Contributors

Author of Constructing Pakistan (Oxford, 2010), Masood Raja is an assistant professor of literature and the editor of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies.

Dr. Qaisar Abbas, a U.S. based free lance journalist, grant writing consultant and a published Urdu poet, frequently writes on media, literature and society. With a Master's degree in Journalism from Punjab University, Lahore, he worked as Public Relations Officer for the provincial government of Punjab. Later he joined Pakistan Television as News Producer before moving to the United States where he did Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in Mass Communication. After working on administrative and teaching positions at several universities in the U.S., he is currently working as Assistant Dean at the University of North Texas. He can be reached at qaabbas@gmail.com

A public scholar, WHH lives in Pakistan and is a regular contributor to The Pakistan Forum.

Mehreen Zahra-Malik is assistant editor, The News International. She may be reached at mehreen.tft@gmail.com

Shaikh becomes a writer when provoked. He usually scribbles travelogues and loves to share his escapades about this beautiful world. Off and on, he writes critiques on films, books and any special events that unfold around him.

Abbas Zaidi is the author of Two-and-a-Half Words and other stories. He can be reached at hellozaidi@gmail.com.

Fayyaz Baqir is currently Director of Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Centre, Pakistan.

Pervez Hoodbhoy received a doctorate in nuclear physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently teaches physics and political science at LUMS (Lahore). He previously taught at Quaid-i-Azam University for 36 years and was head of the physics department.

Farooq Sulehria is working with Stockholm-based Weekly Internationalen (www.internationalen.se). Before joining Internationalen, he worked for one year,2006-07 at daily The News, Rawalpindi. Also, in Pakistan, he has worked with Lahore-based dailies, The Nation, The Frontier Post and Pakistan. He has MA in Mass Communication from Punjab University, Lahore. He also contributes for Znet and various left publications in Europe and Australia.

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has been a regular guest on PBS’s Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has given many radio and press interviews. He has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He has commented extensively on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iranian domestic struggles and foreign affairs. He has a regular column at Truthdig. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a professor at Department of English, Director of Women and Gender Studies, Montclair State University. Email: khanf@mail.montclair.edu

Aida Hamdani is a writer and a freelance journalist.

Wannabe artist (except they’re called visual artists now), corrupter of young Pakistani minds, do gooder (and badder), lover, not a fighter and a general procrastinator.

Gabriele Marranci is an anthropologist studying Muslim communities.

Dr. Asad Zaman (BS MIT 74, Ph. D. Stanford 78) is a professor of Economics currently at International Islamic University, Islamabad. He has previously taught at LUMS, U. Penn., Columbia, and Bilkent University.

Tariq Ali is British Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, campaigner and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso and regularly contributes to The Guardian, Counter punch and the London Review of Books.