Zaidiyyah

The Zaidiyyah are a group of Shia Islam named for the Prophet Muhammad's great-great-grandson Zaid.  While Zaid's brother Muhammad was designated to succeed their father as religious leader, Zaidis claim Zaid as the rightful successor because he actively resisted the corrupt rulers while his brother abstained from politics. While most Shia ascribe the Imam's religious and temporal power to certain descendants of Zaid's brother, the Zaidis look for any descendant of Ali who fights corruption.

Ahl-e Haqq

The Ahl-e Haqq, or people of truth, are adherents of a religion founded in 14th century Persia by Sultan Sahak, who is considered divine by his followers.  While some consider the sect to be Sufi or Shi'a in origin, but this is not precise, and modern practice has diverged significantly from that of Islam.  While most of the Ahl-e Haqq are Kurds, there are believers of other ethnicities, and the group does accept converts.

Druze

The Druze are a religious group that combines elements of Islam, Christianity, and other traditions, referring to themselves as Unitarians. Drawing inspiration from various traditions, they interpret such stories as Creation as metaphorical and eschew traditions and rituals such as fasting and prayers, preferring to abide by the moral statutes of the religion. The Druze do not accept converts, supposing that all living people are reincarnations of people who previously rejected the faith.

Alawi

The Alawi are a religious group that formed over a thousand years ago from a faction of Ismaili Shia Islam that was subsequently influenced by Sunni Islam, Christianity, and previous faiths.  While they consider themselves Muslims, many orthodox Muslims do not because their theology is Trinitarian, they believe in reincarnation, and they reject the Qur'an as their holy book, among other divergences; they are noted for their devotion to Ali above Muhammad.

Baha'i Faith

The Baha'i Faith was founded in the 19th century by Baha'u'llah in present-day Iran. A monotheistic faith, it claims to fulfill the prophecies of faiths such as Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. Baha'u'llah claimed be the most recent in a line of divine messengers including Muhammad, Jesus, and the Buddha, among others; the possibility remains that another messenger could become manifest. The Baha'i Faith has adherents living throughout the world.

Abdurrahim El-Keib

Abdurrahim El-Keib has been the Prime Minister of Libya since November 2011. He was elected to fill the vacancy left when Mahmoud Jibril kept his promise to leave office when Gaddafi's dictatorship had ended. Little known inside Libya prior to his election, he had fled the country in 1975, becoming an electrical engineering professor in the United States and then in the United Arab Emirates.

Awn Shawkat al-Khasawneh

Awn Shawkat al-Khasawneh has been the Prime Minister of Jordan since October 2011. Previously a judge at the International Court of Justice for over a decade, he became prime minister after his predecessor was sacked amid allegations of corruption. Educated at Cambridge, al-Khasawneh served in the Jordanian government, first in Foreign Affairs and then as Jordanian legal adviser to the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, after which he was Adviser to the King on international law.

Moncef Marzouki

Moncef Marzouki has been President of Tunisia since December 2011. Trained as a doctor, he was among Ben Ali's staunchest critics and lived in exile for nearly two decades. He campaigned against Ben Ali in the 1994 presidential election and was subsequently imprisoned for four months, after which he left for Paris, returning days after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia in January 2011. During this time, he founded the political party Congress for the People.

Ahmed Ouyahia

Ahmed Ouyahia has been the Prime Minister of Algeria since 2008.  A Berber from Algeria's Kabylie region, Ouyahia served as a diplomat within Africa and to the United Nations; while he was ambassador to Mali in the early 1990s, he helped to negotiate terms of peace in that country's Tuareg Rebellion.  He subsequently became Prime Minister under Liamine Zeroual, stepping down from the position when Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president in 1998.

Massoud Barzani

Massoud Barzani has been the President of Iraqi Kurdistan since 2005.  The son of famed Kurdish nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani, he has led the Kurdistan Democratic Party since his father's 1979 death. During the Iran-Iraq War, Barzani and many Kurds fought alongside Iran, provoking Saddam Hussein, to brutally retaliate against his Kurdish subjects in Northern Iraq. When the Iraqis lost the war, they regained much of their homeland, which was protected by a no-fly zone.

