Mubarak Awad

Mubarak Awad Founder of Nonviolence International. "Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian Christian psychologist, was educated in the United States at a college run by a church that teaches nonviolence. One of his professors, John Mecartney, remembers the young Mubarak as, of all his students, the one who argued strongest for the necessity of using force.

"But he changed. In 1982, Mubarak Awad published a paper proposing nonviolence for Palestinians and in 1985, he returned to his occupied homeland as Director of the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence. Some of the less publicized direct actions now being carried out in the intafada (uprising) are nonviolent ones that Awad organized. So effective were these actions, and so challenging to the Israeli regime, that Mubarak Awad was expelled last summer from his own country. From the United States, he and his American wife continue to support the intafada and to seek ways of returning home. In October, Mubarak Awad spoke in Toronto at a conference organized by Jains. The audience was moved by his gentleness and his obvious commitment to peaceful ways.

"His centre, said Awad, was meant for research. But when he looked for books in Arabic and Hebrew about nonviolence, he found not a single one. He published translations of writings by the Muslim Gandhian, Badshah Khan, as well as works by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Gene Sharp. He expected to work as a therapist, but he discovered that no one was interested in therapy. They were interested in politics. Awad startled his people by publishing an article saying that, if anybody has a problem - even the problem of being oppressed - but doesn't work on it, he chooses to have that problem. You have to work the problem on a daily basis, he said, to get rid of it." 

"Mubarak Awad is a nonviolent activist, youth advocate, and educator with nearly thirty years’ experience. He is currently the president of Nonviolence International, based in Washington, DC, which he founded sixteen years ago. He is the founder of numerous other organizations in the United States and Israel/Palestine, including the Center for the Study of Non-Violence in Palestine, the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Elections, the National Youth Advocate Program, and the Palestinian Counseling Center. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the International Graduate School of St. Louis, Missouri, and his master’s degree in education from St. Francis University, Indiana."

In 2006 he was fasting with Mohammed Abu-Nimer. 


 * Former Advisor, Albert Einstein Institution
 * International Board of Directors, Youth Advocate Program International
 * Member, Committee of 100 for Tibet
 * Advisory Council, SEARCH

He is married to Nancy Nye.

Biographical Articles

 * Gershom Gorenberg, "The Missing Mahatma: Searching for a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King in the West Bank", The Weekly Standard, June 4, 2009.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Sami Awad