Authors

Osman Bakar

Osman Bakar is a scholar, teacher and writer. Dr. Bakar has written a dozen books and more than 100 articles on various aspects of Islamic thought and civilization, both classical and contemporary. He is one of the founding members and has also served as President of the Islamic Academy of Science of Malaysia. Dr. Bakar is currently Visiting Professor and Malaysia Chair of Islam in Southeast Asia at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. His essay “The Nature and Extent of Criticism of Evolutionary Theory” is included in the anthology Science and the Myth of Progress .

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Ivo Banac

Ivo Banac is Emeritus Professor at the Department of History of Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, USA). He is also Professor of History at Zagreb University’s Faculty of Philosophy. He was the President of the Croatian Helsinki Committee on Human Rights. His publications include: The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (1984), With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (1989), and Acta turcarum (2006). Banac wrote the introduction to the forthcoming World Wisdom title: Maintaining the Sacred Center.

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Shojun Bando

Shojun Bando (1932-2004) was a Japanese scholar, author, translator, editor, and a revered Shin Buddhist priest. He was an influential figure, due in large part to his role in disseminating information on Shin Buddhism to the Western world. Rev. Bando taught for many years as Professor of Buddhism at Otani University in Kyoto, Japan. A prolific author on matters of Buddhism, he published many articles and books, including a contribution to the World Wisdom anthology on Shin Buddhism, Living in Amida’s Universal Vow: Essays in Shin Buddhism.

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James Barr

James Barr (1924-2006) was an author, seaman, navigator and practicing Buddhist whose article “Of Metaphysics and Polynesian Navigation” is included in Seeing God Everywhere. The article first appeared in Avaloka: A Journal of Traditional Religion and Culture.

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Tosun Bayrak

Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi is a Sufi master of the Halveti-Jerrahi order. He has also translated, edited, and written numerous books on Islamic spirituality. Among his books are The Name and the Named: The Divine Attributes of God, What the Seeker Needs: Essays on Spiritual Practice, Oneness, Majesty and Beauty (by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi), The Secret of Secrets (by Hadrat Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani), and Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom (by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi).

Shaykh Tosun Bayrak interpreted the 16th-century book by Imam Birgivi on Islamic morals, values, and spirituality, The Path of Muhammad.

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Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a Board Affiliate of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP), an Advisor to the Institute of Traditional Psychology, and has worked for several years in the field of mental health, covering a broad spectrum of disorders in various psychiatric settings. He has published in numerous journals, including Sacred Web, Sophia, Parabola, Resurgence, Temenos Academy Review, and Studies in Comparative Religion.

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is the editor of the forthcoming Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion volume.

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John Howard Benson

John Howard Benson was a noted graphic artist, calligrapher, stonecarver, author, and educator at the Rhode Island School of Design. With Arthur Graham Carey, he was the author of The Elements of Lettering. He died in 1956. Benson and Carey’s essay, “The General Problem,” is included in the anthology Every Man an Artist ,edited by Brian Keeble .

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St. Bernardino of Siena

St. Bernardino of Siena, the “Apostle of Italy,” was born of noble parents at Massa, Italy, in 1380. He entered the Franciscan order in 1402 and became its vicar-general in 1437. He was the most famous preacher of his time and spoke in all parts of Italy with exceptional charisma. Three times he refused to become a bishop. He died in 1444. Six years later, he was canonized by Pope Nicholas V. Bernardino’s writings are, for the most part, formal treatises upon morality, asceticism, and mysticism. His contributions can be found in the World Wisdom book, Pray without Ceasing .

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Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English, and poet. The New York Times has called Berry the “prophet of rural America.” Berry is the author of more than 30 books of essays, poetry and novels. He has worked a farm in Henry County, Kentucky since 1965. He has received numerous awards for his work, including an award from the National Institute and Academy of Arts and letters in 1971, and most recently, the T. S. Eliot Award.

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Mahmoud Bina

Mahmoud Bina was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1938. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1969, and subsequently a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1973. He taught a wide range of courses in mathematics as well as philosophy of science at Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, from 1977 until his retirement in 2006. Dr. Bina and his wife live in Isfahan, Iran.

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HRH Ghazi bin Muhammad

Besides his official duties for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad is also an author and a scholar with an interest in religious philosophy. He is presently Professor of Islamic Philosophy at Jordan University. Prince Ghazi has published several books on religion and traditional culture in both Arabic and English, and numerous articles.

He is the grandson of the late King Talal I of Jordan, and holds a variety of posts as advisor and administrator in the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad’s essay “The Traditional Doctrine of Symbolism” appears in The Underlying Religion.

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Imam Birgivi

Imam Birgivi was an Ottoman Muslim scholar and moralist who was born in 1522. (His name at birth was Muhammad ibn Pir Ali.) His book on Islamic morals and ethics, now published for the first time in English as The Path of Muhammad, has been influential throughout the Muslim world, where it is still being used as a text in important faculties of theology and in universities. Imam Birgivi was a theologian, an expert in Islamic law, and a dervish in the Bayramiyyah order. Through the 27books that he wrote and his prominence as a teacher, Imam Birgivi became very well known during his lifetime. Imam Birgivi’s ideal was an Islamic society such as it was at the time of the Prophet Muhammad, a model he felt was ageless and valid for all times.

