Robert Abdul Hayy Darr has been a student of the spiritual culture of Islam for 45 years. In the late 1960s, he studied North Indian classical music at the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music in California. By the early 1980s, Darr began studying Persian literature where he first encountered the teachings of Ibn 'Arabi in the works of Abdurrahman Jami of Herat. This began a life-long interest in the Shaykh's profound teachings. In 1987, Darr met Afghanistan's poet laureate in exile, Ustad Khalilullah Khalili and this friendship led to his English translation of the poet's quatrains in 1989. From 1988-2007, Darr was tutored in Persian miniature painting by Ustad Homayon Etemadi, Afghanistan's last court painter and royal librarian. Darr was the disciple of the Afghan Sufi poet Raz Mohammed Zaray from 1992 until the poet's death in 2010.

CYRUS ALI ZARGAR is an associate professor of religion at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. His book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of Ibn 'Arabi and 'Iraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press.

MARIA DAKAKE, researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi'ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She has just completed work on a major colloaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text

MOHAMMED RUSTOM is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University. He is the author of the award-winning book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra and Assistant Editor of The Study Quran: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Editor-in-Chief, Seyyed Hossein Nasr).

Zachary Markwith is a doctoral student and instructor at the Graduate Theological Union where he specializes in early

Islamic spirituality and comparative religious studies. He is the author of One God, Many Prophets: the Universal Wisdom of Islam, and is writing his dissertation on sanctity in the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000). John Mercer is an actor and writer, and formerly the Secretary of the Ibn 'Arabi Society and a founding member

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000)

Jaume Flaquer is a Jesuit priest and Professor of Interreligious Dialogue in the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia in Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Sorbonne; his thesis was on Jesus according to the Sufi mystic Ibn 'Arabi. Publications include Christianity and Fundamentalism (1997) and Travelling Lives (2007). He gave a paper at the Second International Symposium of the MIAS-Latina in 2013 on The Spiritual Qualities of Jesus according to Ibn 'Arabi.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Society's Journal for 30 years. He is co-founder and director of Anqa Publishing and author of The Unlimited Mercifier, a spiritual biography of Ibn 'Arabi. He has translated the Mishkat al-Anwar, Ibn 'Arabi's collection of hadith qudsi, and three of Ibn 'Arabi's shorter treatises including The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation (2008). He has lectured around the world and leads courses at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. He was awarded the first Tarjuman Prize by MIAS-Latina in 2012 (along with Maurice Gloton)

Yafiah Katherine Randall is a doctoral student in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Winchester. Her thesis investigates Sufism among Israeli Jews and Muslims in Israel and explores its potential contribution to reconciliation and conflict transformation