IFP Individual Supporters

Iranians For Peace is a collection of organizations made up primarily of Iranian expatriates who are interested in combining their voices in support of peace. The only criteria for listing is that the organization adopts the IFP founding statement and is willing to help promote it.We welcome participation by people of all nationalities, religions, ideologies and political orientations.

Hamid Dabashi

Contact Name: Golbarg Bashi

Born on June 15, 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. He has also taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab and Iranian universities.
Professor Dabashi has written 18 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics).
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Professor Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher for nearly three decades, Professor Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affair essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist.

Ali M. Ansari

Contact Name: Professor Ali M. Ansari

Professor Ali M. Ansari is one of the world's leading experts on Iran and its history.
He teaches at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where he also founded the Insitute for Iranian Studies. He was awarded his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Professor Ali M. Ansari is one of the world's leading experts on Iran and its history.
He teaches at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where he also founded the Insitute for Iranian Studies. He was awarded his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
Following stints as a lecturer at Durham University, where he was involved with the Centre for Iranian Studies, and Exeter University, he moved to St. Andrews where he is Professor of Iranian History, specifically of Iran and the Middle East.
His books include: Iran, Islam and Democracy: the Politics of Managing Change, Modern Iran Since 1921: the Pahlavis and After, and Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Roots of Mistrust.
He has also written for The Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman among others.

In addition to his dual role at St. Andrews University, as both lecturer and director of the Institute for Iranian Studies, he is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House and sits on the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS). He is a regular speaker at conferences and events regarding Iran, including "Iran's New Parliament" at the New America Foundation.

Mansour Farhang

Contact Name: Mansour Farhang

Mansour Farhang served as revolutionary Iran's first ambassador to the United Nations, resigning in protest when the Khomeini regime refused to accept the U.N. Commission of Inquiry's recommendation to release American hostages in Teheran. Early in the Iran-Iraq war, he served as envoy in negotiations with international peace missions. Currently, he is on the advisory board of Middle East Watch, a branch of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of U.S. Imperialism: From the Spanish-American War to the Iranian Revolution; and, with William Dorman, The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference; he is also a frequent contributor to scholarly journals and the national news media. He has taught at the Claremont Graduate School, the California State University at Sacramento, and Princeton University, where he was also a research fellow at the Center for International Studies. BA, University of Arizona; PhD, Claremont Graduate School. He has taught at Bennington since 1983, where he is the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching, an endowed chair established in honor of former faculty member Catharine "Kit" Osgood Foster.

Noam Chomsky

Contact Name: Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community for his substantial work in theoretical linguistics and cognitive science. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political activist and a libertarian socialist intellectual.
In the 1950s, Chomsky started to develop the theory of generative grammar, which has had a profound influence on linguistics. He established the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. His 1959 review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior challenged the behaviorist approaches to studies of behavior and language dominant at the time and contributed to the cognitive revolution in psychology. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has affected the philosophy of language and mind.
Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of US foreign and domestic policy. He is a self-declared adherent of libertarian socialism which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society".
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period, and was the eighth most-cited scholar in any time period.
Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts and travels often, giving lectures on politics.

Rakhshan Banietemad

Contact Name: Rakhshan Bani Etemad

Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is not simply one of Iran's leading film directors but one, according to Sheila Whitaker, deserving of a place in any history of international cinema.
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad has been a major figure in Iranian cinema for over 20 years and given equivalent status on the international scene since 1991, when Nargess appeared at international festivals, including London. she reveals in her work a strong social and political consciousness. Her sharp eye for realism and astute observation has earned her a high reputation with critics and audiences alike: she has won a number of awards both within Iran and internationally.

