Vali Nasr to Discuss Politics
in the Muslim World

Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East and South Asia politics at the Naval Postgraduate School and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Tuesday, Feb. 6 for a discussion on "The Shia Revival: Politics in the Muslim World." The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m.; seating is free, on a first-come basis.
Across the Muslim worldfrom Morocco in the west to Malaysia in the east to Muslim minority communities from London, Berlin and Marseille to Durban, Delhi or Sydney-Muslims are grappling with the challenges of integration, economic change, and political reform. As nations around the world struggle with the threat of militant Islam, Nasr, one of the leading scholars on the Middle East, provides a rare opportunity of understanding the political and theological antagonisms within Islam itself. His most recent book, The Shia Revival (Norton Press, 2006), is a penetrating historical account of sectarian conflicts in the Muslim world, and how the future rests in finding a peaceful solution to the ancient rivalries between the Shias and the Sunnia.
In addition to The Shia Revival, Nasr has also written: The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (Oxford University Press, 2001); Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford University Press, 1996); and The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan (University of California Press, 1994).
Nasr has briefed the White House, the Department of State, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense on Middle East issues. He also has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, and has provided expert commentary to CNN, BBC, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CBS' Evening News, 60 Minutes, NOW with Bill Moyers, and NBC's Nightly News. He has appeared as a guest on The Charlie Rose Show and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Nasr's visit to CMC is jointly sponsored by The Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Athenaeum.