Geneive Abdo, an author and analyst, is the Liaison for the United Nation’s Alliance of Civilizations, a project created by the UN Secretary General to improve relations between Western and Islamic societies.

Ms. Abdo has just completed a new book, which will be published in late August by Oxford University Press. Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 (Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0-19-531171X; $27.00; 9/11/2006) is the first detailed, investigative work of the Muslim community in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Abdo was a journalist. Her 20-year journalism career centered upon coverage of the Middle East and the Islamic world. From 1998-2001 Ms. Abdo was the Iran correspondent for the British newspaper, The Guardian, and a regular contributor to The Economist. She was the first American journalist to be based in Tehran since the United States cut off ties with Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Her insightful stories over nearly three years, ranging from interviews with jailed dissents, student rebels, and clerics under house arrest, revealed the inner workings of a regime shrouded in secrecy. The stories, which made international headlines, prompted published threats of imprisonment by the government. Ms. Abdo was forced to flee the country in 2001, and is not allowed to return.

From 1992-1993, Ms. Abdo was based in Cairo as the the Middle East correspondent for The Dallas Morning News. During her assignment, she reported from Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and the Persian Gulf. From 1990-1992, Ms. Abdo worked as a correspondent based in Moscow for Reuters. From there, Ms. Abdo traveled on assignments to Central Asia, Afghanistan and Georgia.

Ms. Abdo’s commentaries and essays on Islam have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washington Quarterly, The International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, and Middle East Report. She has been a commentator on Now with Bill Moyers, National Public Radio, the BBC, the Jim Lehrer News Hour, Oprah, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, and other radio and television services.

Ms. Abdo is the author of No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000), a work that documents the social and political transformation of Egypt into an Islamic society. The book was the first to detail the leading figures and events responsible for giving moderate Islamists in Egypt enormous social and political power. Ms. Abdo is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First Century Iran (Henry Holt, 2003), a book that explains the theological struggle in Iran among the Shiite clerics and how this struggle has caused political stagnation. Answering Only to God predicted the recent takeover of the Iranian regime by hard-liners.

From 2001-2002, Ms. Abdo was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. That year, Ms. Abdo also received a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. Ms. Abdo has also earned research grants from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace.