Who Should Be Among This Year's Picks for the TIME 100?

To help make the selection, TIME asked previous honorees whom they would judge to be the world's most influential people. The first installment:

CRAIG NEWMARK

The "Craig" in craigslist transfigured the concept of classified ads for the Web.

I'd select Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux, the Web's ubiquitous operating system; Bart Ehrman, the biblical scholar who wrote Misquoting Jesus, a book on how biblical texts, through error or intent, changed over the past 2,000 years; and Reza Aslan, who wrote No God but God, a book about what's really going on with Islam and the West, debunking the "clash of civilizations" argument.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Somali-born, Muslim-raised Dutch politician and critic of Islamic extremism.

I nominate Denmark's Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, for...

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