Robert Dickson Crane

Director, Center for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies,

Qatar Foundation;

Director for Global Strategy, The Abraham Federation;

Co-Founder, Center for Economic and Social Justice, www.cesj.org

GHA Vice-president

Doha, Qatar

In Russian: http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=546

Bio

Robert Dickson Crane

Robert Dickson Crane, also known as Faruq 'Abd al Haqq, has been a life-long expert in long-range global forecasting for government and industry, with professional work ranging from his Directorship for Third World Studies from 1965 to 1968 at the Hudson Institute to his current position in 2012 at the Qatar Foundation in Doha as Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies.

On September 4, 1962, he became o­ne of the four co-founders of the first foreign affairs think-tank in Washington, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was the principal foreign policy adviser from 1962 to 1967 for Richard Nixon, who in January, 1969, apppointed him Deputy Director for Planning in the National Security Council. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, responsible also for two-track diplomacy with the Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa.

His academic career included earning a B.A., summa cum laude, in 1956 from Northwestern University in Sino-Soviet studies with a 4.0 GPA and a J.D. in 1959 from Harvard Law School in international investment, where he served as the founding president of the Harvard International Law Society and editor-in-chief of its journal, and headed a project for the U.S. Supreme Court o­n the constitutionality of international law. He also spent o­ne year at the University of Munich, Germany studying the sociology of comparative religion. He served from 1960 to 1965 as an Associate and later as Counsel of the world's leading communications law firm, Haley, Wollenberg, and Bader.

Since 1982, Dr. Crane has worked as head of his own think-tanks o­n developing global ethics as a framework for peace, prosperity, and freedom through the interfaith harmony of normative and compassionate justice. In this capacity he has published several hundred professional articles and four books primarily o­n normative Islamicjurisprudence, including the first textbook ever written o­n Islam and Muslims, an 800-page, two-volume work that he and Mohammad Ali Chaudry completed in 2011 as the Chairman and President, respectively, of the Center for Understanding Islam.

July 7, 2012