2001-02 Rockefeller Visiting Fellows Explore Islam and Peacebuilding

The Kroc Institute’s Program in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding (PRCP) is proud to welcome its first group of Rockefeller Foundation Visiting Fellows. Through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowships program, the PRCP is hosting visiting fellows from a variety of cultural and political contexts to explore the diverse roles played by religious actors in contemporary conflicts. The grant provides funding for Visiting Fellowships over a 3-year period beginning in the Fall of 2001.

MOHAMMED ABU-NIMER (Spring semester 2002), a conflict resolution specialist in the School of International Service, American University, received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Hebrew University, Jerusalem and the Ph.D. from George Mason University, where he wrote a dissertation entitled “Conflict Resolution Between Arabs and Jews in Israel: A Study of Six Intervention Models.” As a Rockefeller visiting fellow at the Kroc Institute, Abu-Nimer will complete a book on Islamic resources for nonviolent conflict resolution.

THOMAS SCHEFFLER, a political scientist at the Freie Universität Berlin, is conducting a case study of Lebanon, entitled “Dynamics of Violence-Dynamics of Peace? Religious Hierarchies and the Domestication of Violence in Lebanon.” Based on extensive research in the region, Scheffler will compare the contributions of high-ranking Muslim and Christian religious leaders to legitimating or restraining violent conflict in 20th century Lebanon.

TAMARA SIVERTSEVA, an ethnographer at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oriental Studies, is an expert on Islam’s role in shaping civil society throughout the North Caucasus. She has done extensive field work in Dagestan, a region which has received little attention in the West. Dagestan has demonstrated a surprising ability to stave off violent conflict, in sharp contrast with neighboring Chechnya. While in residence at Notre Dame, Sivertseva will be completing a book project exploring the cultural and religious factors behind Dagestan’s stability.

HAKAN YAVUZ, a political scientist at the Middle East Center, University of Utah, and a frequent commentator in the Turkish media, studies Islamic conceptions of human rights, the politics of identity, and the impact of globalization on developing countries. While at the Kroc Institute, Yavuz will be completing a book on the Nur movement of Turkey (which has branches in Central Asia, Bosnia, Albania, and Germany), a rapidly growing Islamist movement notable for its openness towards democracy and international standards of human rights. Yavuz is particularly interested in its implications for the evolution of modernist thinking in the Islamic world as a whole and for future relations between Islam and the West. 2001-02 Rockefeller Visiting Fellows Explore Islam and Peacebuilding

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