About
Geneive Abdo directs the InsideIRAN project. She is a fellow at the The Century Foundation. Her current research focuses on political developments inside Iran and their relevance to policymakers in the West.
As part of the Iran program, Abdo has launched the website, insideIRAN.org Ms. Abdo was formerly the Liaison Officer for the Alliance of Civilizations, a U.N. initiative under Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She has recently completed a book on Muslims in America, Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11, which was published in September 2006 by Oxford University Press.
Before joining the United Nations, Abdo was a foreign correspondent. Her 20-year career focused on coverage of the Middle East and the Muslim world. From 1998-2001, Abdo was the Iran correspondent for the British newspaper the Guardian and a regular contributor to The Economist and the International Herald Tribune.
Abdo is the author of No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000), a work that documents the social and political transformation of Egypt into an Islamic society. The book is the first to detail the leading figures and events responsible for giving moderate Islamists in Egypt enormous social and political power. Abdo is the coauthor of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First Century Iran (Henry Holt, 2003), a work that explains the theological struggle in Iran among the Shiite clerics and how this struggle has caused political stagnation. Her third book explained the changing identity among American Muslims as they struggle to keep true to their faith while deciding to what degree they will integrate into American society.
From 2001-2002, Abdo was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. That year, she also received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. Abdo has also received research grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace.
Abdo’s commentaries and essays on Islam have appeared in Foreign Policy magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, Washington Quarterly, The New Republic, The Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, and Middle East Report. She has been a commentator on NOW with Bill Moyers, National Public Radio, the BBC, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, the Oprah Winfrey show, and other radio and television services.
Reza H. Akbari is the managing editor of InsideIRAN. He is a graduate student at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, majoring in Middle East Studies. Reza conducts research on Iranian domestic politics, U.S. foreign policy toward Iran, Shiite politics, political transition, and democracy. He has previously served as a Program Officer for a prominent non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. focusing on human rights issues in Iran. He has also served as a research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Project Assistant for Princeton University’s Iran Data Portal.
At InsideIRAN, Reza is responsible for recruiting new contributors as well as translating their works from Farsi into English. He contributes to the Media Analysis column where he dissects daily information gathered from Iranian media.
Reza holds a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from the State University of New York at Fredonia. His bachelor’s thesis explores the effects of national identity among Iranians as a potential cause for their failure to construct a viable democratic political structure.
