Rashad Hussain is ambassador-at-large at the United States Office of International Religious Freedom. Reporters should reach him through Nathan Wineinger.

Wissam al-Saliby is President of the 21Wilberforce Global Freedom Center. Al-Saliby is an expert in international religious freedom and human rights who brings more than fifteen years of experience in advocating for religious freedom at the United Nations, training and capacity building for human rights in the Middle East and around the world.

Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst is a religion professor and director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. Her work focuses on the history of religion, Islamic practice and history, race and imperialism, and South Asian traditions.

“New Religious Movement” is one of those tricky, catch-all terms that can refer to lots of different communities, including ones that have very little in common. Broadly, a New Religions Movement (NRM) is a religious group that came into existence more recently (typically somewhere around the 19th century or later). Other terms include alternative spiritualities, […]

Ria Chakrabarty is the policy director for Hindus for Human Rights.

Mona Bhan is a cultural anthropologist at Syracuse University. Bhan’s areas of specialization include border wars and counterinsurgency; militarism and humanitarianism; race, gender and religion; environmentalism and climate change; occupation and human rights; space and place; water and infrastructure in Indian-occupied Kashmir.

Manan Ahmed is an associate professor at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute. Ahmed’s areas of specialization include the intellectual history of Islam in South and Southeast Asia; frontier spaces and the city in medieval South Asia; and colonial and postcolonial North India and Pakistan.

Rasheed Ahmed is executive director of the Indian American Muslim Council, the largest U.S.-based advocacy organization of Indian American Muslims. 

The Communal Studies Association is a research member association focused on the U.S.’s historical communal sites, intentional communities and communal societies. They publish a journal, host an annual conference and present awards to researchers and other writers in the area of communal studies.