Chris DoyleDirector, Council for Arab-Business Understanding, UK
Chris Doyle is the director of CAABU. He has worked with the Council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honours degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. As part of this course he spent a year in Alexandria. Since then he has travelled widely in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1996 Chris moved to work for a professional government relations firm but returned to a more senior role at CAABU in 1997. In November 2002, he was made full-time director.
As the lead spokesperson for CAABU and as an acknowledged expert on the region, Chris Doyle is a frequent commentator on TV and Radio. He gives numerous talks around the country on issues such as Palestine, Iraq, Islamophobia and the Arabs in Britain. He has had numerous articles and letters published in the British and international media.
He has travelled to nearly every country in the Middle East. He has organised and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. Most recently he took parliamentary delegations to the West Bank in November 2010 and November 2008, he accompanied a delegation including Edward Davey MP, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, to Israel and the West Bank. In February 2008, he joined a British parliamentary delegation to Saudi Arabia, which included meetings with the King and the Crown Prince.
He has spoken at numerous international conferences. In March 2008, he spoke at a major conference in Kuwait on the media’s role in the dialogue between Islam and the West and, in the past, he has given talks at Chatham House, RUSI, the Dubai Press Club and the annual Doha Forum on Free Trade and Democratisation in Qatar. On 29th November 2005, Chris addressed the United Nations on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians.
Chris Doyle writes for a number of journals about the region and was the UK correspondent for Middle East International covering all aspects of the British relationship with the Middle East. He also researched and wrote an educational pamphlet that accompanied John Pilger’s documentary “Palestine is Still the Issue”. He was a visiting lecturer at St. Mary’s College, University of Surrey, lecturing on religion in the Middle East.
