Tawfik Hamid describes himself as a former member of an Islamic extremist movement Jamma’a Islameia who now speaks out for political and religious reform in the Muslim world.

James Piscatori is a professor and deputy director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He is formerly a senior scholar at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in Oxford, England. He is a leading scholar in Islamic communities in the West.

Sohail Hashmi is an associate professor of international relations at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. He is an expert on Islam, pluralism, Islamic political thought and jihad. He posits that Islam lacks a tradition of political thought.

The Saban Center for Middle East Policy is based at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit organization that focuses on U.S. foreign policy through funding independent research, publishing and events. It is based in Washington, D.C.

The National Democracy Institute for International Affairs is a nonprofit organization that seeks to support democracies throughout the world. Its website is searchable by some countries. Kenneth Wollack is president.

The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding is an independent nonprofit think tank committed to research and analysis of U.S. domestic and foreign policies, with an emphasis on issues related to the Muslim community in the United States. Katherine Coplen is director of communications.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies seeks to influence and develop international policy. It has a Middle East Program which focuses on U.S. foreign policy in the region. Its Turkey Project focuses on U.S. policy and Turkish politics. The South Asia Program focuses on the politics and strategic developments in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan. H. Andrew Schwartz […]

The Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World is a program of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. It hosts seminars and lectures and conducts research on the role of Islam in the politics and government of the Islamic world. Carolyn Stewart is the press secretary.

Harvard University’s Islam in the West Program is a project of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. It focuses on the relationship between Islam and democracy in North America. Among the goals is to compare the attitudes of Muslims in Europe and Muslims in America. It conducts seminars, student workshops and surveys of Muslims and produces publications.