ProgressiveIslam.Org is made up of a core team and contributors. 

The Core Team manages content, wields the might of Bonkers, and keeps this bingo hall running as smoothly as one could hope. 

The Contributors post to the Front Page and to their own blogs.  Our goal is to have an array of contributors that reflect the North American Muslim community, including expats.  We are open to and invite bloggers from Salafi to Neo-Traditionalist, from Secular to Religiously Committed, from GLBTQ to Straight, from Angry to Apologetic, from the Wacky to the Regular, from the edges of Islam to its Centers.  If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please start a reader blog.  If you like us, readers like you, and you can handle folks disagreeing with you without flipping out, we’ll probably ask you to join the contributors after a while.   Please join us!  We are fun, really.  I promise.

The Core Team:

Sabahat Ashraf:  Content Manager at Large

Michael Omar Gatto:  Content Manager at Large

Sohail Mamdani:  Content Manager at Large and Technologist

Sohail Mamdani is a freelance geek from Orlando, Fl. A former student journalist, graphic designer, photographer and I.T. consultant, he now spends his days as a roving digital handyman, teaching, consulting, babysitting and coming up with increasingly insane ways to use technology.

The Core Team Emeritus:

Laury Silvers:  Co-Founder and Former Content Manager of the Women’s Health Section and other Gender Justice related projects

Silvers is Assistant Professor of Religion at Skidmore College in upstate New York.  Her research specialty is early Islamic Mysticism.  She considers herself culturally Southern, Jewish, and LA old-school Punk; in other words, she is an American Muslim.  She is proud to be the daughter of the old-school comedian Phil Silvers.  She is a huge Sci Fi and Professional Wrestling fan and is presently taking classes for Professional Wrestling.  Think of it as Improv Self-Defense.  Finally, she would like to assure everyone that this whole activism thing is an accident.

Contributors (In Alphabetical Order):

John Halliwell John currently resides in Cairo, Egypt. He holds a Master’s degree in Arabic Language and Literature from the American University in Cairo, having written his thesis on Sayyid Qutb’s literary approach to the Qur’an. He works as a professional translator, spending his spare time reading up on various subjects. Books he is currently reading include: The Denial of Death, The Tipping Point, and Muhammad Asad’s translation of the Qur’an, all of which are profound works. These days he is also engaged in raising awareness about Dr. Sami Al-Arian’s case.

Bannos: 

Yasmin Amin is a fervent bibliophile and logophile, and is proud to belong to an old Egyptian academic family. She has one husband, two teenage sons, about 7000 books and a mixed German-Egyptian parentage, which leads to a weird combination of dishes being cooked in the kitchen and many nutty ideas relating to faith being explored intermittently on her blog at http://bannos.blogspot.com/. Yasmin is currently a student at the American University in Cairo, studying for an MA in Islamic Studies. She has a Bachelor in Business Administration, long years of administrative experience and is working full time at an Egyptian Governmental Institution as chief pain in the neck.

Mohammad Fadel:

Mohammad H. Fadel is a member of the Faculty of Law at University of Toronto. He received his B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs (1988), a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago (1995) and his J.D. from the University of Virginia (1999). While at the University of Virginia School of Law, Professor Fadel was a John M. Olin Law and Economics Scholar and Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review. Prior to law school, Professor Fadel completed his Ph.D in Chicago, where he wrote his dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. In addition, Professor Fadel served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history.

Zeeshan Hasan is the author of the liberalislam.net web site. He received a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 1996. He lives in Bangladesh.

Muslim Hedonist:

Muslim Hedonist takes her name from a well-known article written by ISNA’s own Louay Safi, who accuses the progressive Muslim movement of being motivated by "hedonism."

Education:

• Graduate School: Secular and Islamic


• Halaqas: MSA, Perennialist, Fundamentalist, Traditionalist


• The Islamic School of Hard Knocks (Women’s Campus): 23 years marriage, 7 years non-consenting first wife in polygamous marriage, 23 years shoe-horning self into someone elses’s "ideal Muslima"

Service/Un-paid Work Experience:

• Teacher: Madrassah, Homeschool


• Editor: Muslim newsletter


• Toddler Wrangler: Muslim camps and programs


• Midwife assistant


• Seamstress: veils, jilbabs, hijabs

Work in progress:

• To reflect


• To know


• To treat others as I would want to be treated, although a thousand religious excuses may allow me to act otherwise


• To experience God.

