South Asian Islam

Nasr M Arif is a Visiting Professor at St Andrews University, UK, and a Professor of Political Science at Cairo University in Egypt. He served as Professor of Islamic Studies and founding Executive Director of the Institute for Islamic World Studies at Zayed University, UAE. His works have been published in Arabic and translated into English, Spanish, Hungarian, Kurdish, Persian, and Urdu. His research concentrates on Islamic traditions and political thought, the history of Islamic cultures, political development, and comparative political systems. He received a PhD degree in Political Science, 1995, Cairo University, Egypt, and the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. Abbas Panakkal is a Visiting Professor at the School of History, University of St Andrews, and a member of the advisory board of the Religious Life and Belief Centre at the University of Surrey, UK. He is currently working on a research project focused on the diverse nature of the integration and indigenization of vernacular communities. Panakkal is the Director of the International Interfaith Harmony Initiative, which has been organising international interfaith conferences in collaboration with the United Nations Interfaith Initiatives, the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Department for Unity and Integration, and the International Islamic University Malaysia for a decade. He was awarded a research fellowship by Griffith University in Australia. He was also the project coordinator of the G20 Interfaith Summit in Australia (2014), Turkey (2015), and Germany (2017).