INDONESIA

Chairman

KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf

General Secretary, Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board

Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf is a distinguished Muslim scholar and the co-founder of a global movement (“Humanitarian Islam”) that seeks to reform obsolete tenets of Islamic orthodoxy that enjoin religious hatred, supremacy and violence, by restoring rahmah (universal love and compassion) to its rightful place as a primary message of Islam. As former Chairman of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) — the world’s largest Muslim organization, with over 100 million members and 28,000 madrasahs — Mr. Staquf is bringing the civilizational wisdom and spiritual authority of Islam Nusantara (East Indies Islam) to the world stage, where a harsh, repressive and all-too-often violent understanding of religion has predominated for decades.

Inspired by the moral and spiritual vision of long-time NU Chairman (1984 – 89) and Indonesia’s first democratically elected president, H.E. KH. Abdurrahman Wahid, Mr. Staquf co-founded US-based organizations Bayt ar-Rahmah li ad-Da‘wa al-Islamiyah Rahmatan li al-‘Alamin (Home of Divine Grace for Revealing and Nurturing Islam as a Blessing for All Creation) in 2014 and the Center for Shared Civilizational Values in 2021, both of which are closely affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama. He is also co-founder of the Jakarta-based Institute for Humanitarian Islam and Founder and Chairman of the G20 Religion Forum (R20), which Nahdlatul Ulama and the Center for Shared Civilizational Values jointly established in conjunction with Indonesia’s 2022 Chairmanship of the G20. In Mr. Staquf’s words, the R20 “seeks to ensure that religion functions as a genuine and dynamic source of solutions, rather than problems, in the 21st century.”

In pursuit of this objective, Mr. Staquf has mobilized a large body of Sunni Muslim authorities to engage in a wide-ranging, concerted and explicit project of theological renewal (i.e., reform) for the first time since the late Middle Ages. A series of historic declarations drafted by Mr. Staquf form the basis for this renewal, enabling the creation, institutional adoption, publication and widespread dissemination of an extensive theological and sociological framework for the reform of obsolete and problematic tenets within Islamic orthodoxy by Nahdlatul Ulama and its 8-million-member young adults movement, Gerakan Pemuda Ansor.

In February 2024, Mr. Staquf and Nahdlatul Ulama were recognized by the Vatican, Egypt’s al-Azhar University, and the Government of Abu Dhabi, which conferred the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity upon “the largest Islamic organization in the world, Nahdlatul Ulama, [which] plays a major role in spearheading global peace and diplomatic efforts.”

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Executive Secretary

C. Holland Taylor

Deputy Chairman & CEO, Center for Shared Civilizational Values (Permanent Secretariat of the R20)

C. Holland Taylor serves as chief executive of multiple organizations he co-founded with senior leaders of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) — the world’s largest Muslim organization, with over 100 million followers. These include LibForAll Foundation, which he established in 2003 with former Indonesian President H.E. KH. Abdurrahman Wahid, Bayt ar-Rahmah li ad- Da‘wa al- Islamiyah Rahmatan li al- ‘Alamin, and the Center for Shared Civilizational Values (CSCV).

For over two decades, Mr. Taylor “has engaged influential and genuinely reform-minded Muslims. . . to articulate and defend a progressive and tolerant understanding of Islam” (Wall Street Journal) and has run “the world’s most potent and innovative anti-extremist network” (columnist Jennifer Rubin, writing in Weekly Standard). He is co-author of the best-selling book, The Illusion of an Islamic State, and has directed multiple films including Rahmat Islam Nusantara (The Divine Grace of East Indies Islam), which the New York Times described in 2015 as “a relentless, religious repudiation of the Islamic State and the opening salvo in a global campaign by the world’s largest Muslim group to challenge its ideology head-on.”

AFRICAN UNION

Archbishop Henry Ndukuba

Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria

The Most Reverend Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba is Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. Born in Imo State, he attended Bishop Shanahan College, Orlu, and later attended the Theological College of Northern Nigeria, obtaining a Bachelor’s of Divinity degree in 1984; a Master’s degree in Systematic Theology from Durham University, UK, in 1990; and another Master’s in Christian Education from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996, where he won the John Havran’s Princeton Prize for Christian Education. In 1999, he was consecrated as Bishop of Gombe, where he worked closely with community leaders to promote development and peaceful coexistence. In 2017, the House of Bishops elected Ndukuba as the new Archbishop of Jos in north-central Nigeria. In 2019, he was elected the Primate of All Nigeria and assumed office in March 2020.

