Olga Louchakova-Schwartz gained her Ph.D. at the Pavlov Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg. She taught for 25 years (1975-2013) at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Sofia University, Palo Alto, California. She is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in Spirituality and Phenomenology of Religion at the Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, California. Her numerous publications cover a broad range of topics including autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, psychosomatic mysticism and non-dual consciousness.

https://www.scu.edu/jst/about/people-of-jst/faculty/olga-louchakova-schwartz/ [/]

Podcasts by Olga Louchakova-Schwartz

Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi and Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi: A Hitherto Neglected Comparison

Mediating Intimacy: Essential Ibn Arabi for Education and Psychotherapy

Nargis Virani is Assistant Professor of Arabic at The New School, University Liberal Studies in New York. She received her PhD in 1999 in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University. She studied the Quran with the Shaykh of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and holds a shahadah (certificate) and an ijazah (permission to teach the Quran). Her doctoral dissertation, entitled I am the Nightingale of the Merciful Macaronic or Upside Down?, analyzed the mulammaat, the mixed-language poems, in Rumi’s Diwan and she is currently converting this into a book which will also include a translation into English of all of Rumi’s multilingual verses in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Greek and Armenian. Dr Virani’s second book project is tentatively entitled Quran in Muslim Literary Memory.

Podcasts by Nargis Virani

“A Donkey’s Tail With Angel’s Wings”: Being Fully Human According to Rumi

Interview on WBAI Radio

Todd Lawson  is Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Dept. of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. He has published widely on Quran commentary (tafsir), the Quran as literature, Sufism, Shi’i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Quran was published in 2009 (Oneworld), his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011 (Routledge). This and other of his publications are listed at www.toddlawson.ca [/].

Podcasts and Videos by Todd Lawson

Water, Light, Knowledge: Towards an Ecology of Imagination

The Mark of Friendship and the Structure of Sanctity in the Teachings of Ibn Arabi

Selected Readings from the Poetry of Ibn Arabi

Being Human According to the Quran

Consciousness, Imagination and Gratitude: The Inexhaustible Sources of the Self

Ibn Arabi’s Joseph: Imagination as Holy Communion

Carl W. Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. His published research, based on the study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, has been mainly devoted to the study of Islam and Sufism. His book Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (UNC Press, 2003) has received several international awards, including the Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Achievement (Cairo, 2004), and another of his books has been awarded the Farabi International Award in the Humanities and Islamic Studies by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology (2008).

He has received research fellowships from the Fulbright program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the co-editor of Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (University of South Carolina Press, 2010). His publications include Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (co-authored with Bruce Lawrence, 2002), Teachings of Sufism (1999), a translation of The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master by Ruzbihan Baqli (1997), Guide to Sufism (1997), Ruzbihan Baqli: Mystical Experience and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (1996), Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (1993) and Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985). He is a co-editor of the “Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks” series at the University of North Carolina Press.

https://religion.unc.edu/_people/full-time-faculty/ernst/ [/]

Articles by Carl Ernst

The Man Without Attributes: Ibn Arabi’s Interpretation of Abu Yazid al-Bistami

Podcasts by Carl Ernst

A Hindu Commentator on Ibn Arabi

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Ibn Arabi and Modernity

William C. Chittick is a philosoper, writer, translator and interpreter of classical Islamic philosophical and mystical texts. He is best known for his work on Rumi and Ibn Arabi, and he has written extensively on the school of Ibn Arabi, Islamic philosophy and Islamic cosmology.

Born in Milford, Connecticut, Chittick finished his BA at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and then went on to complete a PhD in Persian literature at University of Tehran under the supervision of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in 1974. He taught comparative religion at Tehran’s Aryamehr Technical University and left Iran before the revolution. Chittick is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for his academic contributions in 2014.

To pick out a few books from the 22 listed on his website, the following have been hugely important contributions to modern studies of Ibn 'Arabi: Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‛Arabī and the Problem of Religious Diversity (1994, translated into German, Indonesian, Persian, Spanish, Turkish); The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-‛Arabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination (1989, translated into Persian, Turkish, and partially into Indonesian); The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‛Arabī’s Cosmology (1998); Ibn ‛Arabi: Heir to the Prophets (2005, translated into Albanian, Arabic, German, Persian, Turkish). The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms (2009, with Sachiko Murata and Tu Weiming);

https://www.williamcchittick.com/ [/]

Articles by William C. Chittick

Ibn Arabi’s own Summary of the Fusus (PDF)

The Chapter Headings of the Fusus (PDF)

Two Chapters from the Futuhat (PDF)

The Last Will and Testament of Sadr al-Din Qunawi – Translation

The Central Point – Qunawi’s Role in the School of Ibn Arabi

Jami on Divine Love and the Image of Wine

The Divine Roots of Human Love

Presence with God

The Wisdom of Animals

Death and the Afterlife (PDF, Arabic)

The Anthropology of Compassion

The Religion of Love Revisited

Ibn Arabi: The Doorway to an Intellectual Tradition

Qunawi on the One wujud

Commentary on a Hadith by Sadr al-Din Qunawi

Podcasts by William C. Chittick

Ibn Arabi: The Doorway into an Intellectual Tradition

The Religion of Love Revisited

The Anthropology of Compassion in Ibn Arabi’s Futuhat

Interview of 2009 on the Radio Show “Science, Health and Healing”

The Wisdom of Animals