After pursuing post-graduate study in Egypt, Dr Hargey completed his doctoral research at Oxford University. Thereafter, he held several academic appointments at institutions of higher learning in South Africa, Sudan and the United States, where he focused on the writing and researching of Islamic and Middle East history.

He also has been a visiting lecturer in Sri Lanka, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

His extensive and regular travels throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian sub-continent, and South East Asia enables him keep abreast of current trends in the world of Islam. This helps him to identify and isolate what is inimical to the interests of British Muslims. Aside from teaching courses on Qur'anic exegesis, Islamic history and Middle East politics.

Dr Hargey is presently involved in several voluntary organisations and is the chairperson of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (MECO), a progressive and pluralistic body dedicated to the promotion of pristine and inclusive Islam. His forward-looking and liberal perspectives are regularly published in the national press. Dr Hargey is frequently interviewed on national and local radio and has appeared on a number of television programmes, BBC Panorama and Channel 4 Dispatches and others relating to the Muslim community in Britain.

Dr Shaaz Mahboob was born in South London to parents of Indian and Pakistani origin. His family then relocated to Pakistan here he spent his early adulthood. Whilst in Pakistan, during the height of the cold war and Soviet invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan, he observed the transformation of the Pakistani society from a largelymoderate and progressive into a more conservative one with hardline elements of thesociety gaining a stronghold within, harbouring intolerant views and exhibiting arigid interpretation of Islamic teachings. He gained a degree in Medicine from the University of Karachi and returned to the UK in 1998. Since gaining an MBA from the University of Nottingham he has changed his career pathway from clinical medicine to healthcare management.

Halfway through a PhD in Chemistry, Imran realised that there was more to life than test tubes in a laboratory. This happened because he spent too much time staring out of the window, looking at what other people were doing. Rather like going to a travel agent, he went to the University Careers Office and started reading recruitment brochures. Some of these had pictures of people in business suits, travelling around the world having meetings. This looked like fun to him, but he wasn't sure what they actually did.

He eventually figured it out and persuaded one of those big global corporations to hire him into their graduate management development scheme in London. Imran's career began in Finance and transitioned to Information Systems, encompassing management consulting, programme management, business development and operations. Fortunately, no-one has realised that he knows little about computers.

His business career has taken him all over the world, including the US, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, South Asia and even a little of Africa. Imran spent five years living in Minneapolis USA, becoming a senior manager in one of the 'Big Five' global consulting firms.

In 2000, a new position with General Electric brought Imran back to London, where he has since worked, operating seamlessly between Europe, the US and India. He became a Vice President in one of GE Capital's India-based business units, and is currently European Programme Leader in an insurance business.

Imran realised that he was supposed to be a writer at the age of five, when his attempts at crayon art were ridiculed by his classmates and teacher. Since then, he has followed his implausible global career in order to acquire experiences to write about.

Imran's funny, but thoughtful and insightful book, Unimagined – a Muslim boy meets the West , charts his course through school, university and into his first job. Unimagined explores with painful honesty and poignant humour the dilemmas of a Muslim boy from Pakistan growing up in Britain. This true story is both highly enjoyable and urgently pertinent; it takes the Western reader deep inside the Muslim psyche, as well as unravelling Islam from a complex tangle of cultural and social influences. The UK edition will be published in March 2007 by Aurum Press.

Imran likes to drink coffee (currently decaffeinated) in Starbucks and sometimes (when he's really lucky) he can be found on the Appalachian Trail somewhere between Georgia and Connecticut, or on a mountain in Scotland. He also enjoys reading, music, and walking around both strange and familiar cities. Imran is a social rebel; he opens the window when on a London commuter train.

He is regarded as an expert on Islamic fundamentalism, Muslim political thought and European Islam. He is one of the first Muslim leaders who has championed women's causes, against forced marriage, domestic violence and, murder in the name of honour.

Last year, together with some senior clerics, he launched Muslim Marriage Contract to protect rights of women.

He is now leading a campaign against child abuse within faith-based environment.

He has consistently opposed the invasion of Afghanistan and subsequently that of Iraq, joining the Anti-war Coalition at its inception, becoming member of its central executive.

As a patron of Guantanamo Human Rights Commission and active member of 'Campaign Against Criminalising Communities' [CAMPACC], he has campaigned against detention without trial of people held in Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh.

As leader of The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain and director of one of the oldest Muslim think tank, The Muslim Institute, he has promoted dialogue across all barriers: social, cultural and political.