Dr. Hashim El-Tinay
Dr. El-Tinay is an American citizen, native of the Sudan. Born on December 23rd,1939, grew up in Umm -Ruwaba, in the Midwest of Sudan.
His long march to freedom led him from his African modest beginnings as a herder of calves at age 7, to serving the Democratic Party as an honorary member of President Barack Obama’s Kitchen Cabinet and as a founding member of Organizing for Action (OFA).
Dr. El-Tinay is owner of Bridges 21 Communications and founder of two 501 ( c ) 3 DC-based non profits the International Peace Quest Institute (IPQI) and Salam Sudan Foundation (SSF).
Dr. El-Tinay earned a law degree from the University of Khartoum, a masters in diplomacy from the Sorbonne and a PhD from Strassford University. In Khartoum he played for the university soccer team, organized students to build a health center and a youth hostel and led them in a peaceful revolution that ended Sudan’s first military dictatorship in 1964.
Thanks to a UNESCO-WORLD UNIVERSITY SERVICE (WUS) travel grant for youth leaders, at age 23 he visited and studied student governance in Europe and Asia from Paris, Bonn and Geneva, to Delhi, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
A Pan Africanist since the age of 17, Dr. El-Tinay started his career as a diplomat and served in Paris, France, Lagos, Nigeria and Khartoum, Sudan. After resigning from the service of the Sudanese second military dictatorship government because of his ideas, he briefly worked for the WORLD UNIVERSITY SERVICE (WUS), in Geneva, UNESCO, in Paris, and the World Bank, in Washington, DC.
Understanding from personal experience the objective limitations of bureaucracies, he decided to do something about liberating himself and finding his real calling to serve and change the world. He first established in Paris his communications business to use his knowledge of Arabic, English and French to serve and earn a living.
In 1985 Dr. El-Tinay founded his peace advocacy non-profit in Paris and later in Washington D.C. He has lived and worked in four continents. As an American of Sudanese origin, he is aware that he comes from a place that is a microcosm of Africa and the Middle East.
Immersed into and shaped by the pluralism and the multiculturalism of his origins, Dr. El-Tinay embraces and merges, effortlessly, his Nile Valley roots with the new European and American cultures that embraced him while in exile since 1975.
As a Pan Africanist, Dr. El-Tinay is deeply rooted in and aligned with the history and cultures of the Nile Valley and the rich spiritual heritage of Africa and the Middle East, especially of the three monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Since 1985 Dr. El-Tinay has been passionately advocating for freedom, social and economic justice, human rights and peace through a dialogue of cultures and religions, the core vision of both his non-profits; the International Peace Quest Institute (IPQI) and Salam Sudan Foundation (SSF).
Dr. El-Tinay believes that people of all faith traditions and all people, believers and non believers, need to be set free from the tyranny of greed, fear and ignorance. If people can focus on what unites them rather than on what divides them, all problems can be resolved peacefully, through better communication, deeper understanding and mutual trust.
Dr. El-Tinay, inspired and nurtured by his unique perspective resulting from years of observation, research and reflection on life, believes that for peace to be possible we need an audacious paradigm shift that aims to innovate a win-win creative synthesis for a more just, equitable and moral social and economic reorganization of the world.
Dr. El-Tinay believes that our broken human family needs to agree and strive to arrive at a consensus on a more honest and moral narrative of the human story that is rooted in a truth that can set us all free, rather than in politics or ideology. When and if we do that, a synergistic meeting and complementarity between mankind’s contemporary and ancient civilizations of Africa, the Middle East, the Nile valley and the larger worlds can take place.
The magnificent accomplishments of Western innovation and modernity can lift us from the valleys of death to the mountaintops of enlightened living and finally help us build heaven here on earth and reach the promised land. Dr. El-Tinay is a published author, a teacher and a public speaker on Africa and the Middle East. He is a recipient of various awards for his peace advocacy work.
He lives and works in Washington, DC.