Maher Gabra
Maher Gabra is an Arab Egyptian specializing in the Middle East, the ideology of political Islam and the level of support for democratic norms in the Middle East. Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where Maher co-founded two human rights organizations. He has Master's degree, and is a Fulbright Scholar. Maher was actively involved in the political mobilization during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and won a democracy fellowship that same year from the World Affairs Institute. In June 2013, observing the undermining of the Egyptian constitution by the Muslim Brotherhood under the leadership of then-President Mohammad Morsi, Maher also became active in the political protests that led to Morsi being forced from power. At the moment, he is focused on counter-terrorism, defeating radical Islamism, and democracy-building in the Arab world; how to change the intellectual landscape that has been created in the Muslim world by the dominance of Islamist interpretations of history; Islam's role in the world, and Islamic exceptionalism that dominates the educational system, mosques, and so on, throughout the Middle East. The dominance of such interpretations means that all a young Muslim ever hears in most parts of the Middle East, in schools, mosques, online, etc, is one, very stilted, version of history and Islamic identity, which virtually guarantees the spread of virulent forms of Islam. Maher is trying to devise strategies that can counter this trend.
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Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician who helped the U.S. locate Osama bin Laden, has been in jail in Pakistan since he was arrested days after the raid on bin Laden's compound in 2011. In 2013, he was granted a retrial, with a new charge that appears politically motivated: charged with murder in regard to the death, eight years earlier, of a patient he had treated. Afridi has gone on a hunger strike protest his unspeakable prison conditions -- including torture. His former lawyer, Samiullah Khan Afridi, was murdered by the Taliban in March 2015.
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