Dr. Recep Sentürk is Director of the Alliance of Civilizations Institute at the Fatih Sultan Mehmet University in Istanbul. He is also the Director of ISAR in Istanbul and was previously a Professor of Sociology at Fatih University. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Department of Sociology (1998), and specializes in sociology of knowledge, human rights and Islamic studies with a focus on the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Turkey. He authored in English Narrative Social Structure: Hadith Transmission Network 610-1505 (Stanford University Press, 2005), and in Turkish Sociology of Turkish Thought: From Fiqh to Social Science (2008); Islam and Human Rights: Sociological and Legal Perspectives (2007); Malcolm X: Struggle for Human Rights (2006); Social Memory: Hadith Transmission Network 610-1505 (2004); Sociologies of Religion (2004); Modernization and Social Science in the Muslim World: A Comparison between Turkey and Egypt (2006). He edited Ibn Khaldun: Comtemporary Readings (2009) and Economic Development and Values (2009). His recent book is Open Civilization: Cultural Foundations of Pluralism (2010). Dr. Senturk was a visiting research fellow at Emory University Law School during the academic year 2002–2003 as part of the Islam and Human Rights Project.