Abbas Amanat is director of the Iranian Studies Initiative at Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and former chairman of the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. He is author of Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism (2009).

Jamal J. Elias is a professor of religious studies and South Asia studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written on visual religious art in Islam.

Roy Mottahedeh is the Gurney Professor of Islamic History at Harvard University. His major work is on the premodern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East. He is also the faculty adviser of  The Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review.

Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed is National Director for Interfaith and Community Alliances at the Islamic Society of North America.

Safa Rifka is the chair of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. This group condemned the Muhammad cartoons, calling them hateful and racist. ADC lists state chapters.

Salam Al-Marayati is president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. The group condemned both the Danish cartoons and the violence they spawned.

Brian Whitaker, former Middle East editor for the British paper The Guardian, has created the Al-Bab website to provide information on Arab nations.

Alan Godlas is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia and has assembled this resource guide on the Middle East. He is also one of the country’s experts on Sufism.

Juan Cole is a history professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he teaches a course on Islam in global politics. He is the author of a book on politics and religion in Iran and another on the politics and history of Shiite Islam. He is the author of Engaging the Muslim World.