Bronze Leopard, 48th Locarno Film Festival (for The Blue-Veiled)
The Prince Claus Award, 1998
Best Achievement in Directing, Asia Pacific Screen Awards (for Mainland, with Mohsen Abdolvahab)[1]

Habib Peyman

Born in Shiraz, he is an ongoing Melli-Mazhabi activist.
He started off his political movement by becoming a member of “socialists God worshipers” and later on joint the nationalist fighters for nationalising Iran’s oil industry. In 1954 he was accepted at the University of Tehran’s Dentistry department where he was appointed as the head of student’s national resistance organisation. Due to his ambitions and political activities he was repeatedly by Savak’s regime and arrested started experiencing life in prison discontinuously from the year 1950.
Whist not in prison, he obtained two masters from Tehran University in sociology and family planning. He has also been the author of books on social, economic and culture.
After the Islamic Revolution, he started publishing weekly magazines and later on accepted the Revolution Council’s invitation as a member.

Professor Ilan Pappé

Contact Name: Ilan Pappé

Professor of history at the University of Exeter. Born in Israel in 1954, he was a senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University from 1984 to 2007.

Pappé is considered one of the "New Historians" who take a critical view of Zionist narratives and Israel's history. Among these, he defends the Palestinian narrative and analysis of the events of the 1948 War.

Pappé was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. Pappé graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1978, and in 1984 under the guidance of the Arab historian Albert Hourani and Roger Owen, obtained a D.Phil., his doctoral thesis became his first book "Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict", from the University of Oxford. He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and is currently chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies.

Professor William Beeman

Contact Name: Professor William Beeman

William Orman Beeman is an actor, author, singer, and professor of anthropology at The University of Minnesota, where he is Chair of the Department of Anthropology. For many years he was Professor of Anthropology; Theatre, Speech and Dance; and East Asian Studies at Brown University. Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Beeman was the recipient of an award named in honour of opera baritone, George London. From 1996-1999 Beeman sang under contract with Oper Chemnitz in the German city of Chemnitz. He authored the book: The Third Line: The Opera Performer as Interpreter with opera stage director Daniel Helfgot.

Beeman was trained as a linguistic anthropologist at Wesleyan University and the University of Chicago. He gained fame through his extensive writing, having authored several books and more than 100 scholarly articles on communication dynamics in the United States, Iran, Japan and South Asia. His Language, Status and Power in Iran has become a classic, as has his Culture, Performance and Communication in Iran.
Beeman's most recent work, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, deals with the highly negative rhetoric and discourse between Iran and the United States over the three decades since the Iranian Revolution, and its effects on national attitudes toward the Bush administration's policy towards Iran, as well as the possibility of military conflict between the two nations.

An important aspect of Beeman's work has been in the field of performance studies, particularly the study of non-Western theatrical traditions. In Iran, this includes the Iranian ritual passion drama, ta'ziyeh and the comic improvisatory theatre tradition, ru-howzi. He has also studied traditional performance in Japan, China and South Asia. His interest in the art world is also shown in his contribution to the co-authored volume Object, Image and Inquiry: The Art Historian at Work. He has authored more than 500 opinion pieces and media essays, and is the author of the blog Culture and International Affairs.

An admirer of the late anthropologist, Margaret Mead, Beeman has edited seven volumes of her post-World War II papers, having written scholarly introductions for several of them, including The Study of Culture at a Distance, and Studying Contemporary Western Society: Method and Theory.

Tony Benn

Tony Benn a British socialist politician has been at the forefront of many anti war movements. In recent times he opposed both gulf wars and the Kosovo war. He was elected the first president of the Anti War Coalition. - The leading anti war movement in Britain. He has spoken passionately against both militarism and war. In particular he has criticised the perceived imperialism of US foreign policy and Britain's subservience to it.
Tony Benn retired from Westminster as an MP in 2001. He famously quipped "he wished to retire from parliament to spend more time in politics"

Paul Ingram

Contact Name: Paul Ingram

Paul is executive director of BASIC, a peace & security NGO. His subject areas include nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament (with a focus on Iran and the UK); the UK debate over Trident replacement; defence economics, particularly subsidies of exports in the UK; and transatlantic security. His work has directly led to policy changes over UK export credits and defence export support. He hosts a weekly peak-time talk show on IRINN (Iranian domestic TV News in Farsi) focusing on global security issues. He is author of a number of BASIC notes and papers, and a documentary series for Press TV on nuclear issues. He also co-teaches systems thinking and practice on the Top Management Programme at the National School of Government alongside Prof. Jake Chapman.