Archbishop Henry has worked closely with the G20 Religion Forum (R20) since its inception. In November 2022 he addressed the opening session of the R20 International Summit of Religious Leaders in Bali, Indonesia on behalf of the world’s largest Anglican community, the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

As readers may see from his remarks, the platform of the R20 provided Archbishop Henry a unique opportunity to express the profound anguish felt by Christians throughout West Africa at the ongoing persecution inflicted upon their communities by Islamist extremists, which Western governments often attribute to the effects of climate change rather than acknowledge its roots in religious ideology and identity-based conflict.

ARGENTINA

Rabbi Silvina Chemen

Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano

Rabbi Silvina Chemen serves on the faculty of Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, ministers to the community of Bet El synagogue in Buenos Aires, and is a senior member of the Masorti (Conservative) movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. She received her ordination from the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary, having completed her studies in the Majón Schejter of Jerusalem. She is a graduate of Hebrew Language and the Bible from the Mijlelet Shazar, a Hebrew Teachers College in Buenos Aires, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Buenos Aires.

Rabbi Chemen has worked extensively with Nahdlatul Ulama, Bayt ar-Rahmah, and the Center for Shared Civilizational Values since 2020. She co-authored the seminal document, Abrahamic Faiths Initiative: An Invitation to Conversation and Action, in collaboration with a small group of Christian and Muslim leaders — including key figures within the G20 Religion Forum (R20) — and the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Religious Freedom. Rabbi Chemen also works closely with senior Nahdlatul Ulama, CSCV, and R20 leaders in executing The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace.

AUSTRALIA

Professor Greg Barton

Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI)

One of the world’s leading academic experts on Indonesian Islam, Professor Barton was a close friend of long-time Nahdlatul Ulama Chairman and Indonesia’s first democratically elected president, H.E. KH. Abdurrahman Wahid (1940 – 2009). He is the author of Gus Dur: The Authorized Biography of Abdurrahman Wahid, along with numerous scholarly works published during a career that spans nearly four decades of academic research into Islam and social movements throughout Southeast Asia.

Professor Barton currently serves as inaugural Rector of The Deakin University Lancaster University Indonesia campus based in Bandung, West Java, and is a Senior Research Fellow at Hedayah – The International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism, which is based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Since February 2025, he has also served as Special Advisor for International Affairs to the General Chairman, Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board.

Frequently interviewed by electronic, print, and broadcast media, Professor Barton’s most recent book (co-edited and written with Matteo Vergani) is titled Countering Violent and Hateful Extremism in Indonesia: Islam, Gender and Civil Society (Palgrave 2022).

CANADA

Rabbi Professor David Novak

J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

David Novak, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law (halakha). He is an ordained Conservative (Masorti) rabbi and has held the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. His areas of interest include Jewish theology, Jewish ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory (with a special emphasis on natural law), and Jewish–Christian relations.

Rabbi Novak has authored 16 books and more than 200 articles in scholarly journals. His book Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 2000) won the American Academy of Religion Award for “best book in constructive religious thought” in 2000. He is also co-author of Dabru Emet, a document signed by over 220 rabbis and intellectuals from all branches of Judaism — as individuals and not representing any organization or stream of Judaism — whose purpose was to point out common ground and a certain legitimacy for Christianity, from a Jewish perspective, if practiced by non-Jews.

A regular contributor to the ABC News Religion and Ethics portal, Rabbi Novak frequently addresses interfaith conferences and contributes to books and journals published by Christian theologians.

CANADA

Professor Janet Buckingham

Director of the Geneva Office of the World Evangelical Alliance to the United Nations

Professor Janet Buckingham is a respected Canadian scholar, religious freedom advocate, and Director of the Geneva Office of the World Evangelical Alliance to the United Nations. In this capacity, she represents the WEA’s 600 million evangelical constituents across 143 national alliances, focusing on justice and human rights through engagement with the UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review.

