Current Center Researchers
Current Center Researchers
Abdullah Al-Amin Al-Arian
Researcher
Abdullah Al-Arian is a graduate student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. His research interests include modern Islamic history, social movements, Islamic law and society, Islam and globalization, and the history of US policy toward the Muslim world. He received his MS in Sociology of Religion from the London School of Economics in 2003, where he wrote his dissertation on the history of American Muslim political institutions. He graduated from Duke University with a BA in political science and comparative area studies in 2002. He wrote his senior honors thesis on the subject of constitutional law, civil liberties and national security in times of war.
Researcher
Sanae El Mellouki, received her BA from the Faculty of Humanities in Rabat –Morocco in 2000. Her senior thesis was on the representation of Jihad ‘Holy War’ in African Literature. In 2003, she graduated from the faculty of Education with an M.A in applied linguistics and the teaching of EFL (English as a Foreign Language). Ms. El Mellouki also has experience teaching Islam (in English) to female preachers at the Local Council of Scholars in Rabat/ Morocco. Her PhD thesis focuses on the evolution of the moderate Islamist identity under changing political conditions in Morocco. Her research project aims to study the party of Justice and Development’s (PJD) discourse during three different time frames to capture the dynamic processes of their collective identity formation/assertion as reflected in the way they framed the gender reform issue in its different steps of implementation. This research project is premised on the idea that political Islam in all its various emergences is the product the socio-political context within which it operates.
Samuel Rizk
Researcher
Samuel Rizk is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University. Living in Lebanon from 2002 to 2006 he was a founding member and executive director of the Forum for Development, Culture and Dialogue – a regional NGO based in Beirut, working on issues of conflict prevention, community empowerment and interfaith dialogue in partnership with the Arab Group for Christian Muslim Dialogue. During that time he also helped establish the Arab Partnership for Conflict Prevention and Human Security and coordinated its work in relation to the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). Samuel worked with the Middle East Council of Churches in Egypt and Lebanon (1997-2004) as program officer for the Justice, Peace and Human Right program as well as Assistant to the General Secretary for International Linkage. Prior to that, he served as editor-in-chief of Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World, the English-language newsletter of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo (1995-1997). Samuel currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University, teaching and co-teaching Strategic Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Theory. His research interests include Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East and beyond, and the significance of social capital accumulation and investment in developing this relationship as a means of preventing intercommunal polarization, antagonism and violence. Samuel holds an MA in Middle East Studies from the American University in Cairo, with his masters thesis entitled 'Civil Society and Faith-Inspired Social Action in the Middle East; the Duality of Spirituality and Civic Duty,' and a BA in Political Science from Hanover College, IN.
Sadig Malki
Researcher
Sadig Malki, from Mecca, Saudi Arabia is a Ph.D. graduate of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri . He is an assistant professor of Political Science at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah. He received his BA in political Science (major) and Administration (minor) from Jordan University, Amman in 1976 . He holds an MA in Political Science and an MA in Education (major) and Economics (minor) both from Ball State University, Indiana. In 1991 he completed his Ph.D. from W.U in Political Economy. His dissertation entitled, Institutional Inconsistency: A New Perspective on the Role of the State in Development.