Notes on contributors
Abdul Karim Abdullah (Leslie Terebessy) is Assistant Research Fellow at IAIS Malaysia. An ethnic Hungarian, he was born in Bratislava in then Czechoslovakia (now the Republic of Slovakia) before migrating to Canada in 1968. He holds dual Canadian and Slovak citizenship. Abdul Karim earned an MA in political philosophy from the University of Toronto, Canada (1999), a BA (Hons) from the University of Guelph, Ontario (1976), in Political Science and Economics, and an MEd (1986) from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) with graduate work in moral and religious education. He was active for five years (2002–08) at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) as lecturer, editor, writer and coordinator of the English language programme.
Current projects involve research into the causes of the current financial crisis and on critical thinking in Muslim societies.
Maher Y. Abu-Munshar is Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Department of Islamic History and Civilisation at the Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Prior to this, he had been a Lecturer at the Al-Maktoum Institute in the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. His teaching and research expertise include: Middle Eastern history in general; the history of Palestine from seventh century to the present; the Crusaders from a Muslim perspective; and the history of Muslim–Christian relations. Dr Abu-Munshar (PhD, Islamic History, Al-Maktoum Institute, University of Abertay Dundee, United Kingdom; BA, Islamic Law, International College of Islamic Sciences, London), has published several book chapters and articles, including “The Attitude of Christians Towards the First Muslim Fat? (conquest) of Islamic Jerusalem”, Journal of Islamic Jerusalem Studies 9 (Summer 2008), and many others. Islamic Jerusalem and Its Christians: A History of Tolerance and Tensions was published in 2007 by I.B. Tauris, London.
Osman Bakar is the Deputy CEO of IAIS Malaysia. He received an undergraduate degree and an MSc in Mathematics from the University of London. He then graduated from Temple University with an MA in Comparative Religion and a PhD in the Philosophy of Science and Islamic Philosophy. Bakar is currently Professor of Islamic Thought at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) in the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). In addition, he is a Senior Fellow at the Prince Al-Waleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Civilisational Dialogue (founded by him in 1995), University of Malaya, and Visiting Research Fellow at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He was also the holder of the Malaysia Chair of Islam in Southeast Asia at Georgetown University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue in the University of Malaya. Bakar had previously held the post of Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya. He is the author of 15 books and nearly 200 articles.
Christian Giordano was born in 1945 as an Italian citizen in Lugano, Switzerland, and is since 1989 Full Professor and Permanent Director of the Department of Social Anthropology in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He studied Sociology/ Ethnology, History of Art, languages, and History, with a special interest in the history of South Asia, before becoming involved himself in teaching and research at several leading European universities, such as Bern, Heidelberg, Basel, Frankfurt am Main, and Munich, after receiving his PhD in Sociology/Ethnology from Heidelberg University with a thesis on patronage structures in the Sicilian workers and artisans associations between 1750 and 1890. He is the General Editor of the collection Freiburg Studien in Social Anthropology and a member of several editorial boards of international journals. Giordano was Guest Professor or Visiting Fellow at many renowned universities all over the world and has published 45 books and 190 articles and book chapters. In 1999, he received an honorary doctorate from the West- University of Timisoara, Romania. Also, since 1999, he is an Honorary Member of the Association of Bulgarian Scientists, Sociology section.
Ruhanas Harun is Associate Professor and Head of the Strategic Studies and International Programme, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Prior to that, she had been Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the International Master in ASEAN Studies Programme (IMAS) at the Asia-Europe Institute (AEI) in Kuala Lumpur’s University of Malaya. From 2005 to 2007, she was the Head of the Department of International and Strategic Studies at the University of Malaya. She holds an MA from the Sorbonne, Paris, and a Diploma in Political Studies from the prestigious Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, also known as ‘Sciences Po’. She has been Visiting Lecturer at Cairo University, Egypt, and at Vietnam’s National University, Hanoi. Professor Ruhanas is Malaysia’s leading expert on Indochina, especially on Vietnam. Her teaching and research focus is on foreign policy and national security, in particular Malaysian–Indonesian relations. Aside from numerous articles, she has published Malaysia’s Foreign Relations: Issues and Challenges (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 2006).
