PRESENTERS

Salman Bashier, PhD, was born in Israel in 1964, and is currently at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute pursuﾭing his proposed research, “Past and Present: Ibn al-Arabi’s Mysticism, Religious Fundamentalism and the Sense of History,” which will focus on the relevance of Islamic mysticism and the role it can play in balancing Religious fundamentalism. His book Ibn ’Arabi’s Barzakh: The Concept of Limit and the Relationship Between God and the World was published in 2004 by SUNY. His latest book, The Story of Islamic Philosophy: Ibn Tufayl, Ibn al-Arabi and others On the Limit between Naturalism and Traditionalism, is due to be published by SUNY this year and will focus on Ibn al Arabi’s relevance to contemporary thought.

William C. Chittick, PhD, professor of Religious Studies in the Asian and Asian American Studies Dept. at Stony Brook, has spent forty years studying Ibn ’Arabi and the pre-modern Muslim intellectual tradition. Among his thirty books, five deal with Ibn ’Arabi’s thought: The Sufi Path of Knowledge, Imaginal Worlds, The Self-Disclosure of God, Ibn ’Arabi: Heir to the Prophets and (as co-author) The Meccan Revelations.

Stephen Hirtenstein, MA, the editor of the Muhyiddin Ibn ’Arabi Society’s Journal since its inception in 1982 and co-founder of Anqa Publishing, is the author of The Unlimited Mercifier, a spiritual biography of Ibn ’Arabi, and co-translator of two treatises by Ibn ’Arabi, Divine Sayings and The Seven Days of the Heart. www.ibnarabisociety.org

Sachiko Murata, PhD, completed a PhD in Persian literature at Tehran University in 1971 and was the first woman and the first non-Muslim to enroll in its theology department where she obtained a degree in Islamic jurisprudence. Since 1983 she has taught religious studies at Stony Brook and has published many scholarly articles as well as several books, including: The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought and Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light.

Michael Sells, PhD, is the John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He studies and teaches in the areas of qur'anic studies; Sufism; Arabic and Islamic love poetry; mysticism (Greek, Islamic, Christian, and Jewish); and religion and violence. The new and expanded edition of his book Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations appeared in 2007. He has published three volumes on Arabic poetry: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes, which focuses upon the pre-Islamic period; Stations of Desire, which focuses upon the love poetry of Ibn al-'Arabi; and The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, Al-Andalus, which he coedited and to which he contributed. website

Mohamed Haj Yousef, PhD, studied physics in Syria and at Cambridge and had an academic career teaching the subject, but has had a second career as a scholar of Ibn ’Arabi and has written several books including: Ibn ’Arabi: Time and Cosmology and Shams al-Magreb (in Arabic). In addition he runs a website about Ibn ’Arabi (www.ibnalarabi.com), and teaches at United Arab Emirates University.

Taoufiq Ben Amor is a Tunisian vocalist, percussionist and oud player. For the last decade, Taoufiq has been an active performer in the U.S. and Canada. Also an educator, Taoufiq has founded the Columbia Middle Eastern Music Ensemble and produces the music series at the Alwan for the Arts in New York City. Taoufiq is currently Professor of Arabic at Columbia University.

Aaron Cass is an actor, musician, composer and co-founder of the Vastearth Orchestra with whom he has produced two albums of classical Middle Eastern poetry set to music, “Green Bird” and “A Garden Amidst the Flames.” The music composed is based on and inspired by the readings from Ibn ’Arabi. The group performs nationally in the UK.

Nacer Khemir, the director of “Bab ’Aziz,” is an award-winning filmmaker whose previous works include “Les Baliseurs du Désert (Wanderers of the Desert),” awarded the Grand Prix of the Festival des Trois Continents, and “Le Collier Perdu de la Colombe (The Dove’s Lost Necklace),” which won the Special Jury Prize at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in 1991.