Shaikh BaBikr Ahmed BaBikr
Shaikh BaBikr is a descendant of a companion of the Prophet Mohammed (saws), the noble Sayyidina Abu Bakr(ra). Shaikh BaBikr is a traditional Muslim scholar, poet, counsellor, spiritual master, and public speaker. Shaikh BaBikr studied Islamic sciences in Sudan under Shaikh Fatih Qaribullah (ra), son of Sayyidi Shaikh Qaribullah (ra), son of the Great Shaikh, Ahmed al-Tayyib Ba’Ashir(ra).
Shaikh BaBikr travels across the Muslim world and regularly tours mainstream Muslim community events across Britain’s mosques, community centres, and universities. He is an Imam in Yusuf Islam’s Islamia School. He holds weekly circles of dhikr (remembrance of God) in Cricklewood, London.
He has been a constant force of compassion and moderation within British Muslim communal discourse since the 1970s.
Shaikh Dr Usama Hassan
Dr Usama Hassan is a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, planetarium lecturer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and a part-time Imam at Masjid at-Tawhid in Leytonstone, London.
Shaikh Usama is a powerful voice for Western Muslims, creating fusion between Islam and the West. He regularly appears on British and global media outlets, and speaks at university campuses and community events.
Shaikh Usama was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, and pursued doctoral studies at Imperial College, London.
Dr Ghayasudin Siddiqui
Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui is a leading British Muslim spokesperson.
He is regarded as an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim political thought and European Islam. He is one of the first Muslim leaders who has championed women's causes, stood against forced marriages, domestic violence and murder in the name of honour.
Recently, together with some senior clerics, he launched Muslim Marriage Contract to protect the rights of women.
He has consistently opposed the invasion of Afghanistan and subsequently that of Iraq, joining the Anti-war Coalition at its inception, becoming a member of its central executive.
Dr Siddiqui, a trustee of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, is a leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain and director of one of the oldest Muslim think-tanks, the Muslim Institute. He has promoted dialogue across all barriers: social, cultural and political.
Michael Gove MP
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath and Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. He worked on The Times from 1995-2005, and continues to write for the paper. He makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze and Newsnight Review on BBC2.
Michael is author of Celsius 7/7, a courageous indictment of Islamism in Britain. He is an observant Anglican and outspoken supporter of ordinary, mainstream Muslims.
Imam Dr Musharraf Hussain al-Azhari
Dr Musharraf Hussain al-Azhari is the director of the Karimia Institute in Nottingham, a leading British Muslim educational organisation
(www.karimia.fortnet.co.uk).
He completed his studies in Islamic education in a number of countries including the UK, Pakistan and in Egypt at the Al-Azhar University. Among his teachers is the noble scholar and saint, Justice Pir Muhammad Karam Shah(ra). Dr Musharraf is currently one of the presidents of the National Christian-Muslim Forum, a fellow at Staffordshire University, and a founder of Muslim Hands, a leading charity.
Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions. He is a regular commentator in the US and global media on Islamic and Middle East issues. His first book, No God but God, has been translated into half a dozen languages. His next book. How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We’re Losing the War on Terror, will be published by Random House in spring 2008.
Reza is an impassioned and articulate voice for Western Muslims. For a fuller biography, please see http://www.rezaaslan.com/bio.html
Parvin Ali, OBE
A serial entrepreneur, Parvin is a powerful advocate of women’s enterprise at local, regional, national and international levels, including OECD and World Islamic Economic Forum. Founder Director of the FATIMA Women’s Network, she is also a board member of several regional and national public sector organisations. She is also an advisor to the British government’s Muslim Women’s Advisory Group
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7203925.stm)
Parvin is Britain’s first Muslim female chaplain.
Sherin Khankan
Lecturer and author on Muslim issues, former Danish Parliamentary candidate and spiritual Muslim Sherin Khankan is founder and chairwoman of Association of Critical Muslims, Denmark (www.kritiskemuslimer.dk). She is a specialist in contemporary Islamic activism in Europe and the Middle East.
Sherin is member of Co-Existence of Civilisations, a think-tank created in the aftermath of the Danish cartoon crisis. For a fuller biography, please see www.khankan.dk
Rev’d Dr Giles Fraser
Rev’d Dr Giles Fraser is the Team Rector of St Mary’s Church, in Putney, London. He is a columnist for the Church Times, writes for The Guardian and is a regular broadcaster on Radio 4's Thought for the Day. For ten years he was lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, University of Oxford. He is the author of several books on Christianity and the modern world.
St Mary’s Church has a long history of progressive politics. Back in 1647, it was the venue for the first recorded discussion of democratic principles in Britain, and, more recently, it initiated the motion for women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England. Giles Fraser was the founder, and is currently the President of Inclusive Church.
Shaikh Abdal-Aziz Al-Bukhari
A descendant of the great hadith master and compiler, Imam Muhammad bin Ismail al-Bukhari, Shaikh Bukhari lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, where his ancestors have lived since 1616. He is a master of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in Palestine and regularly travels to central Asia, Europe, and North America.
