Malik R Dahlan

Early life and education

Malik Rabea Dahlan was born 18 August 1979 to the Al Dahlan (آل دحلان) family of Makkah. He is of the Hashemite bloodline of Sayyid Ahmad Zayni Dahlan (1816-1886) Jurisconsult of the Two Holy Mosques and Shafi’i Grand Imam of his time near the end of the Ottoman Empire. His mother, Huda Kayal, was an academic specializing in English literature at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. His father, Dr. Rabea S Dahlan, served as Lieutenant Governor of the Emirate of Makkah from 1989 until 1999.

He attended Belmont Hill School in Belmont, MA in the USA. Dahlan read civil law and jurisprudence at Al Al-Bayt University in Jordan and then at the University of Jordan in Amman, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in law in 1999. In 2016, the University of Jordan decorated him as its 50th Anniversary Honorary Alumnus.

He left to America to take government studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in addition to receiving his American legal training at Harvard Law School, obtaining a master's degree in law in 2001. Dahlan was also the first international student to receive the Harvard Law School Dean Leadership Award. He also obtained a master's degree in regional studies at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

He attended Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge to train in English legal methods in 2007.

Dahlan obtained his Habilitation professorial doctorate in jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, where he focused on statesmanship.

Legal career

Dahlan practised trade law at White & Case LLP in New York and was the chief lawyer of MBR Legal, which has advised several corporations and state bodies on their activities in the Middle East, where he is also regional counsel for Twitter. He also headed the Middle Eastern practice of Washington, DC, law firm Covington & Burling LLP from 2008 to 2014.

In 2005, he was appointed lead counsel on Doha's $8.67 billion Specialty Teaching Hospital (SIDRA) and was lead counsel advising the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) on the regulation of the Economic Cities Project in Saudi Arabia in 2010.

He is well-known internationally as a Rule of Law advocate in the Middle East. He served as Special Advisor to The Rt. Hon. the Lord Woolf of Barnes, former Chief Justice of England and Wales, as well as Sir William Blair, in the establishment of the first independent English Common Law Judiciary in the Middle East from 2007-2010. Dahlan is the Founding Director of the Qatar Law Forum, inaugurated in 2009, to commemorate an international agenda under the banner of "Global Commitment to the Rule of Law".

Mediation and international dispute resolution

Together with Wolf von Kumberg, a former corporate counsel at Northrop Grumman, he set up the International Dispute Registry in London as a way of bringing together dispute resolution professionals.

Dahlan is a board director of the International Mediation Institute (IMI) in The Hague. He was the first CEDR-accredited mediator from the Gulf and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He trained in mediation and negotiation at the Harvard Program on Negotiation (PON) where he also taught and was awarded the Negotiation Leader Award by the late Roger Fisher (May 28, 1922 – August 25, 2012) Samuel Williston Professor of Law emeritus and director of the Harvard Negotiation Project.

He served as the founding director of the International Court and Dispute Resolution Center in Qatar (QICDRC), established in 2009, and established the framework for the King Abdullah Center for International Dispute Resolution in Saudi Arabia. In 2011, he led the US-Saudi Judicial Engagement Project to introduce Saudi judges to American methods on alternative dispute resolution (ADR). In 2009 and 2010, Dahlan advised the parliament of Iraq on the establishment of a hydrocarbon revenue-sharing framework. He is also one of ten regional experts in constitutional affairs, selected by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, and advised the United States Trade Representative on negotiation strategy for the accession of Saudi Arabia, and on the Gulf Cooperation Council's membership of the World Trade Organization.

Policy career

Dahlan was engaged at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, from 2004-2005 and was the founding Director of the Brookings Doha Center, as the first think-tank of its kind in the Middle East, which was only formally established in 2008.

He served on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Middle East. He was a trustee of the Arab British Centre and is an Advisory Board Member of the Beirut Institute. He is also a member of the society of fellows of the Aspen Institute and of Aspen Justice Associates.

He developed the three-year Arab Governance Project with the Dubai School of Government in 2010. The project was aimed at improving the study of standards of governance and the application of the rule of law at regional and national levels.

Institution Quraysh for Law & Policy (iQ)

Dahlan established Institution Quraysh for Law & Policy (iQ) in Doha in 2005. Dahlan stated that its purpose was to provide legal and policy advice to governments, non-governmental organizations and international corporations. Since its establishment, iQ has opened offices in Jeddah, Riyadh and King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia, and London, United Kingdom.

iQ works with renowned international experts, affiliates and institutional partners to offer unparalleled regional expertise in law, political economy, policy, regulation, culture and economics with a dedicated focus on the Arabian Peninsula. It was affiliated with Covington & Burling LLP between 2008 and 2014.

iPlatform

In 2013, he launched the Innovation Platform (iPlatform), an independent global initiative looking into specific rule of law and governance challenges. The initiative was set up following the Arab Spring uprisings to help reconstitute legal and political systems in the region. He is currently leading two research projects: a "Transitional Law Manual" in conjunction with the Legatum Institute, and is working with academic publisher Routledge and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) on a book to be entitled "Middle East Marshall Plan".

