Dr. M. Fahim Khan: With a Masters degree in Poltical Economy (Public Policy) and a Ph.D in Economics from Boston University, Dr. Khan has 39 years of experience in economic policy, planning, teaching, training, institutional capacity building, policy oriented research, advising and consulting.
He had the opportunity to work in the area of Economic policy and planning while working for the Ministry of Planning, Government of Pakistan for 13 years in various senior positions. His important works are related to the issues concerning international economics, macreconometeric planning and forecasting models. He played a leading role in developing and using planning and forecasting models for macroeconomic planning of the country for the first time.
In the context of institutional capacity builiding, he played an instrumental role in establishing and enhancing the capacity of the School of Economics of International Islamic University. As Director of the School of Economics, he managed to develop the undergraduate and graduate program of the School. This program proved to be the most successful program in Economics within the country.
As Chief of the Research Division, he built and enhnanced the research capacity of the Islamic Research and Training Insitute of the Islamic Development Bank. He also laid down the basis of the establishment of a program on Islamic economics and finance in Islamic Foundation (UK) which has now developed into Markfield Instiute of Higher Education, Leicester, UK.
Recently, he has developed the Centre of Islamic Business at the Riphah International Islamic University, Islamabad to offer a graduate program in Islamic Business and Finance and to provide advisory and consultancy services in this field. The Centre has already started an MBA program in Islamic Business and Finance.
He published 12 books and several articles in refereed international journals besides contributing numerous conference papers, working papers and policy papers. His recent publication is from Edward Elgar (UK) released in February 2010, with the title Islamic Banking and Finance in the European Union: A Challenge. A text book on Islamic finance has recently been contracted with Wiley (UK).
He advised several national and international bodies on issues relating to economics, finance and shari’a. In 2000, When the Supreme Court of Pakistan, asked the central bank of the country to form a high level commission to transform the financial system of the country and to conform to shari'a, his services were borrowed from Islamic Development Bank to be the adviser to the Governor, State Bank of Pakistan and to be the member/secretary of the high level commission. The work of the commission is the basis of the Islamic financial system now in practice in Pakistan
Currently, he is a visiting faculty member of the Markfield Institue of Higher Education, Leicester, UK.
Mahmoud M. Ayoub was a Professor and director of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia from 1988 to 2008, an Adjunct Professor at the Duncan Black Macdonald Center, Hartford Seminary, Connecticut, a Research Fellow at the Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania and the Tolson visiting professor at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley California. Mahmoud Ayoub was a recipient of the Kent Doctoral Fellowship and the Canada Council Fellowship. In 1994-5, he participated in the Fulbright Exchange of Scholars program for Malaysia. In the Spring-Summer of 2000, he undertook a research project on Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt and Lebanon, also on a Fulbright scholarship. Mahmoud Ayoub is the author of a number of books including, Redemptive Suffering in Islam and The Qur’an and Its Interpreters (vol. 1 & 2). The summer of 2000 saw the release of his two-volume publication, Dirasat fi al-‘Alaqat al-Masihiyyah al-Islamiyyah in Arabic (Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations). Islam: Faith and History appeared in 2004. In addition, his articles have appeared in books and journals, like, The Muslim World, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Bulletin of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies (Tokyo, Japan) and Islamochristiana (Rome, Italy), among many others. Prof. Ayoub has also served and is still serving on a number of Advisory and Editorial Boards.
Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, and an internationally renowned Islamic philosopher and scholar of the Islamic intellectual tradition. Dr. Nasr holds a BS degree (1954) from MIT, and an MS (1956) and PhD (1958) from Harvard in the History of Science and Philosophy. He taught for many years at Tehran University, eventually serving as vice chancellor of the University, before returning to the U.S. in 1979. He served as distinguished visiting professor at the University of Utah and as professor of Islamic Studies at Temple University before coming to George Washington University in 1984. He has also held visiting professorships at Harvard and Princeton, and occupied the first Aga Khan Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut. He has lectured throughout the world, and has addressed many prominent academic and international venues, including the United Nations. He is the author of over 50 books and 500 articles on Islamic thought, comparative religion and philosophy, the philosophy of art, and the philosophical and religious dimension of the environmental crisis.
Dr. Tu Weiming, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies at Harvard University, was born in Kunming, China in 1940. He received his B.A. in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University (Taiwan), M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Princeton University and University of California at Berkeley. Since 1981, he has been on the Harvard faculty. He was the director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 1997 through 2008. He is a member of the "Group of Eminent Persons" invited by Kofi Annan to facilitate the Dialogue Among Civilizations and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published six books in English and four in Chinese. His five-volume collection of works was published in China in 2001. He is the recipient of three honorary degrees and three honorary professorships. He is on the editorial board of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and Philosophy East and West. His research interests are Confucian humanism, Chinese intellectual history, philosophies of China, and Asian and comparative religious thought.
Sherman A. Jackson is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, and Wayne State University. From 1987-89, he served as Executive Director of the Center of Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo, Egypt. In addition to numerous articles, he is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihâb al-Dîn al-Qarâfî (E.J. Brill, 1996), On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (Oxford, 2002) and, most recently, Islam and Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005). He is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Sharî‘ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He is featured on the Washington Post-Newsweek blog, "On Faith," and is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation's Religion Link as among the top ten experts on Islam in America.