Islam

Omar Saif Ghobash was 6 when an assassin killed his father, who was a diplomat from the United Arab Emirates. His new book is a collection of letters to his sons, urging them to reject extremism.

In his new book, Doug Saunders says there are those who believe immigration and high birth rates will make Muslims a majority in Europe in coming decades -- and their hostility to Western values makes them a threat. Saunders tells Fresh Air that such fears are based on inaccurate assertions of fact.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was once the lead cleric associated with the proposed Islamic community center some critics called the "ground zero mosque." In his new book, Moving the Mountain, Rauf calls for moderate Muslims to step up and marginalize the voices of extremists.

Ayad Akhtar's debut novel, American Dervish, tells the story of a Pakistani-American boy in Milwaukee coming to terms with his religion and identity. Akbar drew on his own experiences exploring the Muslim faith as a teenager growing up in Wisconsin.

Reviewer Maureen Corrigan says Amy Waldman's debut novel might be the Sept. 11 novel — the one that finally does justice, artistically and historically, to the aftershocks of that day.

Now that President Obama has declared the end of America's combat mission in Iraq, questions remain about the country's stability. New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid explains what the war means for the future of Iraq and the future of the Middle East.

Ali Eteraz returned to his home country of Pakistan after living in the US to find himself at the center of an abduction plot. He describes his experiences in his new memoir, Children of the Dust.

Iran's president was relatively unknown on the international stage before he was elected, but he's a standard-bearer for a new generation of hardliners. In a new biography, journalist Kasra Naji explores Ahmadinejad's rise to power, his complex character and his motivations.

Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader make up the Axis of Evil Comedy group. (They're of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent, respectively). Their special premiered on Comedy Central last month. It's out on DVD this week.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is the first woman, the first convert and the first native North American to be elected to the position. Mattson, who was born and raised in Ontario, converted to Islam in college. The Islamic Society of North America is the largest Muslim organization on this continent.

Augustus Richard Norton is a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University and has been writing about Lebanon for 25 years. He is an expert on the Shiite political movements, including Hezbollah. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Norton's books include Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon and Civil Society in the Middle East.

Middle East expert Vali Nasr talks about the latest developments there, and about his book The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

Muzammil Siddiqi is chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Islamic legal scholars that interprets Muslim religious law. On July 28, the group issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, condemning all acts of terrorism and religious extremism as fundamentally un-Islamic.

His new book is No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam. The book is a call to reform, and a proposal to end the religious battle between East and West. Aslan was born in Iran and lives in the United States. He was a visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa, where he got an MFA in fiction at the Writer's Workshop. Aslan has written for The Nation, Slate and The New York Times.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid is a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph, reporting on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia . He is also author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and the bestseller, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

His new film, The Clay Bird, is set in 1960s Pakistan, before Bangladesh gained its independence in 1971. It tells the story of Anu, a student torn between Muslim and Hindu worlds. Masud spent much of his youth in an Islamic seminary school in Bangladesh before the war for independence. He is a founding member of the Short Film Forum, the main organization for alternative filmmakers in Bangladesh.

Cole is an authority on modern Islamic movements. He is professor of modern Middle East and South Asia history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam. The book collects some of his work on the history of the Shiite branch of Islam in modern Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf region.

Noah Feldman is a professor of the New York University School of Law with a doctorate in Islamic Thought from Oxford. Until recently he was head of the constitutional team with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq. He is serving as an adviser as Iraq seeks to draft a new constitution. Feldman is also the author of the new book, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy. In the book he argues that it is time for Islamic democracies.

Leila Ahmed is Professor of Women Studies in Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. She written extensively on feminism and Islam, and is the author of a new memoir about growing up in Egypt during the 1940s and 50s. It called A Border Passage: from Cairo to America - a Woman Journey.

Imam Sayed Hassan Qazwini is the religious leader of the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, the biggest such center in the United States. It includes a Mosque in which he preaches.