Mohamed ElBaradei

Mohamed ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a leading opposition figure in Egyptian politics.  Awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize alongside the IAEA for his efforts toward nuclear disarmament and promotion of safe nuclear energy, he left the agency in 2009. As head of the agency, he oversaw the search for WMDs in Iraq prior to the US invasion and the inspection of Iranian nuclear facilities to ascertain whether they possessed weapon-grade material.

Ali Salman

Ali Salman is the leader of Bahrain's opposition Al-Wefaq party and a Shiite cleric. He spent several years in exile because of his role in Bahrain's protests in the 1990s, returning when King Hamad granted a general amnesty to those who had demonstrated against his father. Upon this amnesty, Salman and others founded the Al-Wefaq party in 2001; while they skipped the 2002 parliamentary election, they won almost half of the parliamentary seats in 2006.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Mir-Hossein Mousavi is a leading opposition leader in and former Prime Minister of Iran. An ethnic Azeri, he is related to Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the 1970s, he became involved in Islamist politics and is considered the "architect" of the Islamic Revolution, having acted as political secretary of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republican Party and edited its newspaper. He was Iran's Prime Minister throughout the 1980s, before the position was abolished and he retired from politics.

Abdelilah Benkirane

Abdelilah Benkirane has been the Prime Minister of Morocco since his appointment by King Mohammed VI after elections in November 2011. Elections were held a year earlier than scheduled because of reforms enacted amid the Arab Spring. Benkirane leads the winning Islamist Justice and Development Party. The recent reforms mandate that the king pick the Prime Minister from the winning party; as the party's leader, Benkirane was an obvious choice and also because of his royalist leanings.

Salam Fayyad

Salam Fayyad has been Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority since 2007. While some consider Ismail Haniyeh the Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas has twice appointed Fayyad to the position. A trained economist, Fayyad was a professor before representing Palestine at the IMF and subsequently serving as Yasser Arafat's Finance Minister. After Arafat's death, he left his cabinet position to establish the Third Way political party as an alternative to Fatah and Hamas.

Wael Ghonim

Wael Ghonim has emerged as a leader of the Egyptian revolution. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he became a Google executive based in Dubai, where he anonymously started a Facebook group to honor Khaled Said, a young Egyptian blogger killed by the Mubarak regime in June 2010. He regularly updated it as instances of police brutality occurred, and it became the main Facebook page to coordinate the protests in Tahrir Square and nationwide.

Nabeel Rajab

Nabeel Rajab is the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. A longtime human rights defender, he has been beaten and imprisoned several times for his advocacy, which stretches back to his youth, when he was forced to switch schools after writing pro-justice slogans on school walls. It was not until Bahrain's 1990s uprising that Rajab entered organised human rights work. During this time, he worked clandestinely and was arrested several times.

Riyad al-Asad

Riyad al-Asad has been the leader of the Free Syrian Army since his defection from the Syrian Air Force in July 2011. Like other Syrian soldiers, he defected after refusing to follow President Assad's orders to shoot civilians. Little is known about his background, but he, like the majority of Syrians, is Sunni, unlike the Alawi President Bashar al-Assad. Before the uprising, he had served in Syria's Air Force since 1987, attaining the rank of Colonel.

Mohamed Bouazizi

Mohamed Bouazizi was the man credited with causing the Arab Spring. Because his father had died when he was young, Mohamed barely finished high school before it fell to him to support his family. The main breadwinner for his mother and several siblings, he could only find work in his rural Tunisian town as a fruit-and-vegetable vendor; he barely made a living, but he fared better than many in a country where the unemployed are often university graduates.

Tawakel Karman

Tawakel Karman was one of the 2011 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. A Yemeni activist and journalist, she gained widespread recognition when she was imprisoned during the early stages of the Yemeni protests to depose Ali Abdullah Saleh.  In 2005, she co-founded Women Journalists without Chains, a Yemeni group that since 2007 has led weekly protests to campaign for press freedom.  When the Arab Spring spread to Yemen, Karman emerged as an obvious leader of the protesters.  

Mohammad Ali Jafari

Mohammad Ali Jafari has commanded Iran's Revolutionary Guards since 2007. From a poor background, he received his basic education in his hometown of Yazd before attending Tehran University with financial help. While at university, he became involved in anti-Shah protests; some allege that he participated in the American Embassy siege. During the Iran-Iraq War, he served in the Revolutionary Guards, the section of Iran's military now tasked with preserving the republic's Islamic character.

Sami Hafez Anan

Sami Hafez Anan has been the Chief of Staff of Egypt's Armed Forces since 2005. He was in the United States when the Arab Spring protests began in late January 2011, but he quickly returned to Egypt to order the army not to fire on protestors. The day before Mubarak resigned from the presidency, Anan made a speech in Tahrir Square promising to protect the protestors and their demands.

Avigdor Lieberman

Avigdor Lieberman has been Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2009. Born in the Soviet Union, he moved to Israel as a young man and quickly became involved in conservative politics; there are allegations that he was briefly involved in the Kach party, which was later banned for its racist ideology. In 1999, he founded the secular Zionist party Yisrael Beitenu, whose base is Lieberman's fellow immigrants from the former Soviet bloc.

Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is the heir apparent to the Saudi throne. The younger half-brother of King Abdullah, he became crown prince in October 2011 after the death of Prince Sultan. Alongside the late King Fahd and Prince Sultan, he is a member of the so-called Sudairi Seven, the largest cohort of full brothers among the sons of King Abdulaziz; the brothers support each other and each holds prominent positions in government.

Maher al-Assad

Maher al-Assad is a key Syrian military commander and is widely considered the country's most powerful man after his brother, President Bashar al-Assad. After his brother Basil's 1994 death, Maher, while politically active, was not chosen to succeed his father as president; analysts speculate that this was likely due to either his youth or his temper. The position instead went to his older brother Bashar, then largely outside of politics.

Abdullah Gul

Abdullah Gul has been the President of Turkey since 2007. A member of the country's ruling Justice and Development Party, he has attracted criticism in the secular society because his wife wears a headscarf.  While he gained notoriety as an Islamist, he has recently pursued more moderate policies; as foreign minister, he spearheaded Turkey's bid to join the European Union.  Despite these reassurances, many Turks were still uneasy when Gul became president of the staunchly secular country.

Ali Khamenei

Ali Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989. Previously the president of Iran, he has been the Supreme Leader since Ayatollah Khomeini's death. Khamenei has a long record as a conservative cleric; he was an early supporter of Khomeini's ideology, and served as his spokesman inside Iran during Khomeini's exile. He narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1981, and became president a few months later.

Rashid al-Ghannushi

Rashid al-Ghannushi is a co-founder of the Ennahda Party that won the 2011 Tunisian elections. A Socialist at university in Damascus, he later became more religious and turned to Islamism. In the early 1980s, the then-dictator of Tunisia allowed some political freedoms, and al-Ghannushi used this opportunity to form the political party that would later become Ennahda. Three months after its founding, the leaders were imprisoned, and seven years later, al-Ghannushi would be sent into exile.

Ismail Haniyeh

Ismail Haniyeh claims to have been Prime Minister of Gaza since 2006; Fatah disputes this, having appointed Salam Fayyad in 2007. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza, he joined a party that would later help form Hamas and was arrested by Israel during the Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s. After his release, he became a key assistant to Hamas' founder, Ahmed Yassin, which helped him become known in the party.

Hassan Nasrallah

Hassan Nasrallah has been the Secretary General of Hezbollah since 1992. Born in Beirut, his family returned to their ancestral home when the Lebanese civil war began; Hassan was 15 then and his imams encouraged him to pursue his interest in theology. At 16, he commenced studies at a seminary in Najaf, Iraq. When Iraq expelled all Lebanese students two years later, he and future Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi returned to Lebanon to form a seminary and start Hezbollah.

Qaboos bin Said Al Said

Qaboos bin Said Al Said has been the Sultan of Oman since he ousted his father in 1970. While his father was conservative and mistrusted outsiders, Qaboos has significantly modernized and opened Oman to the world. Qaboos took power during a civil war; the coup was a turning point because of his policy changes and different approach to the conflict. The country has since benefited substantially from the discovery of petroleum, but the Sultan remains an absolute ruler.

Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has been President of the United Arab Emirates since his father's death in 2004.  He is also emir of Abu Dhabi; the two positions are traditionally paired together.  One of the world's richest people, he is known for his philanthropy.  In 2009, he bailed out the construction of the world's tallest building in Dubai, which was then named for him.  In 2008, he forgave $7 billion of Iraqi debt.

Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani

Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has been the Emir of Qatar since he deposed his father in 1995. Previously the Minister of Defense, he replaced his conservative father with the royal family's support; soon after the coup, the son funded Al-Jazeera, unique in the region because it is not controlled by any government.  However, Al-Jazeera's chairman is the Emir's distant cousin, and the network is cautious when covering Qatar and other Gulf countries.

Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah

Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al Sabah has been the Emir of Kuwait since 2006. He became emir a week after the death of his brother Jaber when the intended successor could not take office due to illness. He ascended the throne after over 50 years of service in Kuwait's government, including 40 years as foreign minister. During his reign, several significant reforms have been enacted to ensure more freedom of expression, political freedoms, and women's rights.

Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Jordan

Abdullah II bin al-Hussein has been the King of Jordan since his father's death in 1999. While his uncle had been designated the Crown Prince for over 30 years, Abdullah was selected as the successor two weeks before his father's death. The son of Hussein and his second, English-born wife, Abdullah was largely educated in the West, and he speaks English fluently.

Mohammed VI of Morocco

Mohammed bin Hassan has been the King of Morocco since his father's death in 1999. While his father committed many human rights abuses, Mohammed has sought to create a freer Morocco, though the kingdom is far from democratic. As king, he has reformed Moroccan family law and expanded women's rights. Since the Arab Spring, he has liberalized the constitution while retaining a substantial amount of power.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been the President of Algeria since 1999.  A veteran of Algeria's War for Independence, he was a key government official for nearly two decades after independence.  When President Houari Boumedienne suddenly died in office, Bouteflika was considered a likely successor, but the military instead chose a compromise candidate; soon after, he was charged with corruption and went into exile for six years.

Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas has been the president of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 2005. While Hamas disputes his claim on the Presidency, worldwide consensus supports Abbas' position. Born in Palestine, he moved as a teenager to Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and attended Syrian, Egyptian, and Soviet universities; his doctoral dissertation concerned supposed links between Nazism and Zionism. He joined the Fatah party soon after its founding, eventually becoming prime minister under Arafat in 2003.

Michel Suleiman

Michel Suleiman has been the President of Lebanon since 2008. After a lengthy military career culminating in a ten-year tenure as Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Parliament elected him as president during negotiations that outlasted the previous president's term by six months; talks frequently stalled as the two main factions remained intransigent on several critical issues. Suleiman is widely seen as neutral politically; when he became president, he requested that the military disregard politics.

Nouri al-Maliki

Nouri al-Maliki has been the Prime Minister of Iraq since 2006. He has been an active member of the Shi'ite Islamic Dawa Party since the 1960s; when Saddam Hussein began executing party members, he went into exile in Damascus and Tehran, returning after the 2003 invasion. When he was in exile, he was known publicly as Jawad, but he reverted to his given name of Nouri upon his return to Iraq.

Palestinian diaspora

About 5 million Palestinians live in the Middle East outside Israel and Palestine. While over half live in Jordan, significant communities also live in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf states. Palestinians desiring to leave their homeland encounter many problems as citizens without a state, and the response from different governments varies significantly. Surrounding Israel, nearly 1.5 million Palestinians still live in refugee camps.

Guest workers in the Gulf

Approximately 15 million expatriates live in the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, from a total population of under 40 million. While many are from other Arab countries, the single largest country of origin is India. The region's local elites are rapidly building infrastructure, importing labor for jobs in construction, housework, and other fields, including skilled labor in oil, education, and engineering.

Copts

There are at least 10 million Copts in the world today; estimates vary widely.  Copts are Egyptian Christians, and they traditionally belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church.  To the casual observer, the Coptic Orthodox Church differs only slightly from the doctrines of the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic churches.  Some Copts also belong to the Coptic Catholic Church or various Protestant denominations.