Nakia Jackson aka The Fashion Mujahid:

A Berklee College of Music refugee, Nakia owes her Accidental Revolutionary status to many, ranging from her radical feminist great-grandfather to the imam who called Kecia Ali "some white girl". A trumpeter, bassist, and gonna-be percussionist, Nakia is constantly on the lookout for new, exciting ways to become even weirder. She has ridden a horse, in fact, been foxhunting even, and found both to be the best fun one can have while nearly frozen to a 1000 lb. beast. Don’t even pose the revert/Born Muslim question to her, unless you are quite content with "yes" or are willing to sit through a story involving the delightful tangles of multi-faith families in the 1970’s.  Jackson is a grassroots gender activist including acting as Imam in several woman-led Eid Prayers.  She  is currently recovering from a stint as "Bridezilla", having recently survived a Wedding Extravaganza with Bashir (aka bpoet), and working on a project that will promote greater awareness of the diversity of Islamic thought and traditions.

Michael Muhammad Knight:

Michael Muhammad Knight’s work has been condemned, boycotted, confiscated in Malaysia and threatened with legal action by CAIR officials. He originally self-published his debut novel, The Taqwacores, at Kinko’s and gave away copies for free. The novel was later picked up by Jello Biafra’s record label, Alternative Tentacles, for distribution and published by anarchist press Autonomedia. His forthcoming book, Blue-Eyed Devil, is a non-fiction search for the "American Islam" written during a year of road odysseys. He is also author of The Five Percenters, an ethnography of the Nation of Gods and Earths to be released by Oneworld Publications in spring 2007. Excerpts from the book appear in the 90-page booklet for Lord Jamar’s 5% Album.

Gustavo Mustafa: Currently resides in Southern California in the Republican enclave of San Diego, home to a diverse immigrant Muslim community of khimar-clad Somalis, Arabs from North Africa and Western Asia, Iranians/Afghans, South Asians, Malays, West Africans, Turks, Saudi foreign exchange college students, etc.  Graduated from UCLA in 2003 in Sociology and History with a minor in Chicano/a Studies.  Honorably discharged from the United States Navy, reason for separation: homosexual admission.  Yes, he used legalized discrimination in the United States to get out being transfered to Japan.  His time in the military and being on deployment in the Middle East was interesting.  He encountered first hand the hypocrisy of the Gulf Arab states and the hospitality of Shia Gulf Arabs and Iranian expatriates.  Currently pursuing a career in nursing, might pursue medicine, but undecided yet.  Works in La Jolla, CA with a wealthy, elderly clientele.  Pursuing a relationship with a white revert who is currently a graduate student at Boston College.  In the formative stages right now.

Ginan Rauf: Ginan Rauf is currently completing a PhD. Dissertation in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her special areas of interest include Arabic, Francophone, Arab-American and Sephardic literature. Rauf received a joint MA degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women’s Studies from Brandeis University where she was a lecturer in Arabic. Before coming to the United States, she studied English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo where she received a B.A and M.A in the field. In addition to her extensive teaching experience in the Middle East, Rauf is the associate editor of an English-Arabic Junior dictionary issued by the Elias Modern Publishing House. As cofounder of a nonprofit organization called Art for Action that seeks to fuse socially responsible action with a deeper appreciation of the Arts, Rauf is deeply committed to expanding the receptive space for independent and marginalized artists as a means of promoting cross cultural understanding. To that end she is currently engaged in organizing a mini film series focusing on the varied experiences of children and adolescents in Middle Eastern cinema that she hopes to develop into a long term curriculum. An avid collector of art, Rauf hopes to one day see a museum of Muslim Art in the New York area. During the siege of Sarajevo Rauf worked as a community activist in the Boston area and assisted Bosnian families. Rauf took part in a documentary Muslim Women in America that was produced by the Boston Neighborhood Network in honor of International Women’s Day and her articles occasionally appear on the Muslim Wake Up website. Last but not least Rauf is a feminist hands-on proud mother of two wonderful boys.