Wahhabism (Arabic: وهابية‎) is an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam. It is a form of Salafism, and a religious movement within Sunni Islam Wahhabism was developed by an eighteenth century Muslim theologian, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) from Najd, Saudi Arabia. Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab advocated purging Islam of what he considered to be impurities and innovations. His has become the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Its adherents prefer to be referred to as Salafis.

The movement claims to adhere to the correct understanding of the general Islamic doctrine of Tawhid, on the "uniqueness" and "unity" of God, shared by the majority of Islamic sects, but uniquely interpreted by Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab. Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab was influenced by the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and questioned classical interpretations of Islam, claiming to rely on the Qur'an and the Hadith. He attacked a "perceived moral decline and political weakness" in the Arabian Peninsula and condemned what he perceived as idolatry, the popular cult of saints, and shrine and tomb visitation.

Bernard Lewis, FBA (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.

Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the George W. Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over a 60-year career, he has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East." Lewis is known for his Armenian genocide denial. He is also famous for his public debates with the late Edward Said concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis.

Hamid Algar (b. 1940) is a British-American Professor Emeritus of Persian studies at the Faculty of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is a prolific writer on Persian and Arabic literature and contemporary history of Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Afghanistan.

Hamid Algar was born in 1940 in UK. After earning his B.A. in Persian language at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was offered a scholarship to Tehran University in Iran. He then moved to Cambridge and defended his thesis in 1965.

He served on the UC Berkeley faculty for 45 years (from 1965 to 2010). Algar remains an active scholar and his research has concentrated on the Islamic history of the Perso-Turkish world, with particular emphasis on Iranian Shi'ism during the past two centuries and the Naqshbandi Sufi order.

Professor Hamid Algar, PhD, born in England in 1940, is a well known scholar and convert to Shia Islam. He received his formal training in Islamic studies at Cambridge University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1965. Since 1965 he has served on the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches a wide range of courses including tafsir, Sufism, Shi'ism, the history of Islam in Iran, Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature.

Steve Pieczenik, MD, PhD (born December 7, 1943, in Havana, Cuba) is an American psychiatrist, former State Department official, author, and publisher.

Pieczenik was born of Russian-Polish parents in Cuba and reared in France. His father, a doctor from Dombrovicz who studied and worked in Toulouse, fled Poland before World War II. His mother, a Russian Jew from Bialystok, fled Europe after many of her family members were killed. The couple met in Portugal, where both had fled ahead of the Nazi invaders. Pieczenik was born in Cuba—out of wedlock in 1943. After living in Toulouse, France for six years, Pieczenik's family migrated to the United States where they settled in the Harlem area of New York City, New York. Steve Pieczenik was eight years old when his parents received their visa to the US.

Pieczenik is a classical pianist who wrote a full-length musical at the age of eight.

Pieczenik is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and has a doctorate in international relations from MIT.

According to Pieczenik's autobiography, he attended Booker T. Washington High School in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Pieczenik received a full scholarship to Cornell University at the age of 16. In 1964, Pieczenik claims he received a B.A. degree in Pre-Medicine and Psychology from Cornell, later attending Cornell University Medical College. In his spare time, he attained a PhD in international relations from MIT while studying at Harvard Medical School. Pieczenik claims to be the first psychiatrist ever to receive a PhD focusing on international relations.