Dr. Rudolf Gelpke (1928-1972) was a Swiss born Islamic scholar. He studied at the University of Basel where he received his doctorate in Islamic Studies in 1957. Later Gelpke would move to Iran, where he taught at the University of Tehran and then later at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Moreover, he served as an associate professor at UCLA for a year between September 1962 and May 1963. In the eight years he lived in Tehran, he also worked as a freelance writer, who not only translated many famous historical works but also published many of his own works.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Ph.D., familiarly known as Sarafil Bawa, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is president of The Inayatiyya and founder of Suluk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice with branches in the United States and Europe. He is editor of A Pearl in Wine: Essays in the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan , and author of Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest, Mingled Waters: Sufism & the Mystical Unity of Religions, and Dream Flowers: The Collected… Works of Noor Inayat Khan With a Critical Commentary by Pir Zia Inayat Khan. Pir Zia divides his time between Virginia and Suresnes, France.
David L. Chappell is Rothbaum Professor of Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma. He is author of Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement.Omid Safi is associate professor of Islamic studies at Colgate University and co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion. He is editor of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism.