Background Briefing - Sunday August 22, 2010

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Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom. He is now the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC, the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has written over a dozen award-winning books, including Discovering Islam, which formed the basis of the BBC six-part TV series called “Living Islam,” and the book Journey into Islam. He recently completed a book and movie project called, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam, which we are offering up today for a donation of $125.00.

Qamar-ul Huda is a Senior Program Officer in the Religion and Peacemaking Program and a scholar of Islam at U.S. Institute of Peace. His area of expertise is Islamic theology, intellectual history, ethics, comparative ethics, the language of violence, conflict resolution and non-violence in contemporary Islam. His research is on comparative Sunni-Shi’ite interpretations of social justice, ethics, dialogue, and the ways in which the notion of justice is used and appropriated. His book, The Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam, provides a critical analysis of models of nonviolent strategies, peace building efforts, and conflict resolution methods in Muslim communities. We are offering up his book today for a donation of $80.00.