Baroness Haleh Afshar

Contact Name: Haleh Afshar

Haleh Afshar, Baroness Afshar OBE, (born 1944) is a Professor in Politics and Women's Studies at the University of York and Visiting Professor of Islamic Law at the Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparé. Of Iranian origin, she worked as a journalist before and after her initial studies at York, where she returned after receiving her PhD from Cambridge University.

Afshar serves on several bodies, notably the British Council and the United Nations Association, of which she is Honorary President of International Services. She was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours list of June 2005.[1] On October 18, 2007 it was announced that she would be created a baroness and join the House of Lords as a cross-bench (non-party political) peer. She was formally introduced into the House of Lords on December 11, 2007, as Baroness Afshar of Heslington in the County of North Yorkshire.

Katajun Amirpur

Contact Name: Katajun Amirpur

Dr. Katajun Amirpur is a Cologne-based journalist and Islamic scientist. She studied Iranian studies in Bonn and Tehran. In 1999 she was awarded a doctorate writing her thesis on Abdolkarim Soroush. For the time being she writes her Habilitation (postdoctorate lecture qualification) on Shi'a Quranic exegesis. She has taught at the Freie Universität Berlin, Bamberg University and Bonn University. As a free-lance journalist, she writes for Germany's highest-circulation daily the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Tageszeitung (taz), the weekly Die Zeit and others. She is the co-editor of Islam am Wendepunkt. Liberale und konservative Reformer einer Weltreligion [Islam at the Watershed. Liberal and Conservative Reformer of a World Religion] (with L. Ammann;  Freiburg: Herder, 2006) and co-author of Schauplatz Iran[Stage Iran] (with R. Witzke; Freiburg: Herder, 2005).

Omid Safi

Contact Name: Omid Safi

Omid Safi is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he specializes on Islamic mysticism (Sufism), contemporary Islamic thought, and medieval Islamic history. He received his PhD from Duke University (2000). Before coming to UNC he was an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. Safi is the Chair for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. His book The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam, dealing with medieval Islamic history and politics, was published in 2006. His translation and analysis of Rumi's biography is forthcoming from Fons Vitae.

Safi has been at the forefront of the progressive Muslim debate. His book Progressive Muslims (2003) contains a diverse collection of essays by and about "progressive" Muslims. He was one of the co-founders of the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU-NA). Safi resigned from PMU in 2005, but he continues to support progressive interpretations of Islam outside of PMU.

Books: Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. Edited by Omid Safi, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003
The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006)
Voices of Change (Vol. 5 in the 5 vol series: Voices of Islam), edited by Omid Safi. (Praeger,

Raymond U. Scupin

Contact Name: Professor Raymond Scupin

Raymond U. Scupin, Ph.D., is Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Lindenwood University. He currently serves as the chair of the Anthropology/Sociology department and was the co-founder of the International Studies major at Lindenwood.

He received his B.A. in History, Asian Studies, and Anthropology from University of California, Los Angeles (1972), his M.A. (1974), and Ph.D. (1978) in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He has been a lecturer at University of California, Santa Barbara, and Visiting lecturer at Ramkhamhaeng University (Bangkok, Thailand), and Northern Kentucky University.

He has received the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1999) and the President’s Scholar Award (2007). He was awarded Fulbright grants (1979, 1985), and received an NEH grant award in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (1998). He has served as a member of the American Anthropological Association’s Human Rights Council, the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, and belongs to numerous organizations related to Southeast Asian Studies and Islamic Studies. He is on the Board of Consulting Editors for anthropology texts published by McGraw-Hill and Prentice Hall Press.

