Ibn 'Arabi Society

Alexander Knysh is professor of Islamic Studies and former chair (1998-2004) of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Institute for Oriental Studies (Leningrad Branch) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1986. Since 1991 he has lived and worked in the United States of America and England. His research interests include Islamic mysticism and Islamic theological thought in historical perspective as well as Islam and Islamic movements in local contexts (especially Yemen and the Northern Caucasus). He has numerous publications on these subjects, including five books.

Th. Emil Homerin is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, where he teaches courses on Islam, classical Arabic literature, and mysticism. Homerin completed his Ph.D. with honors at the University of Chicago ('87), and has lived and worked in Egypt for a number of years. Among his many publications are From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint (2nd revised edition, Cairo: American University Press, 2001), his anthology of translations, Ibn al-Farid: Sufi Verse & Saintly Life (Paulist Press, 2001), The Wine of Love and Life (Chicago, 2005) and several chapters on Islam in the volume The Religious Foundations of Western Civilization (Abingdon Press, 2006). Homerin has been the recipient of grants from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also won a number of awards including the American Association of Teachers of Arabic Translation Prize, the Golden Key Honor Society's recognition for his contributions to undergraduate education, University of Rochester's Teacher of the Year in the Humanities (2002), and the University of Rochester's Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Education (2005).

Peter Yiangou is currently the senior partner of an architectural practice based in the Cotswolds in the UK. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi started in 1972 when he met Bulent Rauf, the founder member of the MIAS. His interest in Ibn 'Arabi has continued since then through the activities of the Beshara School, also founded by Bulent Rauf. He spent time as head of the first Beshara Centre at Swyre Farm in the UK in 1975, and a period as Chairman of the Beshara Trust in the early 90's. He has attended 6 month and short courses at the Beshara School where Ibn 'Arabi is part of the core curriculum. In recent years he has been involved in running 10 Beshara School courses in Australia and Indonesia.

Angela Jaffray received her PhD from Harvard University's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 2000. Her translations of Lorca's Sonnets of Dark Love were published in Collected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca. Since graduating, she has dedicated herself to translating and commenting on various texts of Ibn 'Arabi, including The Universal Tree and the Four Birds: Ibn 'Arabi's Treatise on Unification, recently published by Anqa Publishing, and Unveiling from the Effects of the Voyages. She lives in Chicago.

Jane Carroll is a founding member of the Muyhiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society and is Chairperson on the board of the Society in America. She works as an architect in Ojai, California.

Suleyman Derin teaches at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Marmara in Istanbul. He obtained a Ph.D. from Leeds University, with a thesis titled Towards Some Paradigms on the Sufi Conception of Love: from Rabia to Ibn al-Farid, including a chapter on Ibn 'Arabi. His most recent work was on the subject of Ibn Arabi's approach to the verses of qisas "retaliation" titled "The Tradition of Sulh among the Sufis with Special Reference to Ibn 'Arabi and Yunus Emre"

Niels Detert has been a long-time student of Ibn 'Arabi under the umbrella of the Beshara School. He works as a Clinical Psychologist at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, specialising in Neuropsychology. His work is mainly clinical in the cognitive assessment and psychological therapy of people with neurological disorders. He lives in Oxford with his partner and young son.

Samer is an intellectual historian and architectural theoretician with expertise in Islamic philosophy and mysticism. He has studied extensively the works of Ibn 'Arabi and his later follower 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731). His Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005) focuses on the influence of Ibn 'Arabi's teachings on architectural thinking, while his forthcoming book on Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007) traces the development of Ibn 'Arabi's ideas through al-Nabulusi's life and works.

Olga Louchakova, M.D., Ph.D., is the core faculty professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the director of Transpersonal Education and Research Specialization. An acknowledged teacher of Advaita Vedanta, Kundalini Yoga and Prayer of the Heart, Olga received her teaching mandate in the Russian spiritual underground. She published many articles in neuroscience, spirituality and transpersonal psychology, and is currently working on the book-project dedicated to the Prayer of the Heart. She maintains private practice consulting on psychospiritual transformation in Bay Area, California.

Ibrahim Kalin is an assistant professor of Islamic studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. He received his B.A. in history from the University of Istanbul, Turkey, M.A. in Islamic thought from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Malaysia, and Ph.D. from the George Washington University, Washington DC. He is the recipient of the CTNS Religion and Science Course Award, 2002 for his seminar "Religion and Science: Traditional and Modern Encounters". His book on Mulla Sadra's theory of knowledge entitled Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on the Unification of the Intellect and the Intelligible will appear among Oxford titles in 2006.

Salman Bashier graduated from The University of Utah in August 2000. Since then he has been working as a visiting lecturer at Haifa University in the departments of Philosophy and Arabic Language and Literature. He is the author of "Ibn al-Arabi's Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World". He is now completing a second book on the linkage between mystical and philosophical thought. His interests extend to Greek and Islamic philosophy and mysticism, Islamic theology, law, and Arabic literature and poetry.

Elias Amidon is the spiritual director of the Sufi Way International, a western Sufi Order in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan. He has worked as an architect and urban planning consultant. For a number of years he worked with indigenous tribes in northern Thailand and Burma on land rights issues, and has led citizen-to-citizen delegations to Burma, Thailand, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. He is currently a director of the Abraham Path Initiative. He is co-editor of the books Earth Prayers, Life Prayers, and Prayers for a Thousand Years

Jane Clark is a teacher who lives in Oxford. She has been studying Ibn 'Arabi's thought for nearly thirty years as a student of the Beshara School, and in 2000 took a degree at Oxford in order to read him in the original Arabic. She is particularly interested in the way that his ideas have spread throughout the world, and as Society Librarian has done research work on the early manuscripts. She has written and lectured on Ibn 'Arabi's thought and is most concerned with the universal appeal of his writings, especially as revealed in Fusus al-hikam.

Vincent J. Cornell is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. From 2000-2006, he was Professor of History and Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. From 1991-2000, he taught at Duke University. His published works include over twenty articles and three books, including The Way of Abu Madyan (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1996) and Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998). His most recent publication is Voices of Islam, Vincent J. Cornell General Editor (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 2007), 5 volumes. This comprehensive introduction to Islamic religion, thought, life, and civilization includes chapters by 50 Muslim authors, including many of the premier scholars of Islamic Studies. Volume titles and editors: Volume 1 Voices of Tradition (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 2 Voices of the Spirit (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 3, Voices of Life: Family, Home, and Society (Virginia Gray Henry Blakemore); Volume 4 Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science (Vincent J. Cornell); Volume 5 Voices of Change (Omid Safi). Dr. Cornell's interests cover the entire spectrum of Islamic thought from Sufism to theology and Islamic law. He has lived and worked in Morocco for nearly six years, and has spent considerable time both teaching and doing research in Egypt, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. He is currently working on projects on Islamic ethics and moral theology in conjunction with the Shalom Hartmann Institute in Jerusalem and the Elijah Interfaith Institute. For the past six years, he has been a key participant the Building Bridges Seminars hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Born in Lancashire, UK. Married with two grown up children. Read Philosophy and Religious Studies at Lancaster University and postgraduate research at Keble College, University of Oxford. Formerly Senior Lecturer at University of Lincoln, Department of Psychology specialising in courses on the Philosophy of the Self and Philosophy of Science. Retired in 2003. Student of Ibn 'Arabi form very many years. Co-director of the Chisholme Institute, Scotland which runs courses on behalf of the Beshara Trust in Intensive Esoteric Education. Published "Ibn 'Arabi and Modern Thought" (Anqa Publishing, Oxford, 2002).