Seminar Leaders:
Mahan Hussain Mirza is Vice President for Academics at Zaytuna College. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Islamic Studies from Yale University, as well as an M.A. in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations from Hartford Seminary and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Mirza has served as an Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include topics related to the Quran, Islamic intellectual history, modern movements in Islam, and the role of reason in theological inquiry. He is Editor for the forthcoming Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought.


Abdullah Saeed is the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he is also Director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He earned his B.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Islamic University in Medina, Saudi Arabia and has also studied in Pakistan. Prof. Saeed's research involves approaches to the interpretation of the Quran today, reform of classical Islamic law, and Islam and human rights, including religious freedom. He is involved in both Muslim-Christian and Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue. His publications include Freedom of Religion, Apostasy, and Islam, co-authored with Hassan Saeed, and Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a Contemporary Approach.


Guest Speakers:

 Jacob Olidort is a doctoral candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. In his dissertation research he is exploring the legacy of Muhammad b. Salih 'Uthaymin and the theological tradition of Salafism. He holds an M.A. from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a B.A. from Brandeis University in History and Middle East Studies (magna cum laude). He has spent two years in the Middle East, including a year in the United Arab Emirates as a Fulbright Scholar, where he was based at the College of Shari'a and Law in al-Ain, and currently he is studying in Jordan. Jacob has written for the Brookings Institution and The Jerusalem Post, among other publications.


 Asma T. Uddin is an international law attorney with The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, non-partisan public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. She is also a Legal Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Before joining The Becket Fund, Asma practiced commercial litigation at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia and corporate real estate at Greenberg Traurig in Miami. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2005, where she was a member of The University of Chicago Law Review. Asma is the founder and editor-in-chief of Altmuslimah.com: Exploring Both Sides of Gender Divide, a web magazine dedicated to addressing gender issues in Islam. She is also an associate editor for altmuslim.com. Her writing has appeared in Muslim Girl Magazine, Beliefnet, The Washington Post, and in the Guardian's "Comment is Free." In 2009, she was selected as a "Muslim Leader of Tomorrow."


Seminar Director:

Jennifer Bryson is the Director of the Islam and Civil Society Project at the Witherspoon Institute. She studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Stanford, medieval European intellectual history for an M.A. in History at Yale, and Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies for a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale. For the past three years she has been a Guest Instructor at the U.S. Army War College, where she teaches an elective seminar on Islam. She has worked in journalism and for the Department of Defense. For the Department of Defense she has provided outreach to and analysis of Egyptian Islamic newspapers, as well as outreach in Yemen to media, madrasas, and civil society institutions. She managed a counter-terrorism research team for two years for the Department of Defense and received the Defense Civilian Meritorious Service Award twice for this work. Before coming to the Witherspoon Institute, she worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where she was the lead Action Officer for countering ideological support to terrorism in the Office of Support to Public Diplomacy.