I write to support strongly Dr. Ahmed Mansour s application for a Visiting Fellowship with the Harvard Law School s Human Rights Program. Dr. Mansour can make invaluable contributions to American scholars and policy makers seeking to understand the nature and scope of the threat that Islamist extremism throughout the Middle East poses to the United States.

I am the immigration attorney who assisted Dr. Mansour in his successful application for asylum in the United States, which he received on June 29, 2002. I share with you in passing that I also have long experience in higher education, first as a professor of political philosophy at the Claremont Colleges, Brown University, and SUNY/Buffalo, and then as a higher education association executive in Washington DC (General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors and Executive Director of the Council for Liberal Learning).

Dr. Mansour is a preeminent scholar of the Koran whose moderate interpretations, expressed in an impressive corpus of writings, led directly to his persecution in Egypt. He is the author of twenty-two books and has published approximately 500 editorials, articles and research papers. Fearing for his life, Dr. Mansour fled Egypt more than a year ago. The United States government, in granting him asylum, concurs that he cannot return.

Dr. Mansour received a Ph.D. in Muslim History from Al-Azhar University, one of the most well-respected centers of Islamic learning in the world. He also taught Muslim history there from 1973 to 1987. Dr. Mansour lost his academic position because he expressed progressive democratic views. For example, he advocated religious harmony in Egypt between Muslims and Christians and his scholarship shows that the Koran teaches tolerance and respect. From 1996 until 2000 Dr. Mansour was the second-in-command at the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, an internationally renowned meeting place for leading moderate Muslim scholars and activists. Dr. Mansour was director of a weekly public forum at the Ibn Khaldoun Center, which was attended by important intellectuals and foreign scholars, and the deliberations of which were reported in the Center s monthly publication, Civil Society. Dr. Mansour s moderate religious stance has resulted in condemnation by extremists, who label Dr. Mansour an apostate. As I am sure you know, the charge of apostasy in Islam is very grave; some leading Islamists hold that the punishment for apostasy is death. Dr. Mansour has in fact written a book on apostasy (Dr. Ahmad Subhy Mansour, The Penalty of Apostasy, English translation and introduction by Mostafa Sabet. Toronto, Ontario: International Publishing and Distributing Co. 1998), which has further fueled the extremists hate against him.

As you know, the Director of the Ibn Khaldoun Center, Dr. Saadeddin Ibrahim, was arrested and sentenced in a case that was much publicized and condemned around the world. Another prominent and outspoken Egyptian critic of religious intolerance, Farag Foda, was assassinated by Islamic fanatics. The government not only is unable to prevent these radical Islamic groups from committing acts of violence against those who disagree with them, but actually cooperates with the extremist groups. Dr. Mansour is an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and democracy activist whose views, opinions, and initiatives directly challenge the worldview of the extremists and have earned him imprisonment and slanderous media campaigns against him.

Dr. Mansour won a three-month fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy. He there pursued research on the democratization of Egypt and the relationship between democracy and Islamic thought. He is also working on a book in English about the theological bases of Saudi fundamentalism and a project on the reform of Islamic education in the United States and abroad. He has a range of appropriate research topics to pursue as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School.

I enclose with this letter an affidavit submitted to the Immigration and Naturalization Service by Dr. Khalid Duran, another respected scholar of Islam. Dr. Duran corroborates Dr. Mansour s scholarly standing, courageous activism on behalf of human rights, and his well-founded fear of persecution, including both loss of freedom and threat to his life because of his progressive religious and political views. I also attach Dr. Duran s English précis of articles about Dr. Mansour.

Dr. Mansour is an ideal candidate to be a visiting fellow. He is both a distinguished scholar and a thoughtful, committed activist for human rights and democratic solutions in the Middle East. Dr. Mansour is uniquely qualified to provide American scholars, students, and policy makers with both a better understanding of the theological and historical bases of Muslim extremism and mature, insightful recommendations about how the United States can best support democratic movements in Muslim countries controlled by religious fanatics.

I understand that Harvard does not usually provide significant financial support to visiting fellows. However, since Dr. Mansour has the offer of the Scholars-at-risk grant, I hope that Harvard can come up with matching money for a calendar year. Also, although the typical visiting fellowship does not begin until September, I would urge you to appoint him as soon as possible, since he has no source of income since the completion of his NED Fellowship. I cannot imagine a more worthy applicant.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me at 410-357-5982.

Sincerely,
Irving J. Spitzberg, Jr., Esq.

Attachments

Affidavit from Dr. Khalid Duran

Dr. Duran s English précis of an article about Dr. Mansour

To whom it may concern