April 23, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Zainab Al-Suwaij is the co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress (AIC). Ms. Al-Suwaij was born in Basra, Iraq and is the granddaughter of one of Iraq’s premier Shi’ite clerics. During the failed 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, she provided medical assistance to the wounded and afterward was forced to flee Iraq. Before founding the AIC, she worked as a refugee case manager for Interfaith Refugee Ministry. She also worked as language instructor at Yale University. Ms. Al-Suwaij has participated in the conferences for the interim government in Iraq and has spent the last 10 months working in Iraq on rebuilding the educational system and implementing women’s empowerment programs.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident scholar at AEI. An expert on Middle East affairs, he focuses on Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the former Soviet Union, as well as issues such as terrorism and intelligence. He is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (1997) and a chapter on Iran in Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (2000), as well as a regular contributor to the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and International Herald Tribune, among others. He is also currently working on a book titled For Their Eyes Only. Mr. Gerecht formerly held such positions as the director of the Middle East Initiative for the Project for the New American Century and as a Middle Eastern specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hedieh Mirahmadi is the executive director of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education. She was previously a senior advisor for civil society at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan and executive director of the Islamic Supreme Council of America. Ms. Mirahmadi also runs the Hedieh Mirahmadi Professional Law Corporation and is the director of the Center for American Muslim Understanding and the Muslim Women’s Association. She was also a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Conference on Human Rights.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI, focusing on Arab democracy and domestic politics in Iran and Iraq. Before returning to AEI, Mr. Rubin was a political adviser in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and an assistant on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He was a visiting lecturer on international relations and history at Hebrew University (Jerusalem) from 2001-2002 and at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok (Iraqi Kurdistan) from 2000-2001. From 1999-2000, he was a Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting lecturer in history at Yale University.

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