Ahmet T. Kuru is the director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia University. Kuru is the author of Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey, co-editor of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey. His recent book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison co-won the American Political Science Association's International History and Politics Section Award and was included in Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year.