Samer Shehata is an assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He teaches courses on comparative and Middle East politics, U.S. policy toward the Middle East, Islamist politics, Egyptian politics and society, culture and politics in the Arab world. He is currently writing a book about the rise and […]

As’ad AbuKhalil is a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock, Calif. He is a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. He writes the blog Angry Arab.

Gideon Rose is managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and an expert on terrorism, among other issues, in the Middle East and South Asia. He is based in New York City.

Michael Radu is co-chairman of the Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. He has studied terrorist groups around the world and is an expert on terrorism and extremism in Turkey.

Sandra Mackey is a freelance journalist who has written widely on Islamic extremism, especially in Iraq and Lebanon. She is the author several books on Islam and politics in the Middle East including Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (2008). She lives in Atlanta, Ga.

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 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.