Shaikh al-Bukhari is a peace campaigner and believes that peace can be achieved in the Holy Land.
For more details, please visit
jerusalempeacemakers.org
Professor Timothy Garton-Ash
Professor Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. He is professor of European studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and he also contributes to the New York Times and Washington Post.
He is the author of several ground-breaking books. In his latest book, Free World (2004), Garton-Ash argues that the UK cannot, need not, and must not choose between Europe and America. In his Guardian columns, he has critically evaluated relations between intra-Muslim discourse and the liberal West. For a fuller biography, please see www.timothygartonash.com
Shaikh Dr Abdul Hameed al-Ansari
From the noble tribe of al-Ansar (the Helpers of the Prophet's community in ancient Medina) Shaikh al-Ansari is a renowned Muslim scholar in Qatar, who has pioneered liberal thinking within Islamic paradigms. He graduated from al-Azhar University and has spent his life teaching Shari'ah at the College of Law, Qatar University, where he became Dean of the Faculty of Shari'ah. He is known for taking progressive views in the face of heavy opposition from conservative forces.
He is a visionary scholar who foresaw the need for Muslims to modernise and accept the contemporary world. For example, two decades ago when most Muslim scholars in the Gulf region forbade Muslim women from driving cars, Shaikh al-Ansari broke ranks and argued against such rigidity. Today, it is legal for women to drive in Qatar. Similarly, he advocates the right of Christian minorities in Gulf countries to worship freely in churches. Qatar has recently completed construction of its first church building, while Saudi Arabia is yet to follow.
Shaikh al-Ansari is a regular media commentator in the Gulf.
Shaikh Ali al-Saleh al-Najafi
Trained in the traditional Islamic sciences at the holy city of Najaf, a centuries-old city of learning. Shaikh Ali currently resides in Dublin and is the Imam of Milltown Islamic Centre. He is outspoken in his views about the need for Muslims to reconcile Islamic political discourse with universal human rights, democracy, and women’s rights.
Mufti Abu Laith al-Maliki
Mufti Abu Laith was born and raised in Birmingham, England. At a young age, he went to Damascus, Syria, to study Arabic. Soon afterwards, he travelled to Islamabad and memorised the Quran, studied exegesis (tafsir), preliminary jurisprudence (fiqh) and then returned to Damascus for further studies. After receiving teaching licences (ijaza) in Damascus, he recommenced his studies in Pakistan, specialising in hadith and comparative fiqh.
Under the supervision of Mufti Salim al-Tunisi, Shaikh Abu Laith specialised in issuance of religious edicts, or fatwa.
Mufti Abu Laith holds teaching licences (ijaza) from Sidi Mohammad Hassan al-Ghumari in al-Ashmawiyyah, Ibn Asheer, Bidayat al-Mujtahid, Risalah ibn Abi Zayd, Talqeen, al-Qawaneen al-Fiqhiyyah. He also has ijaza from Shaikh al-Ninowi to teach al-Ashmawiya, who has ijaza from Shaikh Abdul-Aziz al-Ghumari. Mufti Abu Laith has read and obtained ijaza to teach the six books of hadith (sihah sittah) with respectable ulama in Pakistan, including Shaikh Abdal-Hadi al-Tabaa’.
Mufti Abu Laith is currently studying for a degree in psychology.
Dr Catherine Fieshci
Catherine Fieschi is Demos' Director. Her research focuses on the relationship between institutions, mobilisation and identity politics. Catherine holds a PhD in Comparative Political Science from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, is a contributing editor to Prospect Magazine, co-editor of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations and the author of In the Shadow of Democracy (MUP 2004).
David Goodhart
David Goodhart is the founder and editor of Prospect magazine, an influential, London-based current affairs monthly, launched in 1995. (www.prospect-magazine.co.uk).
He was born in 1956 and educated at Eton (1969-1974) and York University (1976-79, first in history and politics). He worked on the Yorkshire Evening Press (1979-1982) then the Financial Times (1982-1994) as a labour correspondent, city reporter, Lex columnist, German correspondent and employment editor.
He is married to FT columnist and author Lucy Kellaway; they have four children and live in north London.
Shaikh Abdus Subhan
Shaikh Abdus Subhan is a Birmingham-based Muslim scholar. He graduated from the prestigious al-Azhar University, specialising in Hadith. He holds an MA in Applied Theological Studies from the University of Birmingham.
He is vice-principal of an advanced Muslim seminary in the Midlands that trains future imams.
Dr David Green
Dr David Green is the director of Civitas (www.civitas.org.uk). He is a strong, principled advocate of pluralism and liberal values. Before founding the Institute for the Study of Civil Society in 2000, Dr David Green had been at the Institute of Economic Affairs since 1984, and Director of the IEA Health and Welfare Unit since 1986. He was a Labour councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne from 1976 until 1981, and from 1981 to 1983 was a Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra.
For a fuller biography, please see
www.civitas.org.uk
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