Professor Buckingham is Co-Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF Vancouver) and Executive Editor of IIRF’s flagship publication, International Journal for Religious Freedom. Formerly a Professor of Political Studies at Trinity Western University, with a research focus on religious freedom law in Canada and worldwide, Professor Buckingham directed the university’s Laurentian Leadership Centre for 15 years.

EUROPEAN UNION

Ján Figeľ

Former European Commissioner and former EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief

Ján Figeľ is a Slovak politician who helped draft his nation’s constitution following the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and facilitated Slovakia’s accession to the European Union in 2004. From 2004 – 2009 he served as European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, and from 2016 – 19 as EU Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief.

Mr. Figeľ served as Deputy Prime Minister of Slovakia and its Minister for Transport, Construction and Regional Development (2010 to 2012). From 2009 – 2016, he was Chairman of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) in Slovakia, which is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP) and an observer of Centrist Democrat International (CDI). A devout Roman Catholic, Mr. Figeľ is an authority on the history, philosophy, and practice of Christian Democracy in Europe.

FRANCE

Emmanuel Chouraqui

Chairman and CEO, Beamlight Films

Emmanuel (“Mano”) Chouraqui is a French filmmaker and the director of more than fifty documentaries, including L’écritures des écritures (The Writing of the Scriptures), which is dedicated to his father, the renowned French-Algerian-Israeli lawyer, author, scholar, and politician André Chouraqui (1917 – 2007). A deeply spiritual man, the elder Chouraqui spent much of his life fostering rapprochement between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

In 2023 Beamlight Films released a documentary about the life, sorrows, and lasting achievements of the distinguished French-Jewish scholar Jules Isaac (1877 – 1963), author of the seminal work Jesus and Israel. The 53-minute film — titled The Historian Jules Isaac: From the Teaching of Contempt to the Teaching of Esteem — traces the career of one of the most influential European scholars of history, who was dismissed from his position as Director General of Public Education in France during the German occupation, and whose wife and daughter perished at Auschwitz.

After the Second World War, Jules Isaac played a central role in the 1947 Seelisberg Conference and in persuading Pope John XXIII to address antisemitic elements of Catholic theology at the Second Vatican Council. Ultimately, this led to the publication of Nostra aetate: Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965.

The documentary was produced and directed by Emmanuel Chouraqui, whose father André — a member of the French resistance during WWII — helped save Jules Isaacs’ life by embedding him within a rural community of pious French Protestants after the Nazis occupied Vichy France. André Chouraqui was also a close associate of René Cassin, a French jurist who co-authored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

GERMANY / AUSTRIA

Dr. Rüdiger Lohlker

Distinguished Research Fellow, Center on Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society

Dr. Rüdiger Lohlker is a former Professor at the University of Vienna’s Institute of Oriental Studies, and prominent advisor to the European Union, Germany, and Austria on the subject of Islamist terrorism, including ISIS and al-Qaeda psychological operations. Dr. Lohlker currently serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center on Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society and as Vice President of the Hammer Purgstall Foundation. In 2015 he established the Vienna Observatory for Applied Research on Terrorism and Extremism (VORTEX) at the University of Vienna, in cooperation with Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama.

Professor Lohlker’s areas of research include the history of Islamic ideas, Islamic law, Sufism, Islam and modernity, Indonesian Islam, the critique of orientalism, the history of sciences, Islamic concepts of rulership, jihadi terrorism, and Salafism.

His most recent publications include Humanitarian Islam: Reflecting on an Islamic Concept, Brill | Schöningh, with Katharina Ivanyi (eds.) (2023); “Jihadism and True Islam: Discourses and Realities,” in Nicolas Stockhammer (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Transnational Terrorism, Routledge (2023); “New commentaries on Ibn al-Arabi’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam,” in the Journal of Asian Wisdom and Islamic Behavior (2023); Agents of Violence: Non-Governmental Armed Forces in Southwest Asia, North Africa and beyond, Brill | Schöningh, with Katharina Ivanyi (eds.) (2024); and “Islamic Ecotheology: Transcending Anthropocentrism through Waḥdat al-Wujūd,” in Ascarya: Journal of Islamic Science, Culture, and Social Studies (2024). Dr. Lohlker is author of the seminal essay “Theology matters: the case of jihadi Islam” (2016), which provides a definitive analysis of the specific religious doctrines that pervade and drive the agenda of ISIS.

