Bernard Haykel is a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. He is an expert on ISIS, or the Islamic State, jihadism, and Islamic apocalypiticism.

John Keane is a professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the director of the Sydney Democracy Network. He holds a doctorate and a master’s degree from the University of Toronto and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Adelaide. In addition to other research interests, Keane focuses on secularism, Islam, and Europe.

Abed Awad is an attorney and public speaker based in New Jersey and New York. He focuses on general civil litigation, including complex matrimonial law, commercial law, Islamic law and international law. Awad has an academic knowledge of shari’a and the laws of Arab countries. He holds a J.D. and a master’s degree in Near and Middle East Studies from the University of […]

Asifa Quraishi-Landes is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law and specializes in comparative Islamic and American constitutional law. She is currently focusing on modern Islamic constitutional theory. Quraishi is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.

While nearly 1 in four people identify as Muslim across the globe, a Pew Research survey in 2019 found that only six-in-ten U.S. adults know that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month and that Mecca is Islam’s holiest city and a place of pilgrimage for Muslims.  Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Muslim […]

Don Seeman is an associate professor at the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, where he studies medical and phenomenological anthropology, Jewish studies and ritual theory. He is the author of One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism. He is currently studying contemplative practice among Hasidic Jews.

Marie Marquardt is a scholar-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. She studies Latin American immigrants, gender and migration, multiethnic and multicultural congregations, religious diversity in immigrant communities and religion in civic and public life. She is the founding co-chair of El Refugio Ministry, which serves immigrants detained in Georgia.

Rachel Laser is the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy organization that seeks to reduce entanglement between the government and faith groups. She previously served as deputy director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, where she worked on social justice issues, including gun control, abortion […]