Nadia Mostafa is author of 'Beyond Western Paradigms of International Relations: Towards an Islamic Perspective on Global Democracy'.

Professor of International Relations, at the Political Science Department, Faculty of Economics & Political Science, Cairo University.

Founding Director of Center for Civilizational Studies and Dialogue of Cultures since 2002.     

I supervised and edited a research project on "Islam and International Relations (1986 – 1994)". The research was published in the year 1996, in 12 volumes. These 12 volumes constituted a base and an infrastructure for a collective elaboration of an Islamic paradigm for studying international relations theory.     

Epistemological, as well as methodological, theoretical aspects of this elaboration are at the core of my research and teaching at the postgraduate level since 1997. Three main studies present the findings of these works; 

* Problematics of teaching and research in International Relations from an Islamic perspective (2000, 2007).

* Theorizing relations with the "Other" from a Fiqh perspective to a civilizational one (2008). 

* International Relations in Islamic Political Thought (Forthcoming).      

On the other side; the status of the Muslim World in the contemporary international order (after the end of the Cold War), is an extended area of my applied research, and the impact of globalization on the Muslim World is its main theme.      

Different types of internal and external problems and issues have shown how much economic and political, as well as social and cultural, aspects of the Muslim World status have been influenced by external interventions. Comparative studies have shown how religious-cultural determinants and political-economic ones are interconnected. That's why we have been publishing an annual periodical called “My Ummah in the World". Six volumes of this periodical were issued throughout a decade, since 1998. These volumes have discussed the following themes;

* Globalization and the Muslim World.

* Relations between Muslim states.* The consequences of 9/11.

* The invasion of Iraq consequences.

* Reform in the Muslim World.

* And finally a revivalproject for the Ummah.

In addition to a special edition "The Ummah in the 20th Century" issued in 6 volumes.       The dialogue/clash dichotomy was also another area of research that evoked several types of activities organized by the center. For dealing with this area, 18 books were issued in different topics (see the Center's website at www.ccps-egypt.com).     

In short; theoretical, as well as applied research, went together on two parallel and interconnected ways. Comparison between Western and Islamic perspectives is constantly pursued in studying global issues, processes and patterns of interaction. Globalization, new international order, the environment, armed conflicts, weapons of mass destruction, women's rights, minorities rights, human security, etc…, all these topics are subjects of my extended comparative research.     

Therefore; being invited to participate in the Building Global Democracy Project, presents a new opportunity to elaborate more on the comparison between Western paradigms and the Islamic one.     

Reviewing the literature on Global Democracy, is a first step that is somehow a critical exercise, to try and map different Western perspectives and find the differences, as well as the commonalities, between them. A second step would be elaborating on an Islamic perspective on the so called Global Democracy issue.     

I hope that the workshop will be a live experience for cross-cultural dialogue, and for reaching a consensus among non-Western perspectives, on global change for human justice.

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