INDIA

Swami Mahamahopadhyay Bhadreshdas

Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS)

His Holiness Mahamahopadhyay Bhadreshdas Swami is a Sanskrit scholar and ordained monk of the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS). In 2007 he completed the Swaminarayan Bhashyam, a five-volume classical Sanskrit commentary on the Prasthanatrayi. This commentary on Hinduism’s three canonical texts — the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Brahma Sutras — forms the interpretive foundation of the philosophy of Akshar Purushottam darshana, also known as Swaminarayan darshana, illuminating the Vedic roots of the Akshar Purushottama philosophy, which was propagated by the 19th-century Hindu leader Swaminarayan and later by Shastriji Maharaj.

After receiving a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Karnakata University in 2005, Bhadreshdas Swami was awarded a D. Litt. in 2010 and the Mahamahopadhyaya honorific by Kavikulaguru Kalidas Sanskrit University in Nagpur, India. The University of Mysore also awarded him the “Professor G.M. Memorial Award” and the “Darshankesari award” in 2013 for his work on Swaminarayan Vedanta. He currently serves as the head scholar (“Pradhānācārya”) of Yagnapurush Sanskrit Pathshala in Sarangpur, Gujarat, where students are instructed by him in philosophy, nyaya darśana, the Vedas, the Paninian grammar of Sanskrit, and Indian classical music.

In 2022, Bhadreshdas Swami addressed the First R20 International Summit of Religious Leaders and co-founded the R20 Spiritual Ecology Movement at a religious ceremony held at Puja Mandala in Bali, Indonesia.

INDIA

Archbishop Felix Machado

Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences, Roman Catholic Church

The Most Reverend Dr. Felix Anthony Machado is one of the most significant Roman Catholic leaders in Asia. Since his ordination in 1976, his public ministry has been animated by a profound commitment to interreligious dialogue. Shaped in part by the personal mentorship of Father Raimon Panikkar, one of the greatest figures in interfaith understanding of the last century, Archbishop Machado wrote his doctoral dissertation at Fordham University on Jnaneshvari, the 13th-century Marathi Hindu mystic and commentator on the Bhagavad Gita. He then worked as Undersecretary in the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, from 1999 to 2008. While at the Vatican, he first encountered KH. Abdurrahman Wahid, who, he later recalled, “made a strong positive impact on my own life.” Archbishop Machado returned to India in 2008 when Pope Benedict XVI made him Bishop of Nashik. The following year Pope Benedict appointed him Bishop of Vasai, north of Mumbai, where he served until his official retirement from diocesan responsibilities on 6 June 2024.

Shortly after his retirement, Archbishop Felix was invited by the newly elected leadership of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) to leverage his interfaith expertise and assume the Chairmanship of FABC’s Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. As a consequence, Archbishop Felix is pursuing consequential interreligious initiatives throughout Asia and the world on behalf of FABC, including strategic partnerships with Nahdlatul Ulama, the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, and the G20 Religion Forum (R20). One key element of this engagement is The Road Not Yet Taken Initiative: A Multi-Religious Path Towards Middle East Peace.

ITALY

Shaykh Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini

President, EULEMA (European Muslim Leaders Majlis)

Shaykh Yahya Pallavicini is a second-generation Muslim Italian citizen. He is the Imam and Vice President of La Comunità Religiosa Islamica Italiana (COREIS); a member of the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy (the Great Mosque of Rome); an ambassador for civilizational dialogue for the Islamic Organization for Education, Science and Culture (ISESCO); and an advisor on Islam to the Republic of Italy’s Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Education.

For over a decade, Shaykh Yahya Pallavicini has collaborated with the office of the President of the European Commission. He is co-founder and President of the European Council of Religious Leaders (EULEMA) and has been consistently cited as one of the most influential Muslims in the world by the premier index of Muslim power and influence, The Muslim 500. Since February 2025, he has also served as Special Advisor for International Affairs to the General Chairman, Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board.

