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A fabulously broad range of interviews on the unexpected aspects of Islam, like the magnificent scientific and medical contributions of early Baghdad and feminist Islam in Morocco, as well as a comprehensive reflection on Islam’s past and future. Margot Badram, Ziauddin Sardar, Ayan Hirsi-Ali and Eugene Rogan are among our experts.

Margot Badran on
Islam and Feminism

Margot Badran is a historian and gender studies specialist focusing on the Muslim world. She is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Senior Fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University.

Ahmad Thomson on
The Essence of Islam

British Lawyer Ahmad Thomson converted to Islam in 1973. He is a noted speaker on Islamic matters and an author of several books on the subject. Thomson is a member of the Murabitun movement, founded by Ian Dallas, and a member and co-founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers. In 1994, he founded Wynne Chambers: one of the first chambers to specialise in Islamic law as well as English law. He has actively campaigned for elements of Muslim personal law to be accommodated by English civil law. He says a whole zone of knowledge about Islamic truth and its wisdom has been kept at bay, if you like, by established educational institutions in what’s called the West. He tries to redress the balance here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on
Women and Islam

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. She sought political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 in order to escape an arranged marriage. She became a member of the Dutch parliament and made a film with Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh that led to his assassination by a Muslim extremist in 2004. She is currently a fellow at the right –wing think tank American Enterprise Institute and head of the AHA Foundation (www.theahafoundation.org), a charity that helps protect and defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam.

Ziauddin Sardar on
The future of Islam

Ziauddin Sardar, writer, broadcaster and cultural critic, is considered a pioneering writer on the future of Islam. Author of over 45 books, including his widely acclaimed autobiographies, Desperately Seeking Paradise and Balti Britain. The Future of Muslim Civilisation (1979; 1985) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985; 1991) are regarded as seminal, groundbreaking works. He is the editor of Futures, the prestigious monthly journal of policy, planning and futures studies. He talks about the importance of seeing the future as the domain of alternative possibilities, the future of Islam, and the influence of poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, ‘the first Muslim futurist’, on his thought.

Turi Munthe on
Islam v Modernity

Turi Munthe is CEO and founder of Demotix – www.demotix.com – the multiple-awardwinning open newswire, with over 3,000 reporters in 190 countries around the world. Turi is English-French-Swedish and was brought up in London. He has been a publisher, editor, think-tank analyst (Middle East policy), lecturer, journalist and talking head. He has written for many of the world’s leading English-language newspapers, appeared on CNN, BBC, NBC, al-Jazeera, Asahi. He edited The Saddam Hussein Reader: Selections from Leading Writers on Iraq.

Shazia Khan on
Islam

Shazia Khan is a radio and TV reporter. She reports for the BBC World Service and Radio 4. Her background and training is in news but now she specialises in reporting on faith and culture. She has presented numerous documentaries on subjects such as women and beauty, sacred music and gay Muslims.

Amira Bennison on
Science and Islam

Deputy-Chair of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, and Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Dr Bennison has published widely on the medieval and early-modern Maghreb. She says that the scientific tradition in the Islamic world underpinned much of the European Renaissance, and that Muslim doctors were appalled by the brutal and primitive medical techniques of the early crusaders. Most Muslim towns had a hospital by the 10th century.

Eugene Rogan on
The Arabs

Eugene Rogan is Director of the Middle East Centre and a faculty fellow and lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East at Oxford University. His research focuses on the social and economic history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and the Arab states in the 20th century. His most recent book, The Arabs: A History, came out in 2009 to widespread media attention, not least because it offered historical insight into why US efforts to promote democracy in the region have been met with such suspicion.

Ziauddin Sardar on
Travel in the Muslim World

Travel, says Ziauddin Sardar, is both a physical and a mental exercise – it is about immersing yourself in another culture. Travelling is the process of letting go of yourself and immersing yourself in different ways of knowing and seeing. If you cannot do this, you haven’t travelled. It’s certainly not a holiday – travelling is not staying in five-star hotels. He chooses five books on travel in the Muslim world, starting with 14th century traveller, Ibn Battutah.

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