Berber people

There are about 10 million Berbers; they call themselves Imazighen, meaning "free men". While some Berbers live in the West, most live in Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. While Berbers  are increasingly asserting their identity, education remains primarily in Arabic or European languages.

Kurdish people

Approximately 30 million Kurds live worldwide; more than half live in Turkey, with many in Iran and Iraq and a significant diaspora community.  The Kurds are the most numerous people without an independent homeland, but the portion of Kurdistan in Iraq is autonomous.

Ali Abdullah Saleh

Ali Abdullah Saleh has been President of Yemen since reunification in 1990; he was President of North Yemen from 1978.  An adherent of Zaydi Shi'ism, he received minimal schooling, but joined the military and rose through the ranks to be commissioned as an officer. He was appointed military governor of Ta'izz; when the president was assassinated the following year, he became a member of the provisional executive council, and was subsequently elected President by Parliament.

Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has been the ruler of Bahrain since 1999.  Originally the Emir, he declared himself King in 2002.  After receiving his basic education in Bahrain, he obtained his higher education at universities in Britain and the United States.  Upon his ascension to the throne, he made sweeping reforms, freeing the nation's political prisoners, liberalizing its laws, and permitting the return of many exiles.

Beji Caid Essebsi

Beji Caid Essebsi has been Prime Minister of Tunisia since February 2011.  Emerging from retirement to assume the position, he was Tunisia's foreign affairs minister in the late 1980s and served as President of the Chamber of Deputies in the beginning of the 1990s, but retired from public life in 1994. Born to an upper-class family descended from the mamelukes who once ruled Tunisia, his political career has spanned several generations.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil

Mustafa Abdul Jalil has been the chairman of Libya's National Transitional Council since February 2011. Previously Gaddafi's Minister of Justice, he defected to the rebels' side a week into the civil war when Gaddafi sent him to negotiate with the opposition. Previously lauded by NGOs as an official who criticized the government's human rights violations, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi selected him as justice minister to cast the regime in a more reform-minded light.

Mohamed Hussein Tantawi

Mohamed Hussein Tantawi has been the de facto ruler of Egypt since Mubarak's departure in February 2011.  A field marshal, he is the chairman of Egypt's armed forces.  A veteran of the Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and the Gulf War, he has been Egypt's Minister of Defence since 1991 and was a close Mubarak ally.  He controls the military government that is in place until elections can install a successor.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been the president of Iran since 2005. Previously the governor of Ardabil province and then mayor of Tehran, he is ultraconservative, known for repealing the reforms of his predecessors. A man of humble origins, he was a civil engineering professor before he entered politics, and he held various political positions in Northwestern Iran. He was appointed to every position he held until he campaigned for president in 2005.

Binyamin Netanyahu

Binyamin Netanyahu has been the Prime Minister of Israel since 2009. The son of Zionist activist Benzion Netanyahu, his brother Yonatan was killed during Operation Entebbe by Palestinian activists. A member of the conservative Likud Party, he also served as Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999, after which he left politics amid a corruption scandal, but soon returned on Ariel Sharon's cabinet. When Sharon formed the Kadima party in 2005, Netanyahu was elected to lead Likud.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been Turkey's prime minister since 2003. Once a football player, he became mayor of Istanbul in 1994. Admired for his reforms and lack of corruption, his term ended with his imprisonment for reciting a poem deemed too Islamic by authorities. This prison sentence barred him from assuming public office, but the law was changed so he could become Prime Minister.  

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been King of Saudi Arabia since 2005.  As a son of Ibn Saud showing political promise, he was long regarded as a potential king; this became official when his half-brother Fahd became king in 1982, naming Abdullah crown prince.  When Fahd was incapacitated by a stroke in 1996, Abdullah assumed many of his duties.  At age 87, he is among the world's oldest monarchs.

Bashar al-Assad

Bashar al-Assad has been the President of Syria since his father's death in 2000.  While their father had been grooming his older brother Basil as heir apparent, Basil's death in 1994 caused Bashar to become next in line.  Trained as an ophthalmologist rather than as a politician, Syrians hoped that Bashar would reform his father's policies; while his first months in office saw some reforms, these reforms have not proven lasting.