Cyrus Ali Zargar is Al-Ghazali Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida. His first book, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in Ibn ʿArabi and ʿIraqi, was published in 2011 by the University of South Carolina Press. His most recent book, The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, was published in 2017 by Oneworld Press. Zargar’s research interests focus on the literature of medieval Sufism in Arabic and Persian. This includes metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical intersections between Sufism and Islamic philosophy, as well as Sufi ethical treatises, the writings of Ibn Arabi and early adherents to his worldview, Sufism in contemporary cinema, and satire in medieval and modern literature. He is the author of articles in The Muslim World, The Journal of Arabic Literature, and Encyclopædia Iranica. Currently, he is completing a manuscript on the corpus of the 13th-century Persian poet, Farid al-Din Attar, and the manner in which Attar’s vision for humanity might comment on contemporary questions in religion. It is titled Religion of Love: Farid al-Din Attar and the Sufi Tradition, to be published by the Islamic Texts Society (Cambridge, UK).

Podcasts by Cyrus Ali Zargar

Bird from the Garden of Meanings: Soul and Speech in Ibn Arabi’s Reading of Jesus

The Poetics of Shuhud: Experiencing and Expressing Human-Divine Beauty

Maria Dakake researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi`ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She contributed to  a major collaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, which comprises a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text (2015). She is also currently working with Daniel Madigan on a co-edited volume, The Routledge Companion to the Qur'an, due to be published in 2021, and is working independently on a monograph on the concept of religion as a universal phenomenon in the Quran and Islamic intellectual tradition.

https://religious.gmu.edu/people/mdakakem

Podcasts and Videos by Maria Dakake

Maryam: Pious Woman, Saint or Prophet?

Mohammed Rustom is Professor of Islamic Thought at Carleton University. An internationally recognized scholar whose works have been translated into over ten languages, he specializes in Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Quranic exegesis, and cross-cultural philosophy. Professor Rustom is author of the award-winning book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra (2012), co-editor of The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (2015), author of Inrushes of the Heart: The Sufi Philosophy of ‘Ayn al-Qudat (2022), and editor of Global Philosophy: A Sourcebook (forthcoming).

http://www.mohammedrustom.com/ [/]

Articles by Mohammed Rustom

A Letter to Imam al-Razi

Ibn Arabi on Proximity and Distance – Chapters 260 and 261 of the Futuhat

Podcasts and Videos by Mohammed Rustom

Sanctity and the Song of Life

On Aspiration and Poverty

Akbarian Aphorisms for the 21st Century

Zachary Markwith has been a doctoral student and instructor at the Graduate Theological Union specializing in early Islamic spirituality and comparative religious studies. He earned an M.A. (cum laude) in Hinduism and Islam at the George Washington University and a B.A. in Islamic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has also worked as a research assistant for the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the International Peace Project on subjects that include Islamophobia, non-violence, and interfaith dialogue. He is the author of One God, Many Prophets: the Universal Wisdom of Islam (Sophia Perennis, 2013).

Podcasts and Videos by Zachary Markwith

Jesus and Christic Sanctity in Ibn Arabi and Early Islamic Spirituality

Michael Sells is a professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. He is an authority on Ibn al-'Arabi as well as one of the most distinguished contemporary translators of classical Arabic poetry. His books include: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (Wesleyan); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago); Early Islamic Mysticism (Paulist Press); The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (California); Approaching the Quran (White Cloud); and The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Andalus (Cambridge) as two full translations of Ibn 'Arabi’s Tarjuman al-ashwaq, Stations of Desire (2000) and Bewildered (2018).

Articles by Michael Sells

Ibn Arabi’s Poem 18 (Qif bi l-Manazil) from the Translation of Desires

Ibn Arabi’s “Gentle Now, Doves of the Thornberry and Moringa Thicket” (ala ya hamamati l-arakati wa l-bani), Poem 11 from the Translation of Desires

Selections from Ibn Arabi’s Tarjuman al-ashwaq (Translation of Desires)

Podcasts and Videos by Michael Sells

Bewildered – A New Translation of Ibn Arabi’s Tarjuman Poems

Selected Readings from the Poetry of Ibn Arabi

Life in Ibn Arabi’s “Ringsetting of Prophecy in the Word of Jesus”

Ibn Arabi's Lyric Mysticism and the Persian-Arabic Love Affair

Interview with on WBAI Radio

The Poetry of Ibn Arabi – Recitations from the Tarjuman al-ashwaq

The Young Woman at the Kaaba – Love and Infinity

John Mercer is an actor and writer, and formerly the Secretary of the Ibn Arabi Society in the USA, and a founding member.

Podcasts by John Mercer

Selected Readings from the poetry of Ibn Arabi

Michael Sells is a professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. He is an authority on Ibn al-'Arabi as well as one of the most distinguished contemporary translators of classical Arabic poetry. His books include: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (Wesleyan); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago); Early Islamic Mysticism (Paulist Press); The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (California); Approaching the Quran (White Cloud); and The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Andalus (Cambridge) as two full translations of Ibn 'Arabi’s Tarjuman al-ashwaq, Stations of Desire (2000) and Bewildered (2018).

Articles by Michael Sells

Ibn Arabi’s Poem 18 (Qif bi l-Manazil) from the Translation of Desires

Ibn Arabi’s “Gentle Now, Doves of the Thornberry and Moringa Thicket” (ala ya hamamati l-arakati wa l-bani), Poem 11 from the Translation of Desires

Selections from Ibn Arabi’s Tarjuman al-ashwaq (Translation of Desires)

Podcasts and Videos by Michael Sells

Bewildered – A New Translation of Ibn Arabi’s Tarjuman Poems

Selected Readings from the Poetry of Ibn Arabi

Life in Ibn Arabi’s “Ringsetting of Prophecy in the Word of Jesus”

Ibn Arabi's Lyric Mysticism and the Persian-Arabic Love Affair

Interview with on WBAI Radio

The Poetry of Ibn Arabi – Recitations from the Tarjuman al-ashwaq

The Young Woman at the Kaaba – Love and Infinity