He has published essays in the areas of Islamic studies, Asian studies, race and ethnicity issues, the anthropology of religion, and globalization. He has authored two major anthropological textbooks that emphasize globalization: Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective 7th edition, (Prentice Hall Press, 2008) and Anthropology: A Global Perspective 5th edition (co-authored with Christopher DeCorse, Prentice Hall Press, 2008). In addition, he edited a series of key anthropology textbooks Race and Ethnicity: An Anthropological Focus on the United States and the World (Prentice Hall Press 2003), Peoples and Cultures of Asia (Prentice Hall Press 2006) and Religion and Culture: An Anthropological Focus 2nd edition (Prentice Hall Press 2008). He is currently engaged in research on Islam, ethnicity, religion, and globalization issues.

Ahad Rahmanzadeh

Contact Name: Ahad Rahmanzadeh

Rahmanzadeh is Senior Scientist of “Bonn Research Group Transformation and Development Policy (BFTE)”, University of Bonn, Germany.
Academician of International Eco-Energy Academy in Azerbaijan and Professor for Development Economics, Scientific Consultant for BMZ (Ministry of Development Policy of Germany) a.o.
He is the author of, among others, Zur politischen Ökonomie der Entwicklungsländer [On the Political Economy of Developing Countries] (Lampertheim: 1974); co-author of Perspektiven der Welternährung [Perspectives on Global Nutritional Economy] (Cologne/London: 1984); Population Policy in the Islamic Countries, BMZ-Special 49 (Bonn: 2002); Iran – Civil Society and the NGOs in an Islamic Country (Bonn: 2008).

Ahmet T. Karamustafa

Contact Name: Professor Ahmet T. Karamustafa

Ahmet T. Karamustafa is Professor of History and Religious Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His expertise is in social and intellectual history of premodern Islam as well as in theory and method in the study of religion. He earned his B.A. in Philosophy at Hamilton College and M.A. and Ph.D in Islamic Studies at McGill University. He is the author of God's Unruly Friends (University of Utah Press, 1994), a book on ascetic movements in medieval Islam, and Vahidi's Menakib-i Hvoca-i Cihan ve Netice-i Can (The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1993), a study of a sixteenth-century mystical text. He also served as an editor for, and wrote several articles in, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (University of Chicago Press, 1992). More recently, he completed a comprehensive historical overview of early Islamic mysticism titled Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh University Press & University of California Press, 2007). At Washington University, Karamustafa has held several administrative positions, including a five-year term as director of the Religious Studies Program. Currently, he is the vice-president of the American Research Institute in Turkey and a member of the Steering Committee of the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion.

Farhang Jahanpour

Contact Name: Farhang Jahanpour

Dr. Farhang Jahanpour, is a part- time tutor in Middle Eastern Studies at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford.
He is a former Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University and former professor of comparative literature and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan. He spent many years as Editor for Middle East and North Africa at the BBC Monitoring Service.

He received his First Class BA Degree in Persian Literature from Shiraz University, followed by BA Degree in English Literature from Leeds University, MA Degree in American Literature from Hull University and PhD Degree in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge.

He has edited and written an introduction to Nuzhat Nama-ye 'Ala'i, an 11th-century encyclopaedia of natural sciences, history, and literature. He has translated Arnold Toynbee's Civilization on Trial into Persian, in addition to publishing the Directory of Iranian Officials. His articles have appeared in numerous academic journals, and he has contributed chapters to a number of books.

Golbarg Bashi

Contact Name: Golbarg Bashi

Golbarg Bashi is an Iranian-Swedish feminist academic and human rights activist. She was educated in the British Russell Group universities of Manchester and Bristol.
She is a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York. Bashi has tackled areas of academic inquiry that include human rights, prevention of torture, Black and Third-world feminisms, postcolonial theory, Iranian women's studies, and the politics of media representation of gender, race and ethics.
She has interviewed the once heir apparent to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri in the Shi'i heartland city of Qom [1], and is also known for her criticism of "secular fundamentalist" feminists of Iranian origin in Diaspora for their siding with racist policies against Muslims in Europe and North America [2], [3] and for their hatred and counter-offensives against the positive developments of the women's movement inside Iran.

John Renard

Professor John Renard received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies in 1978 from Harvard University. Since then he has been teaching at St. Louis University in the Department of Theological Studies and part-time in the Department of Art and Art History.

Professor John Renard, a prominent and outspoken scholar of Islam has translated and wrote many books on Islam and Sufism:

- Islam and the Heroic Image: Themes in Literature and the Visual Arts.

- Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources of Spirituality and Religious Life, A Sourcebook of Texts and Images designed as companion to Seven Doors to Islam

- Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims.
All the King's Falcons: Rumi on Prophets and Revelation

- Letters on the Sufi Path by Ibn `Abbad of Ronda, translation from Arabic

Shiva Dolatabadi

Contact Name: Shiva Dolatabadi

Dr. Shiva Dolatabadi is the co-founder of the Society for Protecting the Rights of Children.together with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. She is the director of society. Over the past decade, the group has helped establish kindergartens and has provided training and education on children's welfare issues.
She is Consultant General Psychologist and a member of Alame Tabatabaei university’s faculty in Iran.

Baquer Namazi

Contact Name: Baquer Namazi

Baquer Namazi is an International Development Consultant. He has been serving as a senior adviser for Population Council at WANA regional office, a lead social adviser to World Bank/ Ministry of Housing UUHPR project and the chairman of the board of Directors of “Hamyaran” an Iranian NGO’s resource center which was created by the help of Namazi to strengthen the role, capacity and effectiveness of NGOs in Iran.

From 1996 to present he had prepared many institutional studies and proposals for government and non-government institutions in Iran, Egypt and Yemen. He carried out numbers of missions and studies for UNDP, UNICEF, and the Population Council. He has also initiated national consultation processes for Iranian NGOs.

Baquer Namazi served as UNICEF’s Country representative in Somalia, Kenya and Egypt from 1986 to 1996. At the time he played a leading role in preparing the five year country programs of cooperation of UNICEF, and developing strategies to integrate vulnerable groups, especially nomads into development mainstream. He also played a major role in promoting the right of the children and women in the country’s future program.

During the period of 1970 to 1983 Namazi held high positions in Iran, he was the governor of Khuzestan, the Deputy Executive Director for Regionalization(PBO) and a Member of the Advisory Panel of UN Center for Regional Development, Nagoya.

Over these years many of his papers have been published. Some of the titles and areas of those studies include; “Traditional Community Organizations in Iran” a situation analysis which was published by UNDP in Tehran.
“Kenya, The Convention: Child Rights and UNICEF experience”, “Getting together… And just doing it!” based on UNICEF’s Experience in and Working together with communities in Baringo District, published by UNICEF, and last but not least his selection of papers presented in conferences on “Children living in Armed Conflict in Africa” sponsored and published by African Network on Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), UNICEF and Redda Barnen. He authored the UNICEF Executive 1986 Board paper on Children in situations of Armed Conflict, which elaborated the concept of children as zones of peace.

Carl W. Ernst

Contact Name: Carl W. Ernst

Carl W. Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. His published research, based on the study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, has been mainly devoted to the study of Islam and Sufism. His most recent book, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (UNC Press, 2003), has received several international awards, including the 2004 Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Achievement. His current projects include Muslim interpretations of Hinduism and the literary interpretation of the Qur'an. His publications include Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (co-authored with Bruce Lawrence, 2002); Teachings of Sufism (1999); a translation of The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master by Ruzbihan Baqli (1997);Guide to Sufism (1997); Ruzbihan Baqli: Mystical Experience and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (1996); Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (1993); and Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985).

