ilm works - About Us

		Sarah Hasan, President, covers the U.S. State Department and other news in the Washington, DC area for Bridges TV, and meets regularly with community leaders, scholars and business entities to foster and develop the bridge-building mission of the network. As a member of the Women’s Empowerment Action Team on Education at the State Department led by Ambassador Shireen Tahir-Kheli, Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Rice, Sarah continually suggests and

discusses ways media can be used to make education more accessible to women and girls around the world. Sarah completed her secondary education in A' Level History and Economics in Kuwait and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a triple major in Economics, Political Science and International Studies from Southern Methodist University. She is currently developing a weekly television program and interactive web forum focusing on the evolving roles of Muslim communities in the American experience. Sarah also serves on the Board of The Women's Centre, a non-profit counseling and resource facility that addresses the personal, professional, legal and financial concerns of women and their families.

		John Boyer, Executive Director, helped establish the Media Education Laboratory and taught broadcast journalism at Rutgers University-Newark where he also initiated the youth civic media project, Network Newark New Jersey (N3TV). He has more than twenty years experience as a public television producer specializing in international media issues and media education.

A program series he initiated for Inside Story with Hodding Carter on PBS critically analyzing U.S. media coverage of the Soviet Union won many awards including a national Emmy. He worked in the New York bureau of Visnews and was Program Director of the Hispanic International Telecommunications Network (HITN), a non-profit educational and cultural network. His works include the acclaimed documentary, On Television: Teach The Children with Edwin Newman, and Media Literacy: The New Basic? with John Merrow. He initiated the Media for America project to help citizens learn about and become involved in media policy reform.

		Asma T. Uddin, Executive Editor, is an attorney and freelance writer and editor. Although she primarily practices corporate litigation, she has handled a significant number of pro bono cases, including asylum, prisoner's civil rights and constitutional cases. Most recently, she played an integral role in a case brought by a Muslim policewoman against the City of Philadelphia for its refusal to allow the plaintiff to wear the Muslim headscarf on the job. As
an editor, Asma has worked with Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah on a number of articles for scholarly journals on Islamic Law. She also helped edit the entire manuscript of Dr. Abd-Allah's A Muslim in Victorian America, which was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. As Associate Editor and legal columnist for Islamica Magazine, Asma focused her writings on how American Muslims can rethink their social position within the American legal framework.

Asma has also published her writing in Muslim Girl Magazine. Her more scholarly work has been published in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, and she has an article on the hajj, gender issues, and pluralism due out next year with the Journal of Faith & International Affairs. In May 2008, Asma was part of a U.S. State Department delegation to Norway, Belgium, and Ireland, where she met with Muslim and other minority groups as well as politicians, journalists, and a number of prominent anti-discrimination organizations.

		Steve Klein, Electronic Media Director, is a journalist, teacher, media consultant, sports content specialist and online writing instructor, with a proven ability to work and communicate with people, and a cross-platform vision for academic and professional journalism. Steve is in his sixth year as coordinator of the Electronic Journalism program and the Journalism concentration in the Communication Department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He also
will coordinate a new minor in Sport Communication in collaboration with the Recreation, Health & Tourism Department at GMU beginning in the fall of 2009. Steve teaches classes in Writing Across Media, Online Journalism, Sports Writing and Reporting, Political Journalism, among others. He also leads a summer Global Education program in Ireland. Steve was honored by the Communication Department, as well as Mason Student Media, as both professor and faculty member of the year in 2007. A working journalist for most of his career at several newspapers (USA Today, the Lansing State Journal, the Stamford Advocate, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal, the South Bend Tribune, the Wisconsin State Journal), Steve has taught at Michigan State University, American University, Cape Cod Community College and GMU for 20 years.

		Patrick Reilly, Chief Social Media Officer, is a Silicon Valley intellectual property attorney experienced in patent prosecution in the areas of software, Internet technologies and semiconductor devices; patent portfolio sales; business strategy development; and intellectual property rights negotiations. As founder and CEO of the Intellectual Property Society, he produces and hosts educational seminars and video-blogs in collaboration with organizations like the

High Tech Law Institute of Santa Clara University. Patrick delights in bringing together leading academics, high technology entrepreneurs and creative workers to discuss new and emerging legal issues that are redefining the possibilities and dynamics of world culture. Patrick is a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Russian language Studies. He has earned a BS in Sociology from the State University of New York; a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toledo; and a JD from Concord University. Patrick is a member of the U.S. Patent Bar and the California State Bar.

		Rahilla Zafar, Outreach Director, is a journalism fellow with Devex, a Washington D.C. based company that offers recruiting, networking and news services to more than 100,000 development professionals worldwide. Prior to joining Devex, Rahilla was based in Afghanistan where she worked as an editor for Sada-e Azadi (the Voice of Freedom), Afghanistan’s highest-circulation newspaper distributed by the

NATO-led mission. She also worked as a public information officer for the International Organization for Migration’s Afghanistan mission.

Her writing has appeared in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, the Guardian and Knowledge@Wharton. Rahilla has a bachelor's in public policy from DePaul University and a master's in social policy and planning in developing countries from the London School of Economics.

		Noon Salih, Youth Coordinator, is a graduating journalism student at George Mason University earning a B.A. in communications with a minor in business who is actively engaged in a variety of programs concerning the media and international relations. As the founder and president of the Sudanese Student’s Association at George Mason University, she organized a forum promoting Sudanese culture and awareness of the humanitarian

crisis affecting women in Darfur. She also works as an intern at CNN’s Situation Room and held past positions at the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Development Program and WETA TV, the flagship PBS station in Washington, DC. Noon plans eventually to work in her homeland of Sudan in community-building projects and to contribute to the further development of objective media throughout Africa.

Board of Advisors

		Karen Armstrong was a Roman Catholic nun before earning her degree in literature from Oxford University and taught for many years at the University of London and the prestigious Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism. She has written extensively on what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, including A History of God (Ballantine, 1993), Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (Knopf, 1996) and The Battle for God (Knopf, 2000).

Her most recent books include The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, and a revision of her earlier biography of the Prophet Muhammad under the title, Muhammed: A Prophet for Our Time. For her influential work on Islam and fundamentalism, she has been appointed to the United Nations initiative, “The Alliance of Civilizations”.

		Sulayman Nyang teaches at Howard University in Washington, D.C. where he serves as Professor of African Studies and is co-director of Muslims in the American Public Square, a research project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. He has served on the boards of the African Studies Association, the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists.

Professor Nyang has written extensively on Islamic, African and Middle Eastern affairs. Best known for Islam, Christianity and African Identity (Amana, 1984), he has also contributed over a dozen chapters in books on Islamic,African and Middle Eastern subjects. He is a co-author of Muslims in the Public Square (Alta Mira Press, 2004) and the author of Islam in the United States of America. His numerous scholarly pieces have appeared in African, American, European and Asian journals.

		John L. Esposito is University Professor, Professor of Religion and International Affairs, Professor of Islamic Studies and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He is editor-in-chief of the four-volume The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Oxford History of Islam,

The Oxford Dictionary of Islam and The Islamic World: Past and Present. Author of more than thirty other books on Islam, he is a recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s 2005 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. Dr John Esposito is also actively involved in the UN's "The Alliance of Civilizations".

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