Pakistan. He served four years in an Egyptian prison, during which time his views gradually changed until he finally renounced the Islamist ideology in favor of traditional Islam and inclusive politics. Nawaz now engages in counter-Islamist thought-generating, writing, debating and media appearances. In an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal (August 2010), he makes the important distinction between Islam and Islamism: “Islam is the religion and Islamism the ideological project using this religion to justify total state power.” |
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Mansour al-Nogaidan A Bahraini journalist and former Saudi Salafi jihaddist, al-Nogaidan now advocates for Muslim reformation. |
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A native of Bombay, India, and former Wall Street Journal reporter, Ms. Nomani is a writer-activist dedicated to reclaiming women’s rights and principles of tolerance in the Muslim world. She is a co-founder of Muslims for Peace and the author of Sanding Alone in Mecca: An American Muslim Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. |
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Tashbih Sayyed Tashbih Sayyed was a Pakistani scholar, journalist, and author. He was the Editor in Chief of Our Times, Pakistan Today, and In Review, president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, and adjunct fellow of Hudson Institute. A noted spokesman against Islamism, Sayyed wrote about the Islamist threat to the US. He is featured in the documentaries, Relentless: The Struggle for Peace in Israel and Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. He died in May 2007. |
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Stephen Schwartz Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is a former journalist–he was a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle for 10 years–who now serves as the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism. He is a Sunni Muslim and a scholar of Wahhabism and Islamist extemism as well as Jewish history in the Balkans. Schwartz is the author of The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism, and Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan Jewish Notebook. |
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In an article in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (March 10, 2007), Saudi columnist Thuraya Al-Shihri criticized Muslims for failing to convey the positive messages of Islam and denounced the violence being perpetrated by some Muslims. She wondered why the Muhammad cartoons affair had been so broadly publicized in the Arab world, and had led Muslims to commit violent acts instead of making attempts to explain the values of their faith – while positive developments, such as a Belgian newspaper’s publication and distribution of the Koran, do not evoke a strong reaction among the Muslims. |
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Born in Damascus, Bassam Tibi is a professor of international relations at the University of Goettingen in Germany. A Muslim, he is a staunch critic of Islamism and an advocate of reforming Islam. Tibi is the author of Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe: Democratic Politics and Euro-Islam versus Global Jihad. |