He studied comparative religion at Stanford University (A.B. 1973) and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1981), and has done research tours in India (1978-79, 1981), Pakistan (1986, 2000, 2005), and Turkey (1991), and has also visited Iran, Egypt, the Gulf, and Uzbekistan. He has taught at Pomona College (1981-1992) and has been appointed as visiting lecturer in Paris (EHESS, 1991, 2003), the University of Seville (2001), and the University of Malaya (2005). On the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1992, he has been department chair (1995-2000) and Zachary Smith Professor (2000-2005). He is now William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor (2005- ) and Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. He and Bruce Lawrence are co-editors of the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series at the University of North Carolina Press.

Mohssen Massarrat

Contact Name: Mohssen Massarrat

Mohssen Massarrat is a professor emeritus for political science and economics at the University of Osnabrück (Germany), with a thesis (Habilitation) in economics, a doctorate in political science and a degree in mining engineering (Dipl.-Ing). Born in Tehran in 1942, Massarrat has been in Germany since 1960 and has made research visits to the United States, Brazil, Columbia, Israel/Palestine and Iran.
His main teaching and research fields include: Political economy, International Relations, international economic relations, environmental policy, peace and conflict studies, as well as the Near and Middle East. His publications include 17 books and over 400 articles in scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers in German, English, Persian, French, Spanish, Japanese and Dutch. A member of numerous scientific associations and active in a number of social movements, Massarrat has initiated numerous socio-political projects and has organized several conferences.

His latest books are Kapitalismus – Machtungleichheit – Nachhaltigkeit [Capitalism - Power Disparity - Sustainability] (Hamburg: VSA, 2006) and Amerikas Weltordnung [America's World Order] (Hamburg: VSA, 2003).

Norman Finkelstein

Professor of Political Science and author, whose primary fields of research are the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. (the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce critic of Israel, has been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years.) His books include: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict: Israel-Palestine Conflict.

Abdulaziz Sachedina

Abdulaziz Sachedina is the Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, teaching mainly subjects associated with Islam. He has been a professor for 33 years, beginning in 1975. He annually teaches courses on Classical Islam, Islam in the Modern Age, Islam, Democracy and Human Rights, Islamic Bioethics and Muslim Theology.

He was born in Tanzania, his heritage originally is from India. He has an MA/PhD from the University of Toronto and has BA degrees from Aligarh Muslim University in India and Ferdowsi University of Mashad in Iran. He was one of the students of Dr. Ali Shariati in Iran.
In 1998, Grand Ayatollah Sistani issued a statement against Sachedina that advised Muslims not to listen to his talks or to ask him questions about religious matters.

In addition to his work at the university, Professor Sachedina has been a consultant to the Department of Defense regarding middle-eastern affairs and was an adviser to those drafting the Constitution of Iraq that was put into effect in 2005.

The Just Ruler in Shi'ite Islam: The Comprehensive Authority of the Jurist in Imamite Jurisprudence Oxford University Press.
The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism Oxford University Press.
The Islamic World: Past and Present John L. Esposito (Editor), Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina (Editor): Oxford University Press.
Islamic Messianism State Univ of New York Press.
Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures co-authored with David Little and John Kelsay: South Carolina Press.
Prolegomena to the Qur'an" being trans of Abu al-Qasim al-Khui's Al-Bayan Oxford University Press (USA), 1988
Recueil de textes du professeur Abdulaziz Sachedina, Editions Publibook (France)

Bijan Khajehpour

Contact Name: Bijan Khajehpour

Dr. Bijan Khajehpour is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Science and Arts Foundation in Iran (www.saf.ir ) an NGO focusing on the empowerment of Iranian youth through Information Technology. Furthermore, he is the chairman and co-founder of the Atieh Group of Companies (www.atiehgroup.com ) a group of strategic consulting firms based in Tehran, as well as of Atieh Dadeh Pardaz (www.adpdigital.com ) an IT consulting firm. He has contributed to many publications as well as national and international conferences commenting on strategic issues and economic developments in Iran. Among his publications are articles in the Quarterly Review Goftogu (www.goftogu.net ) where he is a member of the Editorial Board and contributions to the following books published in the US: “Caspian Region – New Frontiers”, “Iran at Crossroads”, and “Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus”.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Contact Name: Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Dr. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam lectures on politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. The author of Iran in World Politics: The question of the Islamic Republic (Hurst/ Columbia University Press, 2007/2008) and The International Politics of the Persian Gulf (Routledge, 2006), he was the first Jarvis Doctorow Fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He was also elected Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge European Trust Society at the University of Cambridge.
Born in Istanbul, he was educated at the Universities of Hamburg, American (Washington DC) and Cambridge.

