Reuven Paz

Reuven Paz was born and grew up in Haifa, Israel. He graduated his academic education from Haifa University, in the fields of Arabic language and literature and Middle Eastern Studies, specializing on Islam and modern Islamic thought. Reuven Paz is fluent in written and spoken Arabic, and in Hebrew and English.



Since the early 1970s most of his studies, research, and fields of experience, focused on Islam, Islamic culture, Islamic radicalism, development of radical Islamic doctrines, all over the Arab and Muslim world, and Palestinian society and politics in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. His research combines thorough academic work with a long field experience in the Israeli security service.



In 1998, he was a visiting fellow in the Dayan Center in Tel-AvivUniversity and twice in 2000 and 2001, in The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C. Between 1989-1998 he lectured in the department of Middle Eastern Studies at Haifa University, on radical Islamic movements and Palestinian society. In 1997-2000 he was the academic director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in the InterdisciplinaryCenter in Herzliya, Israel.

In 2003, he founded the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM – www.e-prism.org) in the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, which he directs. The project deals with developments of radical Islamic and Islamist movements in the social, cultural, ideological, and political fields; Finance of radical Islamist groups; Sponsoring of Islamic states to Islamist radicalism and terrorism; Islamic communities in the West; The “Culture of Global Jihad” and its attitude toward the Western civilization, Israel, and the Jews; Islamist networks; and support for radical Islam through the virtual global Jihad in the Internet. The focus of its research is on primary sources in Arabic, and the project wishes to fill some vacuum in the use of Arabic sources for the research of Islamist phenomenon. In 2006, PRISM has opened a special research project for radical Islam in Africa, and in 2007 a research project on Islamist social affairs, and radical Islam in Central and Latin America.

In 2013 he joined the newly founded research think-tank for the research of Islam and Muslims in Africa, founded and directed by Dr. Moshe Terdman. He will serve as the responsible for research on social Islamic issues in Africa.

Reuven Paz has published so far dozens of articles in the fields of Palestinian society and politics, and global radical and militant Islam. He gave 19 expert testimonies in the U.S., Canada, and European courts, in cases that involved terrorism. In the recent years he is working on a book about the “mindset of Global Jihadis”.

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