Tengku Ahmad Hazri is a researcher at IAIS Malaysia. He obtained his LLB (Hons) from the University of London and was subsequently attached to the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) (of which he is currently a member). He later joined the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur for his graduate studies in Islamic thought, researching in particular the philosophy of the Indian Muslim scholar and reformer Shah Wali-Allah of Delhi (d. 1762). He has contributed reviews and other writings to the Malaysia press, Amazon.com and other websites.
Syed Adil Hussain graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States, with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics. Subsequently, he worked to defend the rights of Muslim Americans at the Council on American– Islamic Relations in Washington, DC. In 2005, Syed Adil founded and built uProdigy, an online education firm that has received many acclaims, including the Executive Summary Competition (ESC) award as a ‘Top Consumer Service’ in recognition for the high-quality online tutoring of his company (2008). The MIT ESC award is one of the world’s leading entrepreneur competitions and is designed to encourage students and researchers to act on their talent and ideas. It has produced hundreds of successful ventures since its establishment in 1990. In 2009, Syed Adil had been a Visiting Research Fellow at IAIS Malaysia, doing research on the Malaysia banking sector. He is currently a graduate student at Harvard University.
Mohammad Hashim Kamali is the Founding Chairman and CEO of IAIS Malaysia. He graduated from Kabul University, before going on to complete an LLM in Comparative Law and a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Law in the University of London from 1969 to 1979. Kamali was a Professor of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), and also Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) from 1985 to 2007. He was previously Assistant Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University and has also held Visiting Professorships at the Capital University, Ohio, and at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin. Kamali is on the board of several local and international bodies and
was an original signatory of the international ‘Common Word’ document between Christians and Muslims. He has served as Senior UN Advisor on the constitutions of Afghanistan, the Maldives, Iraq and currently Somalia. He has addressed over 150 national and international conferences, published 20 books as well as over 120 academic articles.
Christoph Marcinkowski, award-winning German scholar of Catholic–Muslim dialogue, Islamic and Middle Eastern, as well as Southeast Asian and Security Studies, is Principal Research Fellow and Co Chair of Publications at IAIS Malaysia. He holds an MA in Iranian Studies, Islamic Studies and Political Science from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and a PhD in Islamic Civilisation from ISTAC. He was Associate Professor of Islamic History at ISTAC and has held numerous distinguished fellowships, such as at New York’s Columbia University, Switzerland’s University of Fribourg, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, the National University of Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur’s University of Malaya. Professor Marcinkowski serves on the editorial boards of several distinguished academic journals and has published ten books, among them Religion and Politics in Iraq (Singapore, 2004), The Islamic World and the West (Zurich, 2009), and Shi’ite Identities (Zurich, 2010), as well as about 100 articles and book chapters. In 2000, then Iranian President Khatami conferred on him the First Prize of the Iranian Culture Award for his book Mirza Rafi?a’s Dastur al-Muluk: A Manual of Later Safavid Administration.
Matsuyama Yohei was born in April 1984 in Shizuoka, Japan. His academic career includes a BA (South and West Asian Studies) from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies, and an MA (Area and International Studies), also from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He is a member of the da?wah committee of the Japan Muslim Association and Deputy Editor of the Muslim Shimbun (monthly Islamic journal, in Japanese). He is presently a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (the Graduate School of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies). His research focuses on contemporary Islamic thought and matters pertaining to the Muslim minorities. Among his published books are Introduction to Islamic Private and Public Law: Public Law (Japan–Saudi Arabia Society, 2008, (in Japanese) and Introduction to Islamic Private and Public Law: Family Law (Japan–Saudi Arabia Society, 2009, in Japanese).