Dr. Jackson received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. From 1987 to 1989, he served as Executive Director of the Center of Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo, Egypt. He is the author of several books, including&nbsp;<em>Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shih&acirc;b al-D&icirc;n al-Qar&acirc;f&icirc;</em>&nbsp;(E.J. Brill, 1996),&nbsp;<em>On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Ab&ucirc; H&acirc;mid al-Ghaz&acirc;l&icirc;&rsquo;s Faysal al-Tafriqa</em>&nbsp;(Oxford, 2002),&nbsp;<em>Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection</em>&nbsp;(Oxford, 2005)&nbsp;<em>Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering</em>&nbsp;(Oxford, 2009), and most recently&nbsp;<em>Sufism for Non-Sufis? Ibn &lsquo;Ata&rsquo; Allah al-Sakandari&rsquo;s Taj al-&lsquo;Arus</em>&nbsp;(Oxford, 2012).

Dr. Jackson is a co-founder, Core Scholar, and member of the Board of Trustees of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), an academic institution where scholars, professionals, activists, artists, writers, and community leaders come together to develop strategies for the future of Islam in the modern world.

Additionally, Dr. Jackson is a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, former President of the Shari&rsquo;ah Scholars&rsquo; Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He has contributed to several publications including the Washington Post-Newsweek blog, On Faith, and the Huffington Post. Dr. Jackson is listed by the Religion Newswriters Foundation&rsquo;s ReligionLink as among the top ten experts on Islam in America and was named among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

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King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture, and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity

Asifa Quraishi-Landes specializes in comparative Islamic and U.S.constitutional law, with a current focus on modern Islamic constitutional theory. She is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.
                

Quraishi-Landes writes on comparative legal theory and Islamic law. Recent publications include &ldquo;The Separation of Powers in the Tradition of Muslim Governments,&rdquo; and &ldquo;What if Sharia Weren&rsquo;t the Enemy: Re-Thinking International Women&rsquo;s Rights Activism and Islamic Law.&rdquo; Currently, she is working on &ldquo;A New Theory of Islamic Constitutionalism: Not Secular. Not Theocratic. Not Impossible.&rdquo; This project seeks to articulate a new constitutional framework for Muslim majority countries that will answer both the Muslim impulse for a sharia-based government, as well as secular concerns that a non-theocratic system is important in order to respect human and civil rights.
                

Professor Quraishi-Landes holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School and other degrees from Columbia Law School, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California at Berkeley, and has served as law clerk in the United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has served as a Public Delegate on the United States Delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (2010), the Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and as advisor to the Pew Task Force on Religion &amp; Public Life. She is currently on the governing board of the Association of American Law Schools&rsquo; Section on Islamic Law, the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), and Muslim Advocates. She is an affiliate of the Muslim Women&rsquo;s League, past President and Board Member of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, a Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and a member of the &ldquo;Opinion Leaders Network&rdquo; for the British Council&rsquo;s &ldquo;Our Shared Future&rdquo; project.

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Visiting Professor (University of Wisconsin – Madison Law School)

Asad Q. Ahmed is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the University of California, Berkeley. He received his B.A. in 2000 from Yale University, majoring from the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Literature. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 2007 from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University.

Ahmed specializes in early Islamic social history and pre-modern Islamic intellectual history, with a special focus on the rationalist disciplines, such as philosophy, logic, and astronomy. Though he has worked extensively on Islamic intellectual history of the so-called classical period (ca. 800-1200 CE), his current focus is the period ca. 1200-1900 CE, especially with reference to the Indian subcontinent. He is the author of&nbsp;<em>The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Hijaz</em>&nbsp;(University of Oxford, 2011) and&nbsp;<em>Avicenna&rsquo;s Deliverance: Logic</em>&nbsp;(Oxford University Press, 2011). He is also the co-editor of&nbsp;<em>The Islamic Scholarly Tradition</em>&nbsp;(Brill, 2010). He has published several articles in the aforementioned fields and in usul al-fiqh and kalam. His general training also includes Graeco-Arabica, classical Arabic poetry and poetics, and hadith and Qur&rsquo;anic Studies.

Ahmed is the editor-in-chief of the&nbsp;<em>Oxford Studies in Post-Classical Islamic Scholarship</em>&nbsp;(OUP) and co-editor of the journal&nbsp;<em>Oriens</em>. He is also co-editor of the Qur&rsquo;an and Early Islam sections of&nbsp;<em>The Marginalia Review of Books</em>. He currently chairs the Mellon Seminars called Graeco-Arabic Rationalism in Islamic Transmitted Sciences: The Post-Classical Period, held regularly at UCB.

Ahmed is very happy to receive queries and applications from students wishing to pursue doctoral studies in his fields of interest and expertise and he welcomes manuscripts of books, articles, and reviews for publication in the three venues noted above.

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Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies University of California, Berkeley

Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and affiliated faculty in the Department of History at the University of Toledo. He is an intellectual historian of Islam. His academic interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology, or notions of reason and reasoning, in various domains of Islamic thought, ranging from politics, law, theology, and spirituality (including Sufism). Anjum&rsquo;s work is interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of classical Islamic studies, political theory, and cultural anthropology. His recent monograph is&nbsp;<em>Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment</em>&nbsp;(Cambridge University Press, 2012), which explores the nexus of politics (siyasa), law (sharia), theology (kalam) in classical Islam, with comparative theoretical interest in Western Thought.

His current research is to bring his historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements. He is researching theoretical developments in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, and accordingly editing a forthcoming volume tentatively titled &ldquo;Islam and the Nation State in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings: Traditions, Transitions, and Trajectories.&rdquo; He is also near-completing a decade-long project to translate a popular Islamic spiritual and theological classic,&nbsp;<em>Madarij al-Salikin</em>&nbsp;(<em>Ranks of Divine Seekers</em>) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351), which, upon completion, would be the largest single-author English translation of a classical Islamic text.

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Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion University of Toledo, Ohio

Metra was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her parents immigrated to the US when she was two years old. After she completed her undergraduate studies at UCI she began working closely with refugee women and children from Afghanistan. The experience inspired her to apply for her Master&rsquo;s in Marriage and Family Therapy at Alliant International University, Irvine. She became a certified domestic violence counselor and worked for two years at a domestic violence shelter. She was accepted into the doctoral program in Psychology at Alliant International University, Irvine. She was one of 20 nationwide doctoral students selected throughout the country by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists for the minority fellowship program. Through this program she was on full scholarship and attended extensive seminars and trainings by insightful therapists in the country. She completed her dissertation, which focused on creating a curriculum to enhance cultural diversity training for mainstream therapists working with the Muslim population.

Metra has a profound research interests in studying minorities&rsquo; mental health issues, identity formation, spirituality in therapy, substance abuse, marginalization of minorities, couples therapy, parenting issues, PTSD, ADHD, and children of minorities who suffer from autistic spectrum disorders.

She was the school counselor at New Horizon Elementary School for 3 years and currently works with children and adults in a private practice setting in Tustin. In her practice she utilizes Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy approaches as well as the Humanistic model. She has always had an entrepreneur&rsquo;s vision and as a result of her love of education she is the new business owner of the Mission Viejo Montessori. In her spare time, she raises money for Women&rsquo;s organizations in Afghanistan, serves on the Pillars Academy School Board and teaches parenting classes as well as other seminars in masjids throughout southern CA.

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Marriage & Family Therapist / Visiting Professor

Jonathan AC Brown received his BA in History from Georgetown University in 2000 and his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2006. Dr. Brown has studied and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia, India and Iran. His book publications include&nbsp;<em>The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon</em>&nbsp;(Brill, 2007),<em>Hadith: Muhammad&rsquo;s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World</em>(Oneworld, 2009),&nbsp;<em>Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction</em>(Oxford University Press, 2011) and&nbsp;<em>Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet&rsquo;s Legacy</em>(Oneworld, 2014). He has published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory and Pre-Islamic poetry and is the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Law. Dr. Brown&rsquo;s current research focuses on modern conflicts between Late Sunni Traditionalism and Salafism in Islamic thought.

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Associate Professor of Islamic Civilization Georgetown University, Washington DC

Zareena Grewal is Associate Professor of American Studies, Religious Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Middle East Studies at Yale University. Trained as a historical anthropologist, she is the author of&nbsp;<em>Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority</em>, which was awarded one of the Victor Turner Ethnographic Writing awards. She was the first Fulbright fellow to be sponsored by Al-Azhar University. She also directed and produced the documentary film&nbsp;<em>By the Dawns Early Light: Chris Jackson&rsquo;s Journey to Islam</em>, which had a national broadcast on the Documentary Channel. She is currently conducting historical and ethnographic research for her next book on the Qur&rsquo;an in the American imagination, tentatively titled &ldquo;Is the Quran a Good Book? Islam and the Limits of American Religious Tolerance.&rdquo; She lives in New Haven, Connecticut with her husband Hamada Hamid Altalib and their three children.

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Associate Professor of American Studies/Religious Studies Yale University

Dr. Hamid is the Co-Director of the Veteran Administration (VA) Epilepsy Center of Excellence in West Haven, CT. He has established a Neurobehavioral clinic, where he provides clinical care for veterans who suffer from emotional distress and/or behavioral problems associated with neurological conditions. His research explores psychiatric co-morbidity of neurologic disease. He is currently the primary investigator of a study examining the neurologic substrates of depression in people with epilepsy.

<h2>EDUCATION</h2>
- B.A. &ndash; University of Michigan (1996)
- D.O. &ndash; Michigan State University (2001)
- M.P.H. &ndash; New York University (2008)
- M.P.H. &ndash; New York University (2008)
- Residency &ndash; New York University, Neurology/Psychiatry (2003 &ndash; 2008)
- Intern &ndash; Cook County Hospital, Chicago, IL, Internal Medicine (2001 &ndash; 2002)
- Fellowship &ndash; Yale University School of Medicine, Epilepsy (2008 &ndash; 2010)
- Board Certification &ndash; Psychiatry, Board Certified (2009)
- Board Certification &ndash; Neurology, Board Certified (2009)
- Board Certification &ndash; Behavioral Neurology &amp; Neuropsychiatry, Board Certified (2012)

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Asst. Professor, Yale School of Medicine

Özgür Koca (PhD, Claremont Graduate University) is an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Philosophy at Bayan Islamic Graduate School. He also holds a B.A. degree in Physics, and, before entering the field of Islamic studies, taught physics and mathematics at the high school and college level in different countries. Koca&rsquo;s work focuses on the intersection of Islamic theology (kalam), philosophy (falsafa), and spirituality (Sufism) in classical and post-classical Islam. He also examines the implications of these legacies for the realities of modern Islam. This implicates issues of the religion and science debate, pluralism, interreligious discourse, and related areas of inquiry.

He is the author of&nbsp;<em>Islam, Causality, and Freedom: From the Medieval to the Modern Era</em>&nbsp;(Cambridge University Press, 2020, forthcoming). He was awarded the&nbsp;<em>Fisher Faculty Teaching Award&nbsp;</em>in 2015 for excellence in teaching. He is currently working on a monograph, tentatively titled: &ldquo;the Principles of Sufi Metaphysics.&rdquo;

<h2 data-fontsize="18" data-lineheight="27">Education</h2>
B.S. Physics &ndash; Marmara University<br />M.A. Philosophy &ndash; Fatih University<br />Ph.D. Religious Studies &ndash; Claremont Graduate University

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Associate Professor of Islamic Studies

Joseph Lumbard,&nbsp;associate&nbsp;professor of classical Islam, researches Islamic intellectual traditions with an emphasis on Sufism and Islamic philosophy. He is the editor of &ldquo;Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition&rdquo; (World Wisdom, 2004), a collection of essays that examines the religious, political and historical factors that have led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
                

Lumbard teaches at the&nbsp;Hamad Bin Khalifa&nbsp;University in Doha, Qatar, and is currently researching the development of Sufi theories of love in the early Islamic period and their influence on the Persian Sufi tradition.
          

He completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in 2003.

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Assoc. Professor of Islamic Studies Hamad Bin Khalifah University, Qatar

Hamid Mavani is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Bayan Islamic Graduate School. His expertise in Islamic Studies stems from both academic training at Universities as well as specialized theological training at the traditional seminaries in the Muslim world. His primary fields of interest include Islamic legal theory, women and Shi&lsquo;i law, Islamic theology and political thought, Islam and secularity, intra-Muslim discourse, and environmental ethics. He is the author of a book published by Routledge in June 2013 titled,&nbsp;<em>Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi&lsquo;ism: From Ali to Post-Khomeini</em>&nbsp;and is co-author with Dr. Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi on a work in progress on Islamic legal theory, to be published by IIIT. Dr. Mavani&rsquo;s scholarship also includes translations of Islamic texts from Arabic and Persian into English. In this regard, he finished translating from Persian a ground-breaking work by Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar on Islam, apostasy, and blasphemy (under contract with the Edinburgh University Press).

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Rami Nashashibi has served as the Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) since its incorporation as a nonprofit in January 1997. He has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago and has been an adjunct professor at various colleges and universities across the Chicagoland area, where he has taught a range of Sociology, Anthropology, and other Social Science courses.
           

He has worked with several leading scholars in the area of globalization, African American studies and urban sociology and has contributed chapters to edited volumes by Manning Marable and Saskia Sassen. Rami has lectured across the United States, Europe, and Asia on a range of topics related to American Muslim identity, community activism and social justice issues, and is a recipient of several prestigious community service and organizing honors.
              

Rami and his work with IMAN have been featured on many national and international media outlets including the BBC, PBS and a front page story in the Chicago Tribune. In 2007&nbsp;<em>Islamica Magazine</em>&nbsp;profiled Rami as being among the &ldquo;10 Young Muslim Visionaries Shaping Islam in America&rdquo; and in 2009, Chicago Public Radio selected Rami Nashashibi as one of the city&rsquo;s Top Ten Chicago Global Visionaries.
              

Rami was named one of the &ldquo;500 Most Influential Muslims in the World&rdquo; by The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in concert with Georgetown&rsquo;s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He was named a White House &ldquo;Champion of Change&rdquo; in 2011, and was also invited by the governor of Illinois to serve on the Commission for the Elimination of Poverty and as a member of the Governor&rsquo;s Muslim Advisory Council.
           

Rami lives with his wife and three children on Chicago&rsquo;s Southwest Side.

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Executive Director, Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)

Necva Ozgur is the founder and Executive Director of MERIT and the founding School Head of New Horizon School Pasadena, NHSP. Necva obtained an M.S. degree from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Istanbul and later, an M.A. degree in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College in California, where she wrote her thesis on Strategies to Achieve Excellence in an Islamic School.
                


Necva played a pivotal role in establishing NHSP and lead the school to get its accreditation from WASC and CAIS. With the leadership of Necva and a skilled administrative team, NHSP earned the Blue Ribbon recognition from the Department of Education. Necva was also instrumental in launching New Horizon School Irvine and Minaret Academy in an advisory role.
                

Necva has served as a trustee of several non-profit organizations, including the New Horizon School Board, Islamic Center of Southern California Board, California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) and Council of Spiritual and Ethical Education (CSEE), and was a member of The Non-Profit Executive Forum and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Necva is currently serving on the Islamic Society of North America&rsquo;s (ISNA) Education Forum and the Counsel of Islamic Schools of North America (CISNA) board as vice-chair. She previously chaired the Education Council of Islamic Center of Southern California, and the Board of Bayan.
              

After serving NHSP for twelve years, Necva established a resource center called MERIT, Muslim Educators, Resource, Information and Training Center in 2005. MERIT promotes excellence in American Muslim schools and empowers Muslim educational leaders. This organization plays a vital role in providing professional growth opportunities for boards of directors, administrators, and faculty, and it develops professional and educational resources and provides networking opportunities for Muslim Educators.
             

Necva is currently providing Islamic schools with board training, principal coaching, accreditation, school establishment, development and evaluation and consulting. She has been part of many school accreditation and chaired accreditation teams on behalf of different accrediting agencies. Currently, she is chairing a committee for a pioneer project
              

&nbsp;of developing Islamic school standards for joint accreditation with AdvancED. Necva was invited two years in a row by the US State Department to travel to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to provide workshops on &ldquo;How to Raise Public Awareness Campaign,&rdquo; &ldquo;Social Marketing,&rdquo; &ldquo;Parenting,&rdquo; &ldquo;Volunteer Management,&rdquo; &ldquo;Leadership Training&rdquo; and more.
               

Necva also developed an adult education program for the Islamic Center of Southern California, which is called the Academy of Islamic Thought (AIT) www.academyofislamicthought.org.

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Executive Director, MERIT

Dr. Hadi Qazwini is an international scholar, educator, and public speaker. For over 15 years, he has educated diverse audiences across the United States and other parts of the world on topics related to Islam and Muslims in a variety of settings, including academic conferences, college and university campuses, schools, places of worship, and media outlets. 



             


Dr. Qazwini completed advanced traditional Islamic studies training at the Seminary of Qum under the guidance of prominent scholars. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California Irvine, a M.A. in Theology, Islamic Studies and Leadership from Claremont School of Theology and Bayan Islamic Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in Religion with a concentration on Global Islam from the University of Southern California. 


Dr. Qazwini's areas of scholarly interest and research are in Islamic intellectual history, with a focus on theology, law, and Imami Shiʿism. His publications have appeared in leading academic venues, such as Islamic Studies, The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, Shii Studies Review, and Edinburgh University Press.


In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Qazwini serves several organizations in the areas of higher education and international development and relief. He has traveled extensively across the globe and currently resides in Southern California with his family.

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International Scholar and Educator

Nadia Roumani is the Co-Founder and Director of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute (AMCLI). Nadia has worked with a wide range of organizations over the past decade to better understand the needs of Muslim communities across the United States, and develop strategic, structural solutions to address these needs. In addition to her work with AMCLI, Nadia has been involved with research projects and initiatives with the University of Southern California, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.
                

Nadia has also worked with several grantmaking foundations that are supporting Muslim communities in America and/or addressing US-Muslim World Relations. Nadia is currently the Consultant Program Officer for the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art&rsquo;s Building Bridges Program, which aims to improve American&rsquo;s understanding of Muslim societies through arts and media. Nadia has also consulted for the Four Freedoms Fund, Rothschild Foundation, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Jewish Funds for Justice.
                

Nadia has also worked extensively in the field of international economic development. She was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, where she co-founded the Global Policy Innovations Program. Prior to that, between 2000 and 2004, Nadia was the Assistant Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a project directed by Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. She was also a Junior Associate in Stiglitz&rsquo;s office at the World Bank from 1999-2000. Nadia also consulted for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the United Nations Development Program.
                

Nadia is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Nadia received her master&rsquo;s degree from Columbia University&rsquo;s School of International and Public Affairs, and her bachelor&rsquo;s degree in economics and international relations from Stanford University.


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Co-Director, American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture

Omid Safi is one of the leading Muslim public intellectuals. He is a Chair and Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, and Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC). He previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in contemporary Islamic thought and classical Islam. Omid is an award-winning teacher and speaker, and has received teaching awards at Colgate University, Duke University, and University of North Carolina.
                


He is the editor of the volume &ldquo;Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism.&rdquo; His last book was published by HarperCollins, titled &ldquo;Memories of Muhammad,&rdquo; and deals with the biography and legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.
               

He has been among the most frequently sought speakers on Islam in popular media, appearing frequently in the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC, CNN and international media. He has recently been designated as a lead Islam writer for the Religion News and Huffington Post.

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Associate Professor of Islamic Studies Duke University

Jihad Turk is the founding President of Bayan Islamic Graduate School, a preeminent Muslim institution of higher education offering accredited Master’s degrees in the fields of Islamic Studies, Leadership, Education, and Chaplaincy. Bayan also offers a doctoral degree in ministry with a focus on Islamic Leadership. 

Dr. Turk is a sought after national speaker on issues related Islam and Muslims in America, ethical leadership and spiritual formation of youth. Having served as an imam for many years at the Islamic Center of Southern California, one of the region's oldest and largest mosques, Dr. Turk is often consulted to provide mosque board trainings nationally. 

Having been born to a Muslim-Palestinian father and a Christian-American mother in Phoenix Arizona, Jihad spent his college years traveling the Muslim world and exploring his roots and the Islamic tradition. He spent time in both the Islamic University of Medina where he studied Arabic and Islamic Studies, and in Iran where he studied Farsi at the University of Tehran and in Qum. He completed his undergraduate study at the University of California, Berkeley where he received his B.A. degree in History and Arabic. Jihad completed his Master’s degree at the University of Texas, Austin in Arabic and Islamic law and jurisprudence. In 1999, Jihad began his doctoral studies in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles and obtained his doctorate in education from the University of Southern California. He taught as adjunct faculty for many years at UCLA and at Southwestern School of Law. 

Jihad has co-founded several interfaith organizations with the aim of collaboratively addressing homelessness, poverty and peacemaking.

Dr. Turk has been consulted by the White House and has traveled around the world (Indonesia, Morocco, Qatar, and France) for the US State Department to speak to Muslim communities abroad and represent the American Muslim Community. Jihad is a member of the USINDO, an NGO that aims to strengthen ties between the US and Indonesia.

Jihad has been profiled on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, regularly appears on NPR and other news outlets, has appeared numerous times on the History Channel and was featured in a documentary produced by the Annenberg Foundation’s www.explore.org about the Abrahamic faiths, entitled “Traveling with Jihad.”


Dr. Turk has received awards for his religious leadership by the US congress, the Valley Interfaith Council, and the South Coast Interfaith Council, has been acknowledged as a Local Hero by the World Festival of Sacred Music and was recognized as one of the 500 Most Influential people in Los Angeles by the LA Business Journal.


<h2>Community Service &amp; Interfaith Activity</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<div>UC President&rsquo;s Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion: Advisory Member</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Muslim Jewish High School Leadership Council: Advisory Board Member</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Islamic Society of North America: West Zone Rep. &amp; Majlis al-Shura Member</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Levantine Cultural Center: Advisory Board Member</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>ReGeneration: Board Member &amp; Founding Board Member</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Muslim Youth Camp: Instructor</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>The Christian-Muslim Consultative Group: Co-Chair &amp; Co-Founder</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>UMMA Community Clinic: Advisory Member</div>
</li>
</ul>


<h2>Education</h2>
<p>B.A., University of California, Berkeley<br />M.A., University of Texas at Austin<br />Ed.D., University of Southern California </p>

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Founding President 

Suhaib Webb is a contemporary American Muslim Imam, thought leader and educator. After his conversion to Islam, Webb left a career in the music industry and pursued his passion in education. He graduated with a Bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Education from University of Central Oklahoma. After serving as Imam and resident scholar in various communities across the country, Imam Webb enrolled at the world-renowned Al-Azhar University to study Islamic Law.
                


After years of study in the Arabic Language he was appointed head of the English translation Department at Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyah as a Mufti (Jurist). Imam Webb has completed the memorization of the Quran and holds a number of licenses from traditional scholars in various Islamic sciences. Imam Suhaib Webb strongly advocates for an authentic articulation of the American Muslim identity. He is a proponent of understanding the various challenges facing the American Muslim community and finding solutions based on an authentic American Muslim experience.
            

In 2010 his website&nbsp;<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20141006015224/http://www.suhaibwebb.com/">SuhaibWebb.com</a>&nbsp;won the Brass Crescent&rsquo;s best &ldquo;Blog of the Year&rdquo; award. Recently he was part of a delegation that visited Auschwitz to develop better understanding between Muslim and Jewish Americans. He was named by the British Government as a &ldquo;Moderate Muslim leader&rdquo; and was named in 2010 as one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center.

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International Scholar

Tahara Akmal earned an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Pastoral Care & Counseling, and Islamic Studies from the Claremont School of Theology. She became a Chaplain Intern at The Ohio State Medical Center, a Chaplain Resident at UCLA Health, and then an advanced Chaplain Resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She went on to serve as an Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) Certified Educator and Chaplain at Reading Hospital School of Health Sciences. Tahara currently serves as the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Program Manager at Medstar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. She is the first Muslim woman in the United States to become certified as a CPE Educator by ACPE. Tahara is a Ph.D. Candidate at Alvernia University, where she is researching Chaplaincy and Leadership.


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Educator; Faculty Member 

Karima Diane Alavi is a curriculum specialist, educator and author. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in History, Middle East and East Asian Studies from Kent State University and Shiraz University in Iran. She went on to receive her Master’s Degree in History, Middle East and Asian Studies from Kent State. Karima also took one year of post-graduate studies in East Asian Art History at Kansas University. As a graduate student, she received one of ten Bicentennial scholarships to study language, history and art in Iran. Early in her career, she traveled and taught in the Middle East. She taught Islamic Studies for seven years at the renowned Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. She also directed the Dar al-Islam Summer Teacher’s Institute in Abiquiu, NM for many years. Karima continues to travel in educational endeavors, speaking at conferences and events both nationally and internationally. She has presented at NESA (Near East, South Asia Teachers’ Conference) in Cairo, Egypt and Bangkok, Thailand; numerous state, regional and national Social Studies Conferences; The Library of Congress; The Smithsonian Institution; Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies; Middle East Studies Association. She is the author of Ramadan: More Than Fasting (Journal of the Near East, South Asia Council of Overseas Schools, Spring, 1998),  What Are American Children Learning About Islam? (The Muslim Magazine, Vol.1, No. 3, July, 1998), The Emergence of Renaissance: Cultural Interactions Between Europeans and Muslims (co-authored with Susan Douglass, Council on Islamic Education, 1999), Life in the House of Wisdom in “Al-Ma’mun, Caliph of Baghdad” (Calliope, Cobblestone Publications, 2000), At Risk of Prejudice: Teaching Tolerance About Muslim Americans (Social Education Magazine, National Council for the Social Studies,  2001), Turning to Our Faith in Response to the Events of September 11 (America Magazine, a Catholic Publication and ABC television, Albuquerque. October, 2001), The History of Islamic Science, Technology and Medicine, part of the four-volume reference text, “World Eras: The Rise of Islam” (Gale Publications, June, 2002), Rihla, The Islamic Concept of Travel for the Sake of Knowledge, lesson plan (PBS web-site, The Islam Project), Hijab, Islamic Dress for Men and Women, lesson plan (PBS web-site, The Islam Project), The Qur’an: Islam’s Holy Scripture (Calliope Books. December, 2003).


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Former Director, Curriculum Developer, and Author

Najah Bazzy, RN, is an internationally recognized healer, humanitarian and interfaith leader who left a six-figure salary as a critical-care nurse to build Zaman International. The Metro-Detroit based non-profit empowers marginalized women and children to break the cycle of extreme poverty. In 2019, she was recognized as a Top Ten CNN Hero highlighting Zaman&rsquo;s growth from a grassroots team of volunteers to a world-class organization with a global reach that has helped more than 2.1 million people in 20 countries since 2010.&nbsp;



Born and raised in Southeast Michigan, Najah earned her nursing degree from Madonna University and holds a Doctor of Humanities Honoris Causa degree from Oakland University. She has specialized over the past three decades in critical care and transcultural nursing. The CEO of Diversity Specialists, Najah has implemented a national model of transcultural clinical care and hosted workshops for health care institutions across the country. She also had served as an adjunct professor at Michigan State University&rsquo;s Institute of International Health and currently teaches graduate courses at Bayan Claremont Theological School in affiliation with the Chicago Theological Seminary. In 1997, she co-founded the Young Muslim Association, now known as the Muslim Youth Connection, and serves as Senior Advisor providing leadership training to youth.&nbsp;
           

Najah has been interviewed by national and international media outlets about her work and was selected as a CNN Hero for 2019. In 2020, she was recognized in People Magazine&rsquo;s Women Changing the World issue, featured in the Smile with Lay&rsquo;s campaign, and inducted into the Michigan Women&rsquo;s Hall of Fame. Najah has been profiled on CBS 62&rsquo;s &ldquo;Eye On The Future: The Power of Women&rdquo; along with Suzanne Shank, Mary Barra, Gretchen Valade, and Andra Rush. She was featured on a United Way of Southeast Michigan billboard as a source of inspiration to Detroit-area youth. She and her family appeared in the PBS film &ldquo;Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet,&rdquo; which was viewed by over 15 million people when it premiered in the U.S. and has been seen by hundreds of millions worldwide since.
                

An avid reader and tea aficionado, Najah lives in Canton, Mich., with her husband of more than 35 years, Allie Bazzy. They have four children and four grandchildren.&nbsp;

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Founder and CEO, Zaman International

Shaykh Jihad Brown is the Resident Scholar at Bayan Islamic Graduate School. He is a classically-trained Muslim scholar of the traditional Islamic disciplines, with a focus on theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, and legal theory. An American scholar who has lived, studied, and worked throughout Europe and the Arab world. <br/> Shaykh Jihad completed his degree in Psychology at Rutgers; & attained post-graduate degrees in Philosophical Theology and Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He would further pursue a rigorous, classical curriculum with prominent Shariah authorities in Syria and Morocco; at whose hands he became authorized—with advanced licenses (ijazat khassah)—to teach and pass on these sacred disciplines. <br/> As a critical public intellectual, Shaykh Jihad has appeared on various media outlets such as BBC and CNN and continues his work today as an academic consultant and writer on issues pertaining to Islam, Muslim American communities, and the interplay between normative Islamic thought and the modern world.


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Resident Scholar; Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

R. David Coolidge received his Ph.D. in 2023 from the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), with a dissertation about Muslim perceptions of the Hindu tradition. From 2008-2013 he worked as a Muslim chaplain, first at Dartmouth College and then at Brown University. From 2014-2017 he taught an undergraduate course on Islamic law and ethics at New York University. He has served on the boards of various American Muslim institutions, including Zaytuna College and Taleef Collective. He converted to Islam in 1998, and in 2004 married Sumaiya Balbale, daughter of early American Muslim activists Shafi and Nishat Balbale (Allah have mercy on them).


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Dr. Dakake is Associate Professor of Islamic thought and Quranic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shiite and Sufi traditions, and women spirituality and religious experience. She has just completed work on a major collaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, which comprises a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text (November 2015). This work draws upon classical and modern Quran commentaries, making the rich and varied tradition of Muslim commentary on their own scripture, written almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian, accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time in such a comprehensive manner. She is also currently working with Daniel Madigan on a co-edited volume, The Routledge Companion to the Quran, and is working independently on a monograph on the concept of religion as a universal phenomenon in the Quran and Islamic intellectual tradition.


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Asssociate Professor of Islamic Thought

Dr. Susan Douglass earned her Ph.D. in World History at George Mason University, and a M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. She is currently the K-14 Education Outreach Coordinator for the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and has been a Senior Research Officer for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations project. She previously worked as a Research Associate and principal textbook reviewer for the Council on Islamic Education, and authored a number of teaching units for the organization. She is the author of Teaching About Religion in National and State Standards Documents, a report co-published by the Council on Islamic Education and the First Amendment Center, 2000 and “Developments in Islamic Education in the United States” (Chapter 14), Oxford Handbook of American Islam, edited by Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, Oxford University Press, 2014.