Shaykh Yahya’s father was the late Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini, the noted preacher and head of the Ahmadiyyah Idrisiyyah Shadhiliyyah Sufi brotherhood in Italy. As son and spiritual heir of Shaykh Abd al-Wahid, Yahya Pallavicini represents an Islamic current that seeks the renewal of Prophetic wisdom in light of the teachings of Shaykh Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058 – 1111), Shaykh Abu al-Hassan al-Shadhili (1196 – 1258), Shaykh Ahmad ibn Idris al-Hasani al-Fasi (1760 – 1837), and Shaykh Abd al-Wahid Yahya Guénon (1886 – 1951).

Shaykh Yahya is a scion of the Pallavicini, a noble Italian family whose name dates back to the 11th century. They are descendants of the Lombard house of Obertenghi, which in the early Middle Ages ruled much of northwest Italy, including Milan and Genoa. The family remains influential in contemporary Italy, Austria, and Brussels, headquarters of the European Union.

ITALY

Dr. Francesca Caddedu

Executive Director, RESILIENCE (a European cross-disciplinary research infrastructure serving the study of religion)

Dr. Francesca Cadeddu works with the Foundation for Religious Sciences (Fscire) in Bologna, Italy and teaches in the Department of Education and the Humanities at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She specializes in the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States, as well as religious freedom and religious literacy in the twentieth century. She holds a master’s degree in international relations and a Ph.D. in political doctrines from the University of Bologna.

Dr. Cadeddu wrote her Ph.D. dissertation, and has conducted extensive research at Georgetown and the University of Notre Dame, on the American Jesuit priest and theologian John Courtney Murray. Murray (1904 – 1967) is especially known for his efforts to reconcile Catholicism and religious pluralism, particularly focusing on the relationship between religious freedom and the institutions of a democratically structured modern state. During the Second Vatican Council, John Courtney Murray played a key role in persuading the assembled Catholic bishops to adopt the Council’s ground-breaking declaration on religious liberty, Dignitatis humanae.

JAPAN

The Right Reverend Yoshinobu Miyake

Chairman, International Shinto Studies Association, and Director General, UN Association Japan Kansai Capital

The Right Reverend Yoshinobu Miyake is a Shinto priest, scholar, and Chairman of the Board of the International Shinto Studies Association. He has represented groups such as the International Association for Religious Freedom, Religions for Peace, and the Japan UN Association at the United Nations and other international fora. Reverend Miyake also served as General Secretary of the G8 Religious Leaders Summit and the International Religious Fellowship. He is the author of numerous works, including Interfaith Worship and Prayer: We Must Pray Together; Kazamidori: How Humanity Has to Confront Infectious Diseases; and Shinto DNA: How Much Do We Know about Japan?

MEXICO

Dr. Marcela Szymanski

Head of International Advocacy, Aid to the Church in Need

Dr. Marcela Szymanski is Head of International Advocacy for Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), an international Catholic aid organization that has been recognized as a Pontifical Foundation since 2011. Dr. Szymanski has worked for more than 20 years in media and public affairs to highlight the problem of global religious persecution among policy-makers throughout the world, particularly in Europe. She is the Editor of ACN’s report, Religious Freedom in the World, which covers 196 countries and is published every two years. She is a member of the Council of Experts of the UN-based International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA). Dr. Szymanski is also an affiliate researcher and author on International Relations with Universidad de las Américas en Puebla (UDLAP). Previously, she was an international media correspondent based in Brussels, where she reported on EU and NATO issues for CNN en Español.

SOUTH AFRICA

Reverend Hermy Damons

Board Member, The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa

The Reverend Hermy Damons is an ordained Christian minister of more than three decade’s standing and Chairman of one of South Africa’s most active ecumenical bodies: the National Chaplaincy/Security Services Christian Advisory Board. NC/SSCAB serves as the ecclesiastical oversight body for all Christian Chaplains in the South African Defense Force, Police, and Department of Correctional Services.

Reverend Damons has forged strong ties with senior clergy across South Africa, including among African Independent Churches, Pentecostal, and Charismatic Churches, as well as with non-Christian groups. He serves as a Board Member on the National Executive Committee of the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa (TEASA), which is an affiliate of the World Evangelical Alliance, and on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Faith and Community at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Theology.

Reverend Damons has broad intercultural experience, having ministered to inner city communities in Johannesburg for thirty years. He currently pastors a church in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, seat of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

TURKEY

Professor Dr. Mahmud Erol Kılıç

Director General, Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

Prof. Dr. Mahmud Erol Kılıç was born in 1961 in Istanbul. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences of Istanbul University (1985). During his high school and university education he also studied the sciences of Sarf-Nahw, Tafsir, Hadith, and Fiqh with various scholars. He studied with a number of Sufi scholars as well. After graduation, Dr. Kılıç lived for some time in the UK and Egypt. Prior to entering academia, he worked as the director of a publishing house.

At the Department of Islamic Philosophy at Marmara University, he wrote his master’s thesis titled “Hermes and Hermetic Thought in the Light of Islamic Sources” (1989). After the establishment of the departments of Sufism in Turkish universities in 1993, he defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled “Being and its Stages in Ibn Arabi’s Thought” (1995) (published), which was regarded as the first Ph.D. thesis to be written and accepted in that newly established academic branch of learning.

Dr. Kılıç was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998 and full Professor in 2004. He has directed numerous MA and Ph.D. theses. His articles have been published in various encyclopedias and journals and he has presented papers at a wide variety of national and international congresses. His book Sufi ve Şiir: Osmanlı Tasavvuf Şiirinin Poetikası (The Sufi and Poetry: Poetics of Ottoman Sufi Poetry) was awarded the Turkish Authors’ Association Study and Research Prize in 2004 and translated into several languages. To date he has authored 16 books; translated 5 books into Turkish; and published 2 edited volumes. Professor Kılıç speaks English, Arabic, Persian, and French. He teaches at the Institute for Sufi Studies, Üsküdar University, Istanbul, and serves as Director General of OIC’s Research Centre For Islamic History, Art, and Culture (IRCICA), which is based in Istanbul, Turkey. From 2016 – 2019, Professor Kılıç served as Turkey’s ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia.

UNITED KINGDOM / EUROPEAN UNION

Thomas G. Dinham

Director of Communications & European Engagement, Center for Shared Civilizational Values

Thomas G. Dinham is a geopolitical analyst, author, journalist, and strategic communications professional. Fluent in classical and colloquial Egyptian Arabic, English, Indonesian, and Polish, Mr. Dinham has lived and worked extensively in the Middle East, including Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Abu Dhabi, where he served as a media advisor under the authority of the UAE Ministry of Presidential Affairs. In 2018, Mr. Dinham joined the Nahdlatul Ulama-affiliated institute, Bayt ar-Rahmah, to support the expansion of NU operations worldwide. Since 2022, he has served as Director of Communications & European Engagement at the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, which is affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama and Bayt ar-Rahmah.

Working closely with NU General Chairman KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf and his Special Advisor for International Affairs, C. Holland Taylor, Mr. Dinham helped to draft the 2018 Nusantara Manifesto, along with numerous declarations, statements, and proclamations that have been disseminated to millions, and which carry the religious authority of the world’s largest Muslim organization.

A dual British/Polish citizen based in Warsaw, Mr. Dinham holds a B.A. in History and Politics from Oxford University and M.A. in the Politics and International Relations of the Middle East from the University of Exeter. He has contributed commentary and analysis to a wide range of academic journals, books, newspapers, and broadcast media, including the BBC, Financial Times, Strategic Review, al-Arab, al-Gomhuria, and Georgetown Security Studies Review. He is a co-editor of, and contributor to, the forthcoming scholarly volume Indonesia’s Humanitarian Islam Movement: Origins, Development, and Global Impact.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Professor Mary Ann Glendon

Learned Hand Professor, emerita, Harvard Law School and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See

Professor Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand Professor of Law, emerita, at Harvard University, and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. An internationally recognized authority in the fields of human rights, comparative law, and political theory, Glendon chaired the U.S. State Department Commission on Unalienable Rights (2019 – 2020) and served as a member of the Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2012 – 2016, as well as the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics (2001 – 2004). Professor Glendon received the National Humanities Medal in 2006 and in 1991 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Glendon was President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences from 2003 to 2013, a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Institute of Religious Works (Vatican Bank) from 2013 to 2018, and has represented the Holy See at various international conferences, including the 1995 U.N. Women’s conference in Beijing, where she headed the Vatican delegation.

She is the author of numerous books, including A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, 2001) and The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt (Oxford University Press, 2011).