In November 2015, iPlatform in conjunction with the Nora Weller Gallery hosted an art exhibition titled ‘A Moving Identity’. The exhibition featured art pieces exclusively inspired by the crisis and was in aid of Syrian Refugees. Proceeds are being used to support the work of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Jordan.

Academic involvement

Dahlan is currently a professor at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), Queen Mary University of London. His specialisms are energy law, geopolitics and ethics, as well as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).

In 2010, Dahlan was a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he conducted research on models for regional cooperation in the Middle East. This looked at how the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) could inform attempts to mold a regional system for the Middle East. As an academic at the NUS Middle East Institute and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, he taught a course on the modern Middle East to Chinese civil servants.

In 2012, he was invited to deliver a European Union keynote address to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the failure of Arab regional international organization and introduced his theory on Open Regionalism, on which he has published a chapter in Gulf Politics and Economics in a Changing World.

From September 2014 to September 2015, Dahlan was a fellow at Cambridge University's Lauterpacht Centre for International Law affiliated with Peterhouse College. While there, he wrote his book "The Hijaz: In Integration Islamic Statehood and the Origins of Arab Self-Determination".

In 2016, he joined the advisory board of the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research at St Andrews University in Scotland and is a member of the academic board of HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan's West-Asia North Africa Institute (WANA). Prof. Dr. Dahlan served as the International Chair of the Harvard Law School Association from 2011-2016.

He is a member of the editorial board of the UCLA Journal of Middle East Policy Development, the Advisory Board of the SOAS Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, and the University of Toronto and Yale Law School initiative- Middle East Law and Governance Interdisciplinary Journal (MELG).

Public policy

In 2016, Dahlan produced The Application of the Objectives of Islamic Law on Public Policy, a two-volume book on Islamic governance based on his Habilitation thesis. The work deals with the objectives of Islamic law when applied to "legitimate governance", which covers: 1) statecraft; 2) governance; 3) sovereignty and leadership; 4) institutions and rule of law; and 5) public policy.

Dahlan argues that the nature of the Caliphate is, and has always been, subject to interpretation and debate. He traces its role in establishing public interests by examining the function of the ruler and the authorities they possess, which confers on them a mandate to take decisions, propose innovations and take part in a discourse of development. Public good (maslaha), Dahlan argues, is a fundamental driver in the historical legal structure of government and so must be thoroughly examined. He concludes, that Siyasah Shar’iyyah (the Islamic notion of the social contract between ruler and ruled) is in fact the statecraft of a nation through its leaders and decision-makers in accordance to the rule of law.

Hamza Shehata

In 2016, Dahlan's monograph on the Saudi philosopher and educationalist Hamza Shehata was published by Haus publishing. This took the form of a discussion of Shehata's lecture Manliness as the Pillar of a Virtuous Ethic, and was intended to cast some light on a figure who represents, according to Dahlan, a distinctive strand of liberal Islamic thought that failed to flourish in the post-war Arabian world.

As well as making an original contribution to ethical and political philosophy, Shehata was active in the self-determination movement, in the years following the absorption of the Kingdom of the Hijaz into the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a process that began in 1924 with the surrender of Jeddah to Ibn Saud.

The Hijaz

Dahlan's book, The Hijaz: Integration, Islamic Statehood and the Origins of Arab Self-Determination, is due to be published by the University of Chicago in November 2016. Dahlan explores the question of Arab self-determination, statehood and the entry into the League of Nations of the first Islamic state and the first independent Arab state and founding signatory, Kingdom of The Hijaz, in the aftermath of the Great War. His book examines the history of the Hijaz from the points of view of Islamic governance and Westphalian conceptions of statehood as well as that of international law, and suggests how the Hijaz could play a role in reintegrating the states of the Middle East into a stable regional structure.

Ethical advocacy and responsible investment

In addition to teaching ethics, Dahlan is an active citizen in the areas of education, youth empowerment, medical research, climate change and renewable energy, interfaith, ethical finance and philanthropy.

He is an active member of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) community and sits on its President's Council as well as serving as a Director of its International Advisory Board and MGH international ambassador. He has also served as a director of the Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar from 2005 to 2008.

After the outbreak of violence in Mali in 2012, Dahlan was called to join the Timbuktu Renaissance Initiative Presidential Action Group.

In 2008, Dahlan and Omran Hamad Al-Kuwari founded GreenGulf Inc, the first private clean technology and renewable energy advisory business in the Gulf focused on the development and management of renewable energy. He is currently the chairman of Green Gulf who have worked on projects with Chevron, UN COP-18, Enviromena Power Systems, Siemens, Millennium Energy Industries and Qatar Science & Technology Park.

Personal life

Malik Dahlan is married to Sarah Yamani, a diplomacy and education expert and former UN consultant. They currently live in London, England and they have four children.

Malik is a producer of classical folk music including the Covenant of Hijaz.

He is an automobile restoration-modification enthusiast. He is the owner of a unique aged habanos collection in London. He enjoys Arabian history, poetry and American-Jewish stand-up comedy. His favourite confection is biscotti, the twice-baked Italian almond biscuit. He is a fan of the HBO Original Series Game of Thrones.

Publications