Category: MEPF Events

The Judge offers a portrait of Judge Kholoud Faqih, one of the first women to
serve as a Palestinian family court judge,. With unparalleled access to the courts,
THE JUDGE presents an unfolding legal drama,offering views into both Islamic
law and gendered justice. In the process, the film illuminates some of the
pressing issues in family law universally and in a Palestinian context.

Mirjam Künkler (Ph.D. Political Science, Columbia University) is Senior Research
Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. Her books include Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, Columbia University Press, 2013; A Secular Age Beyond the West, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Female Religious Authority in Shi‘i Islam: Past and Present (with Devin Stewart), Edinburgh and Oxford University Press, 2019; and The Rule of Law and the Politics of the Judiciary in Contemporary Iran (with Hadi Enayat), Cambridge University Press, 2019. Before joining SCAS, she taught Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where she also directed the Oxford-Princeton research cluster on “Traditional authority and transnational religious networks in contemporary Shi’i Islam,” and co-directed the Luce Program on “Religion and International Affairs” for many years. She is a founder and PI of the Iran Data Portal and sits on the boards of various academic journals.

Abdullah Alaoudh is a Senior Fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for
Christian-Muslim Understanding and a fellow at Yaqeen Islamic Institute. He was
Research Scholar in Law and an Islamic Law & Civilization Research Fellow at Yale
Law School (2017-2018). He earned his LL.M. and S.J.D. from the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law, where his dissertation focused on the role of religious
institutions in post-revolutionary Arab countries and the transition to democracy.
Alaoudh also received his bachelor’s degree in Islamic law from Qassim University.

Satoshi Ikeuchi is a professor of Religion and Global Security at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) of the University of Tokyo. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2009 and Visiting Fellow at the Clare Hall University of Cambridge in 2010. He specializes in Middle East Politics and Arab-Islamic Thought. His publications include Islamukoku-no Shogeki (The Shock of the Islamic State) published in 2015 which was a nation-wide best selling book in Japan and awarded several prizes. He also published literary and critical essays in various journals and compiled them into a book Shomotsu-no Ummei (The Fate of Books) which was award Mainichi Book Review Prize in 2006.

Jon Alterman is a senior vice president, holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and is director of the Middle East Program at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS in 2002, he served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. He also previously served as an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission). In addition to his policy work, he often teaches Middle Eastern studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the George Washington University.

Karen Young is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on the political economy of the Middle East, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (best known as the GCC), and the Arabian Peninsula. She concurrently teaches courses on the international relations and economy of the Middle East at George Washington University and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.