Jawid Mojaddedi

Contact Name: Jawid Mojaddedi

Jawid Mojaddedi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. He moved to Britain at the age of five, where he began his education.

He got both his BA and PhD from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester. He also worked for two years as a full-time faculty member of that department, teaching Arabic and Islamic Studies, before moving to New Jersey in 1998.
He had held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Columbia University, where he worked for two years as a full-time editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica. He is now teaching at Rutgers since 2003.

Dr. Jawid Mojaddedi's research has been concerned primarily with medieval Sufi texts written in Arabic and Persian. His doctoral dissertation was a literary analysis of the Sufi Tabaqat genre, from Al-Sulami’s foundational Arabic work to the Persian collection by Jami. His dissertation investigated the functions of this genre in the processes of redefining the identity of the Sufi community. It was published as "The Biographical Tradition in Sufism"[Routledge] Curzon, 2001.

Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature (Routledge, 2003). He is also drawing on that research for his current study of the famous Sufi poet Rumi, which aims to analyze his teachings in their historical and intellectual context for the first time.

It was soon after moving to New Jersey in 1998 that Jawid Mojaddedi decided to pursue his longstanding interest in the poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi by translating his magnum opus, the Masnavi. This is a poem of some 26,000 verses divided into six books. Jawid Mojaddedi’s translation, The Masnavi: Book One, was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press as an Oxford World’s Classics edition. It was awarded the 2004 Lois Roth Prize for excellence in translation of Persian literature by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His translation of The Masnavi: Book Two has recently been published by Oxford University Press.

Lucian Stone

Contact Name: Lucian Stone

Dr. Lucian Stone is a professor of philosophy with a concentration Islamic Philosophy, Sufism, Comparative Mystical Literature, Iranian Intellectual History, Continental Phenomenology and Theology, and Philosophy of Humor at Southern Illinois University Edwardin.

Dr. Stone has organized and host, Cosmopolitan Iran, a Speaker and Film Series intended to provide an open forum for educated discussion about Iran. The scheduled series of speakers and films will explore the Iranian cosmopolitan community through cultural outlets such as music, literature, religion, poetry, art, and film, wherein contemporary social issues are addressed.

Miriam Cooke

Contact Name: miriam cooke

Miriam Cooke (which she spells in lower case, miriam cooke) is a professor of modern Arabic literature and culture at Duke University. She received her doctorate from the St Antony's College, Oxford in 1980.
Professor miriam cooke, has travelled and researched in Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Syria. Her first book dealt with the writings of one of Egypt's leading intellectuals of the 20th century, Yahya Haqqi. Subsequently, her interests turned to the writings of women, especially those that deal with issues of war and gender in the postcolonial Arab world. Her recently published book, Women Claim Islam, analyzes the discourse of Islamic feminists.

Her publications include;
Good Morning! and Other Stories (translation and edition of stories by Yahya Haqqi)
War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War
Opening The Gates. A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (co-edited with Margot Badran)
Gendering War Talk (co-edited Angela Woollacott)
Women and the War Story
Hayati, My Life
Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature
Muslim Networks. From Hajj to Hip Hop (co-edited with Bruce Lawrence)

She won many awards and honours, such as President of the Association of Middle Eastern Women’s Studies, Women Claim Islam: Choice Outstanding Academic Book and last but not least Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary and International Studies award for Muslim Networks, Trent Foundation award for Muslim Networks Workshop.

Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Contact Name: Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Dr. Ziba Mir- Hosseini is a legal anthropologist. A Senior Research Associate at the London Middle Eastern Institute, SOAS, University of London, she has held numerous research fellowships and visiting professorships, most recently as Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2004-5), Hauser Global Law Visiting Professor at New York University (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008 …) and Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (2007). Her publications include Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco (I. B. Tauris, 1993, 2002), Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (Princeton University Press, 1999; I. B. Tauris, 2000), and (with Richard Tapper) Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (I. B. Tauris, 2006). She has also directed (with Kim Longinotto) two award-winning feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001).

Gholam Reza Vatandoust

Contact Name: Gholam Reza Vatandoust

Dr. Vatandoust was a Associate professor of history in College of Literature and Humanities at Shiraz University in Iran. He was a visiting professor of history in University of Washington in 2004. His areas of academic interests are Modern Middle East, 20th Century World History, World Civilizations and Arab-Israeli Conflict.

He delivered numerous lectures since 2003 in various universities and colleges and research institutes both in Iran and abroad. These include the Association of Historians of Asia, Middle East Association of North American, Society for Iranian Studies, Center for Iranian Research and Analysis, Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), Jackson School of International Studies, Center for Dialogue among Civilizations and the Islamic Institute, London.

He won many awards and wrote number of book and many articles on Middle East conflict and Iranian History.
His ongoing list of awards also includes; Getty Institute Fellowship, Summer 2006 in Turkey and Greece. "Reconstructing the Past in the Middle East." Outstanding Research Fellow in the Humanities, Shiraz University, for the 2005-2006 academic year.
Fars Province Award for outstanding scholarly contributions to Fars Studies, February 2005 and Giovanni Costigan Professor of History, University of Washington, November 2002- August 2003.

Seied Nasseri

Contact Name: Seied Nasseri

Professor Seied Nasseri is an Iranian- German Scholar. he is the head of the Meachnical Engineering Department of the University of Cooperative Education (Berufsakademie) at the Berlin School of Economics (Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft Berlin).
He also chairs the VINI (Verein Iranischer Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure) the Association of Iranian Scientists and Engineers in Germany.

Prof. Nasseri is the deputy chairman of the Academic Board of the BWE (German WindEnergy Association).

Ahmad Ahgary

Contact Name: Ahmad Ahgary

Ahmad Ahgary is one of the founding member of the “Verein Iranischer Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure (VINI) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“, the Association of Iranian Scientists and Engineers in Germany.
He was a graduate in mechanical engineering and has taught materials technology at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin.
As freelance journalist for Iranian media, he has also acted as technical and cultural editor as well as translater.

Gholamreza Khojaste-Mohtachem

Contact Name: Ahmad Ahgary

Gholamreza Khojaste-Mohtachem is a member of the “Verein Iranischer Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure (VINI) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“, the Association of Iranian Scientists and Engineers in Germany.

He is a graduate from the Technische Fachhochschule Berlin (University of Applied Sciences) in 1979 with honors and from the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin in 1982

Mahboubeh Djafar

Contact Name: Mahboubeh Djafar

Mahboubeh is an architecture graduate from the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin (1994). Since 1998 she is member of the “Verein Iranischer Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure (VINI) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“, the Association of Iranian Scientists and Engineers in Germany, and since 1999 a member of the “Architektenkammer Berlin”, the Chamber of Architects of Germany capital city.

In 2006, she has founded energyrich, an architecture and energy consulting company, based in Berlin.

Saeid Motmaen

Contact Name: Ahmad Ahgary

Saeid Motmaen graduated from the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin in 1998. He is a member of the “Verein Iranischer Naturwissenschaftler und Ingenieure (VINI) in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“, the Association of Iranian Scintiests and Engineers in Germany.

 

Elahe Rostami- Povey

Contact Name: Elahe Rostami- Povey

Dr. Elaheh Rostami-Povey is a Development Studies lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her areas of specialisation are gender issues in Iran and Afghanistan. She is the author of Women, Work and Islamism: Ideology and Resistance in Iran and also the author of Afghan Women: Identity and Invasion.