Dr Shahid Babar

Dr. Shahid I. Babar is a Medical physician, graduate from Internal Medicine Residency, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is Fellow of American College of Physicians and Fellow of Society of Hospital Medicine. He completed a Master of Business Administration degree from George Washington University, Washington DC, and Master’s Degree in Islamic Studies from American Open University, Washington, DC. He is Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Chief of Division of General Internal Medicine at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health. He provides Islamic sermons and Quran educational programs at Islamic Community Center of Lancaster and other Islamic centers in Pennsylvania. He is also a founding member and Board of Trustees at the Islamic Community Center of Lancaster.

Dr. Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu

Executive Director, CAIR-Philadelphia

Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu is the Executive Director at CAIR-Philadelphia. Ahmet joined CAIR- Philadelphia in 2017 and previously served as the Education and Outreach Director.

Ahmet is a Turkish-American academic and organizer. He directs CAIR-Philadelphia’s Civic Engagement and school district projects. He serves on the boards of several non-profits in the greater Philadelphia area.

As part of his portfolio at CAIR-Philadelphia, Ahmet teaches courses on Islam 101 and Islam in America at Temple University’s OLLI program and presents inclusion and equity workshops for school districts and corporate settings.

Ahmet’s academic research focuses on American Muslim history and identity. He received his PhD in political science from Boston University in 2016. Concurrently, Ahmet directs the digital Islamic Studies project themaydan.com at George Mason University where he is a research fellow at the Center for Global Islamic Studies.

Br. Iftekhar Hussain

Iftekhar is the Chairperson of the CAIR PA Board of Directors and Vice President of the CAIR PA Philadelphia Chapter Executive Committee. He has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU-PA and on the advisory committee of the American Friends Service Committee, Middle East Peace Building Unit.

He is engaged in local interfaith educational initiatives with a focus on ‘Islam and the Middle East’ and ‘US Foreign Policy and the Muslim World’. On behalf of CAIR-Pennsylvania, he has developed a 10-part course titled ‘Understanding Islam and Muslims through History and Jurisprudence’ and has taught it at churches, synagogues, mosques and local county night schools. He has presented this course at over 40 different venues over the past 8 years.

Iftekhar serves as Friday prayer service leader at suburban mosques in the Delaware Valley. He has started and volunteered for PA and TX Muslim community organizations at the board level and executive committee level. He has also worked with national Muslim organizations as consultant for local work and representation and has represented local Muslim organizations at the national level.

Iftekhar was born in Bangladesh, has lived in the Middle East and Europe and studied in Texas obtaining a Bachelors and a Masters at Texas A&M University and worked toward a PhD at Penn State University. He works as a consultant in the Pharmaceutical industry, traveling in Asia Pacific and Europe on corporate business process re-engineering assignments.

Ustadh Hasan Petrus

Ustadh Hasan was born in raised in Montreal, Canada. His pursuit of sacred Islamic knowledge has taken him to two continents to sit at the feet of those who still carry unbroken chains of sacred learning. During his stay in South Africa, Hasan focused primarily on Qur'anic Studies. He subsequently moved to Tarim, Yemen, to study at the prestigious seminary, Dar al-Mustafa. During his time in Tarim, Hasan was able to study a broad curriculum of Islamic sciences, benefitting directly from Habib Umar bin Hafiz, Habib Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Aydarus, Habib Hashim bn Aqil, Shaykh Umar bin Husayn al-Khatib and others. He returned from Tarim in 2015 to take up a teaching post at al-Maqasid.