Westminster Institute talks

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/laszlo-szabo/

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/ahmet-yayla/

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/daniel-green/

Dr. Jack Dziak is co-founder and President of Dziak Group, a consulting firm in the fields of intelligence, counterintelligence, and technology transfer. He is a Distinguished Fellow in Intelligence Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council and also is a Senior Fellow at the International Assessment Strategy Center.

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/patrick-clawson/

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/joseph-braude/

Read his transcript here: https://www.westminster-institute.org/events/agus-widjojo/

Christopher C. Harmon wrote his political science dissertation on terrorism in the early 1980s and continued that work as Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy to a member of Congress and, much later, director of counterterrorism studies programs in Asia and Europe for the U. S. government. A professor at civilian and military graduate schools including the Naval War College, Dr. Harmon began teaching courses at The Institute of World Politics after 9/11 -- on terrorism, and later on counterterrorism. Lead author or editor of six books, he holds the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University, Quantico VA.

Hassan Abbas is Professor of International Security Studies and Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs (CISA). Aside from his expertise on Pakistan and Afghanistan, he also travels frequently to Iraq for research work on Hashd al-Shaabi (also known as Popular Mobilization Forces/Shia Militias). Along with addressing the main topic of the Taliban revival, he will compare and contrast Taliban and Hashd. His latest book titled, The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier (Yale University Press, 2014) was profiled on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in August 2014. Abbas’ earlier well acclaimed book Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America’s War on Terror (M E Sharpe, 2004) remains on bestseller lists in Pakistan and India. He also runs WATANDOST, a blog on Pakistan and its neighbors’ related affairs. His other publications include an Asia Society report titled Stabilizing Pakistan Through Police Reform (2012) and Pakistan 2020: A Vision for Building a Better Future (Asia Society, 2011). Dr. Abbas serves as a Carnegie Fellow 2016-2017 at New America where he is focusing on a book project on Islam’s internal struggles and spirituality narrated through the lens of his travels to Islam’s holy sites across the world. He is also currently a Senior Advisor at Asia Society. He was the Distinguished Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at Columbia University before joining CISA and has previously held fellowships at Harvard Law School and Asia Society in New York. He regularly appears as an analyst on media including CNN, ABC, BBC, C-Span, Al Jazeera and GEO TV (Pakistan). His opinion pieces and research articles have been published in various leading international newspapers and academic publications.

Author Ibn Warraq‘s most recent book is The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology. In it, he takes the dogmas of jihadists seriously and critically examines the Islamic sources upon which they draw. Ibn Warraq is perhaps most famous for his best-selling work, Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), an early warning to the West about the dangers of political Islam and multiculturalism. He has edited and contributed to several books of Koranic criticism and on the origins of Islam: The Origins of the Koran, 1998; The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, 2000; What the Koran Really Says, 2002; Which Koran? 2011; and Christmas in the Koran, 2014. Bernard Lewis has written that, “Ibn Warraq exemplifies the rarely combined qualities of courage, integrity, and intelligence.” Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, 2007, was described by distinguished professor Paul Berman as “a glorious work of scholarship, and it is going to contribute mightily to modernizing the way we think about Western civilization and the rest of the world.” In Why the West is Best, 2011, Ibn Warraq addressed the need for Western civilization to regain its civilizational self-confidence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said that “Warraq’s books have defended Western civilization and have reminded us what we are fighting for.” He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Westminster Institute, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a contributing editor to The New English Review. He studied Arabic and Persian at the University of Edinburgh.