Mohammad Ali Chaudry, Ph. D.

Dr. Chaudry, grew up in Pakistan, graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science with honors in Economics and Econometrics and earned a Ph. D. in Economics from Tufts University (1972). He worked at AT&T in the Strategic Planning and served as a Division CFO. He has published several articles and contributed chapters in books on productivity and planning. He also has coauthored with Dr. Robert Crane educational booklets on Islam.

Dr. Chaudry is a Lecturer in business at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey teaching courses on leadership, international business and other management subjects. He also has served as the Campus College Chair for Management and Business at the University of Phoenix - Jersey City Campus and has taught economics for the University of Phoenix Online.

Since the September 11 tragedy, Dr. Chaudry has been active in interfaith dialogs and creating bridges of understanding with the American community at large. He has spoken at numerous churches, synagogues, schools and colleges and conducted workshops on Islam and Muslims for several groups of middle and high school teachers. He regularly teaches well attended courses on Understanding Islam in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Rutgers University that also served as an impetus for writing the current book.

Dr. Chaudry is Co-founder and President of the Center for Understanding Islam (www.cuii.org) established immediately after 9/11 to undertake an educational effort to create a presence of moderate Muslim scholars and thinkers who can effectively counter extremism and to engage in interfaith and intra-faith dialogs with all communities. In an attempt to build an enlightened Muslim presence on the airwaves, he appears frequently on the WABC Radio program, Religion on the Line. He also has appeared on NPR, CBS News and FOX News.

Dr. Chaudry served on the Bernards Township Board of Education (1990 to 1995) in Basking Ridge, New Jersey and led a successful effort during 1996-1997 to build the Bernards Township Community Center. Less than two months after 9/11/2001, he was elected to the Bernards Township Committee and was elected Mayor of Bernards Township in 2004 to become the first Pakistani born Mayor in America.

Dr. Chaudry is among the founding trustees of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey and the Islamic Center of Basking Ridge, and served as President of the American Islamic Academy in Boonton ( NJ) for nearly ten years. He also has served on the boards of many non-profits, including Somerset Hills YMCA, Board of Managers of the Morris County Family Services, and Somerset County Cultural Diversity Coalition.

Robert Dickson Crane, JD

Dr. Crane grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated with a B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Northwestern University in 1956 and a J.D. (Doctor of Laws) from Harvard Law School in 1959 with a specialization in comparative legal systems and international investment. In 1958 he founded the Harvard International Law Journal and was the founding president of the Harvard International Law Society. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., in the world’s leading international communications law firm, Haley, Wollenberg, and Bader.

In 1962, he became one of the four co-founders of the first Washington-based foreign-policy think-tank, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 1966 he left to become Director of Third World Studies at the first professional futures forecasting firm, The Hudson Institute, led by Herman Kahn. From 1963 to 1968 he was personal adviser to Richard M. Nixon, responsible for preparing a “reader’s digest� of professional articles on key foreign policy issues. President Nixon appointed him in January, 1969, to be Deputy Director for Planning in the National Security Council. He left the government after Watergate and founded his own consulting firm. In 1981, President Reagan appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, but at the beginning of 1982 he openly embraced Islam and left the government.

Since 1982, he has been a full-time Muslim activist working out of his own research centers. From 1983 to 1986, he was Director of Da’wa (religious education) at the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., and was the first director of the Dialogue Commission of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington (IFC). In 1992 he helped to found the American Muslim Council, serving as Director of its Legal Division from 1992 to 1994. In 1993, he became the founding President of the Muslim American Bar Association.

Dr. Crane has authored or co-authored a dozen books, including Detente: Cold War Strategies in Transition, Dulles and Crane, CSIS, Praeger, 1965; Planning the Future of Saudi Arabia: A Model for Achieving National Priorities, Praeger, 1978; Shaping the Future: Challenge and Response, Tapestry, 1997; and The Natural Law of Compassionate Justice: An Islamic Perspective, 2010. These books have been augmented by numerous monographs and by more than 350 articles, of which most have been posted electronically on his defacto web-site/blog, www.theamericanmuslim.org.

As the co-founder and first Chairman of the Board of the Center for Understanding Islam, he continues his research on Islam as part of the effort of American Muslims to present the true message of classical Islamic thought and classical American thought in order to help America promote its founding principles of peace, prosperity, and freedom through faith-based, compassionate justice.