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Education Outreach Coordinator 

Fouad Elgohari is a faculty member and the Director of Research and Media at Bayan Islamic Graduate School. As a student of fifteen years in the classical Islamic sciences with a specialization in systematic theology (kalām), Fouad has served as an instructor, academic consultant, and research fellow on various international councils, institutes, and educational programs. He received a Bachelor’s degree in the Liberal Arts, and went on to pursue Islamic Studies in Egypt from numerous institutes and under the supervision of senior-scholars of Al-Azhar where he received advanced traditional licenses (‘ijāzāt khāṣṣah) to teach credal theology, Sunni legal theory, Malikī Legal Rulings, Arabic language, taṣawwuf, Ḥadith, and the Qur’anic sciences. He went on to further specialize in systematic theology (kalām) and legal theory (uṣūl). In 2018 he graduated from Claremont School of Theology with an M.A. in Islamic Studies. His current research is in post-classical (13-18th century) Islamic intellectual history, with a focus on the rational sciences (kalām, usūl, philosophy). He is currently a regular weekly instructor at The Majlis, a local initiative in Southern California founded on offering traditional learning in the American context, while developing an intentional community rooted in love and service.


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Senior Director of Academic Affairs; Instructor of Islamic Theology 

Dr. Mohammad Fadel is Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago and received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.


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Associate Professor of Islamic Law

Dr. Reinhard Krauss is Executive Director of the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies in Los Angeles. Since 2008 he has taught Inter-religious Studies as a Lecturer at the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA. In addition, he is a member of the faculty of the New Theological Seminary of the West. A native of Germany, Dr. Krauss studied at the universities of Tübingen and Bonn and received his Ph.D. in Theology from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is an accomplished academic translator, being one of the main contributors to the new English edition of the works of the German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a key leader of the resistance against Hitler’s Nazi regime. Dr. Krauss has been a member of the Board of Directors of the University Religious Conference at UCLA since 2012 and is currently serving as a Vice-President of the organization. He has served as President of the South Coast Interfaith Council as well as Harbor Interfaith Services. Dr. Krauss is a recipient of the ‘Interfaith Courage Award’ by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the United States Congress, as well as the ‘Interfaith Unity Award’ by the South Coast Interfaith Council.


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Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies

Khalid Latif is Executive Director and Chaplain (Imam) for the Islamic Center at New York University (NYU).
                In 2005, Imam Latif was appointed the first Muslim chaplain at NYU. At NYU, Khalid initiated his vision for a pluralistic American Muslim community, rooted on campus and reaching out to the city. In 2006, Imam Latif was appointed the first Muslim chaplain at Princeton University. In 2007, Imam Latifs position was fully institutionalized at New York University, and so he committed himself to that institution and the building of a Muslim life institution. Today Islamic Center is a leader among American Muslim organizations, uniquely shaped to contribute to the future of Muslim practice in the West. <br/>
                Imam Latifs exceptional dedication and ability to cross faith and cultural boundaries on a daily basis brought him recognition throughout the city, so much so that in 2007, Mayor Michael Bloomberg nominated Imam Latif to become the youngest chaplain in history of the New York City Police Department. He was 24. Since then, Imam Latif has dedicated himself to Americas largest Police Department, and has developed tremendously valuable skills as a spokesperson for co-existence, mutual understanding and productive relationships between cultures, communities and religions.<br/>
                At NYU, Imam Latif has not only managed to build a strong Muslim institution at NYU, but he has offered his experience and awareness to the U.S. State Department, various institutions, corporations, mosques and other communities in the United States, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Egypt. He is a highly sought-after speaker, offering to diverse audiences his unique blend of motivational speaking, leadership insights, spiritual development and religious awareness.


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Omar M. Mahmood, Ph.D., is a clinical neuropsychologist at Sidra Medicine in Doha, and is licensed to practice psychology in California and in Qatar. He has conducted numerous neuropsychological evaluations of children and adults. He is also experienced in providing evidence-based psychotherapy. Dr. Mahmood is bilingual in English and Arabic and has worked as a consultant neuropsychologist throughout the Middle East and North Africa region. Dr. Mahmood graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychobiology and Arabic. He then completed a Master of Arts degree and a Doctorate of Philosophy degree in Clinical Psychology from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Mahmood completed his clinical psychology internship at the University of California, San Diego and the VA San Diego Healthcare System. His internship specialized in neuropsychological assessment and child/adolescent psychiatric services. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Dr. Mahmood was previously a Staff Neuropsychologist at Executive Mental Health in Los Angeles, and an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego where he was involved in cognitive neuroscience research on brain maturation and function. He frequently gives community lectures on topics of mental health, brain development, and psychology from an Islamic perspective. In addition, he has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for various peer reviewed scientific journals in the fields of substance use, psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroimaging.


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