Advisory Board

Akbar S. Ahmed
Akbar S. Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and professor of International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C. Born in Allahabad, a small town on the Ganges River in what was then British India, Dr. Ahmed is a distinguished anthropologist, writer and filmmaker. He has been actively involved in inter-faith dialogue — and his work to bring understanding between Islam and the West has included three appearances on Oprah and a BBC news series called "Living Islam" — broadcast for the first time in 1993. From 1999 to 2000, Dr. Ahmed was the Pakistani High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the United Kingdom. He has also held many other senior positions in Pakistan. His many award-winning books include: Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society, Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise, Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World and Jinnah Quartet.

Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali, better known around the world today as the author of "The Clash of Fundamentalisms," was once described as "Pakistan's most famous son."

Long before 9/11 or the emergence of the twin evils of Imperialism and Religious Fundamentalism, Tariq Ali had already made a mark for himself as a revolutionary, street fighter, anti-war activist and an ardent believer in the fact that another world is possible; a world free of exploitation and
misery.

If 1967 saw the Summer of Love, the following year could not have been more different. As riots swept the streets of Paris, President de Gaulle fled to Germany, seemingly impotent in the face of radical student leaders like Daniel Cohn-Bendit - Dany le Rouge. Across the Channel 25,000 students marched on the American Embassy in London in a violent outburst against the Vietnam war. At their head the mustachioed Tariq Ali, urged the masses on to revolution.

Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1944. A Muslim environment, a Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents.

Later, while studying at the prestigious Government College in Lahore, Tariq Ali was elected President of the Students' Union. He organized public demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship and was banned from participating in student politics. As a student leader in Pakistan, Tariq Ali instilled an internationalism that still reverberates in that country. Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara became household names.

He came to Britain and studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford. Joining the University Labour Club, he was a committed member of its Socialist Group before becoming President of the Oxford Union in 1965. With the Vietnam war at its height, Tariq Ali earned a national reputation through debates with figures like Henry Kissinger and the then British Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart.

"It was the Vietcong guerrilla fighters who really set the example," he wrote later. "When they showed they could inflict major defeats on the Americans, people all over the world said, 'if they can do it to the Americans, we can too'". The rampant anti-imperialism which fuelled his student campaigns had begun, by the late 1960s, to evolve into a sophisticated credo. Tariq came to believe that a more systematic political approach was required to further his revolutionary aims.

Tariq Ali has always been, and will certainly remain, a dissenter. "The way capitalist politics is functioning," he says today, "is increasingly authoritarian, designed not to wipe out, perhaps, but completely to marginalize dissenting voices."

A film maker, playwright and novelist, Tariq Ali has just published the fourth novel in the Islam Quintet series. A Sultan in Palermo is based in Sicily in the 13th century, while his earlier novels in this series are based in Andalusia, the Crusades, and the Ottoman Empire.

Just turned 60, the firebrand of the 1960s may be graying, but his revolutionary spirit is, without doubt, still

Scott Siraj Al-Haqq Kugle
Scott Siraj Al-Haqq Kugle is Assistant Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on the intersections between Islamic mysticism (Sufism), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and Ethics, including a special focus on gender, sexuality and the importance of bodies in Sufi devotional practices. Dr. Kugle received his Ph.D from Duke University in the History of Religions. His essay "Sexuality and Sexual Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims" appeared in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (2003).