Seminar Leader:
Dr. Jennifer Bryson
studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Stanford, medieval
European intellectual history for an MA in History at Yale, and
Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies for a PhD in Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations at Yale. She has worked in journalism and for the Department of
Defense. For the Department of Defense she has
provided outreach to and analysis about Egyptian Islamic newspapers,
as well as outreach in Yemen to media, madrasas, and civil society
institutions. She managed a counter-terrorism research team for two
years for the Department of Defense and for this work twice received
the Defense Civilian Meritorious Service Award. She most recently
worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense
where she was the lead Action Officer for countering ideological
support to terrorism in the Office of Support to Public Diplomacy. Dr. Bryson has near-native
fluency in German, professional-fluency in Arabic, and has reading
knowledge of Latin, Greek, Syriac, French, and Persian.
Seminar Faculty:
Thomas F. Farr is the
Director of the Task Force on International Religious Liberty of the
Simon Center on
Religion and the Constitution. A former
U.S. diplomat, he is Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and
World Affairs, and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion,
Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. During his career in the Foreign Service,
Dr. Farr specialized in strategic military policy, political affairs,
and religious freedom. During the Cold War he helped develop U.S.
strategic nuclear policy, and was part of the U.S. negotiating team
in the U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in Geneva. In the 1990s he
served in Bonn, negotiated the value of U.S. military bases being
returned to Germany, and focused on Greek-Turkish-Cyprus relations.
During the last four years of his career, Farr served as the first
director of the State Department's office of international religious
freedom. In that capacity he traveled worldwide to engage
governments and religious communities on the subject of religious
freedom. Dr. Farr has taught history at the U.S. Military Academy
and international relations at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He has
written widely on America's international religious freedom policy
and U.S. national security, as well as on the development of the
Catholic doctrine of religious liberty.
Abdullah Saeed
is a leading scholar of Islam and religious freedom. He is currently
the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the
University of Melbourne, Australia, where he is also Director,
National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, and Adjunct
Professor, Faculty of Law. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from
the University of Melbourne, Australia, an MA in Applied
Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Australia. He earned his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the
Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He has also studied in
Pakistan. Prof. Saeed's research includes approaches to the
interpretation of the Quran today, reform of classical Islamic law,
and Islam and human rights, including religious freedom. He is
involved in both Muslim-Christian and Muslim-Jewish inter-faith
dialogue. His publications include
Freedom of Religion, Apostasy
and Islam, co-authored with his brother Hassan Saeed (2004),
and
Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a contemporary approach
(2006). For further information and a bibliography of Abdullah
Saeed's extensive list of publications see
www.abdullahsaeed.org.
Asma
T. Uddin is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of
www.altmuslimah.com. She is also an
attorney, with several years of experience practicing commercial
litigation at prestigious national law firms. Currently she works on
international religious freedom matters with The Becket Fund for
Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. As an editor, Asma has worked
with Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah on a number of articles for scholarly
journals on Islamic Law. She also helped edit the manuscript of Dr.
Abd-Allah's A Muslim in Victorian America, published in 2007 by
Oxford University Press. As Associate Editor and legal columnist for
Islamica Magazine, Asma focused her writings on how American Muslims
can rethink their social position within the American legal
framework. Asma's writing has also appeared in
Muslim Girl
Magazine,
altmuslim,
beliefnet, and in the
Guardian's "Comment is Free." She is an expert panelist for
the
Washington Post/Newsweek blog On Faith. Her more
scholarly work has been published in the
Rutgers Journal of Law
and Religion and
The Review of Faith & International
Affairs. Asma, selected in 2009 as a "Muslim Leader of
Tomorrow," has traveled throughout Europe and to various
Muslim-majority countries to meet with Muslim and other minority
groups as well as politicians, journalists, and anti-discrimination
organizations. Asma is a 2005 graduate of the University of
Chicago Law School, where she was a member
The University
of Chicago Law Review.
Guest Speakers:
Abdullah bin Hamid Ali began his study of Arabic as a teenager in
Philadelphia and then studied as an undergraduate with Dr. Khalid Blankinship at Temple University. He studied Arabic, Qur'anic
recitation (
tajwid) and memorization (
hifz), and
other introductory topics with Imam Anwar bin Nafea Muhaimin and his
brother Anas. Next he studied Islamic sciences at the University of
Qarawiyyin of Fes, Morocco, graduating in 2001 with a license from
the Faculty of Shariah to teach the Islamic Sciences (
al-ijazah
al-'ulya). He specializes in the Islamic sciences of Fiqh
(jurisprudence), Usul-ul Fiqh (legal theory) and Aqeeda (Islamic
doctrine). He is author of articles on various Islamic topics (
www.lamppostproductions.com),
as well as an instructor, and he translated and annotated
The Attributes of
God (Amal Press). He served for
five years as chaplain with the State Correctional Institution of
Chester, Pennsylvania. Currently he is a resident scholar at the
Zaytuna Institute. He lives with his wife and daughter in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of
Jurisprudence and founding Director of the James Madison Program in
American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the
Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He is
a member of the Presidents Council on Bioethics, and formerly served
as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil
Rights. Professor George was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court
of the United States. His books include
Making Men Moral: Civil
Liberties and Public Morality and
The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law,
Religion, and Morality in Crisis. A graduate of Swarthmore College
and Harvard Law School, he holds a doctorate in legal philosophy
from Oxford University.
Paul
Marshall is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in the
Center for Religious Freedom. Prior to joining Hudson he was a
Senior Fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House.
He has held several professorships, including at the University of
Toronto and the Free University of Amsterdam. He has taught
political science, law, philosophy, and theology. He holds a B.Sc.
(Geology) from the University of Manchester, an M.Sc. (Geochemistry)
from the University of Western Ontario, an M.Phil. (Philosophy) from
the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and an M.A. and Ph.D.
(Political Science) from York University, with further studies in
international human rights law at the University of Strasbourg and
theology at Oxford University. Marshall is the author and editor of
over twenty books on religion and politics, especially religious
freedom, including
Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion
(2009),
Religious Freedom in the World (2008),
The Rise of Hindu
Extremism (2003), and
Islam at the Crossroads (2002).
Louay
Safi is an associate faculty at the Indiana
University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) and a fellow of
the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). Author of
eleven books, including:
The Quranic Narrative (Praeger 2008),
Tensions and Transitions in the Muslim World, (University Press of
America, 2003),
Peace and the Limits of War (International Institute
of Islamic Thought, 2001),
The Challenge of Modernity (University
Press of America, 1994), and
Truth and Reform (The Open Press,
1998). Founding member and former board member of the Center for the
Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) (1999-2007), he served as
communications and leadership development director (2009) and
executive director of the Leadership Development Center (2004-08) of
the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). He also Served as the
Executive Director (1995-97) and Director of Research (1999-2003) of
the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Editor of the
Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (1999-2003), and President of the
Association of Muslim Social Scientists (1999-2003).