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Jean Biès

The author of more than thirty books and numerous articles on philosophy, comparative religion, poetry and travel, Jean Biès is former professor of Greek Literature and the University of Pau, France. A Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and recipient of the High Prize of the Society of French Poets, since 1962 he and his wife have lived in a country home “Saint Michel la Grange” at the foot of the Pyrennees.

An anthology of the writings of Jean Biès was published under the title Returning to the Essential: The Selected Writings of Jean Bies (World Wisdom, 2004). The following articles by Jean Biès have also appeared in these books by World Wisdom: “Sacredness” in Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West, and “Theology of the Icon” in Ye Shall Know The Truth: Christianity and The Perennial Philosophy.

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(Nicholas) Black Elk

Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) was a renowned Oglala Sioux spiritual leader and medicine man. He was the second cousin of Crazy Horse. Black Elk participated, at about the age of twelve, in the Battle of Little Big Horn of 1876, and was wounded in the massacre that occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890. The remarkable story of this Lakota holy man, a life that straddled the pre-reservation days and the later days of forced assimilation, came to the attention of the world in John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks, and then in Joseph Epes Brown’s The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux.

The new edition of Brown’s other classic book, The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian, contains previously unpublished correspondence from Brown during his time on the reservation, which sheds new light on the debate on whether Black Elk was indeed a sincere Catholic, as well as recording many of Black Elk’s observations on modern ways and traditional Indian spiritual values. Another World Wisdom book, Indian Spirit, contains numerous excerpts of Black Elk’s words taken from various sources.

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Rodney Blackhirst

Rodney Blackhirst lives in Bendigo, Australia, where he has lectured in Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University for the past decade. Dr. Blackhirst is a regular contributor to journals such as Sacred Web. Dr. Blackhirst’s article “Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy and Tradition” can be found in The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual crisis of Modernity, edited by Harry Oldmeadow.

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Alfred Bloom

Rev. Dr. Alfred Bloom (1926–2017) was one of the world’s foremost authorities on the study of Shin Buddhism. He taught World Religions and Buddhism at the University of Oregon and the University of Hawaii and wrote many books and articles on Shin Buddhism and spirituality in general. Prof. Bloom was Dean at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, sponsored by the Buddhist Churches of America. He was an ordained Shin priest. About Dr. Bloom, the well-known Buddhist magazine Tricycle: The Buddhist Review said: “Bloom is widely regarded as one of the most important American figures of the past five decades in the Jodo Shin school of Buddhism.”Prof. Bloom’s contributions to World Wisdom books include: UL REMOVED

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Jean Borella

Jean Borella taught philosophy at the University of Nancy II in France until 1995. From a Platonist foundation, he became immersed in the thought of Guénon and Eastern metaphysics. His work has been in the field of theology, religious ideas and symbolism. He is the author of several works including Ésotérisme guénonien et mystère Chrétien and La Crise du symbolisme religieux.

Dr. Jean Borella’s article “Nakedness and Sacrifice” appears in Not of This World: Treasures of Christian Mysticism, and “The Torn Veil” is in The Essential Sophia.

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Ahmed Bouyerdene

Ahmed Bouyerdene was born in Algeria in 1967, but emigrated with his family to France when he was five; he has both Algerian and French nationality. Dr. Bouyerdene is an independent researcher in history and a specialist on the great Algerian leader Emir Abd el-Kader. Bouyerdene completed his PhD on the life of Abd el-Kader at the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France, and has since published several books and articles on the Emir in his native French, including Abd el-Kader, l’harmonie des contraires (le Seuil, 2008, 2012) and Abd el-Kader par ses contemporains (Ibis Press, 2008). Ahmed Bouyerdene has also attended conferences around the world to present papers on the intellectual and spiritual qualities of the Emir, and has been a consultant on various media projects on the Emir. The World Wisdom book Emir Abd el-Kader: Hero and Saint of Islam is his first work to be translated into English. Dr. Ahmed Bouyerdene lives in southern France.

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Louis Brenner

Louis Brenner is Emeritus Professor of the History of Religion in Africa, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has published extensively on the history of Islam and of Muslim societies in West Africa, with special emphasis on the dynamics and transmission of Muslim thought and ideas, and on Sufism.Brenner wrote the introduction to the World Wisdom title A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokarby Amadou Hampâté Bâ.Dr. Brenner’s book West African Sufi: The Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Tall is an excellent complement to A Spirit of Tolerance, providing much context, additional information, and insight on the life and teachings of Tierno Bokar.

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Elenita and Marina Brown

Elenita and Marina (Weatherly) Brown are the wife and eldest daughter respectively of noted scholar of American Indian spirituality, Joseph Epes Brown Elentia is a renowned dancer, teacher and artist, and was married to Joseph Epes Brown for nearly 50 years. Marina is a professional artist and educator. She is also the author of several articles and is editing a forthcoming biography of the late Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, the first American Indian Nurse and wife of the Crow Sun Dance chief Thomas Yellowtail .They are the co-editors of The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian: Commemorative Editionwith Michael Fitzgerald

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Joseph Epes Brown

The late Joseph Epes Brown was a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Montana. A renowned author in the fields of American Indian traditions and World Religions, Brown was one of the founders of Native American Studies and was largely responsible for bringing the study of these religious traditions into American higher education. His publications include The Sacred Pipe (1953), his famous recounting of the sacred rites of the Oglala Sioux.Dr. Brown’s work appears in the following World Wisdom books:

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Joseph Bruchac

Joseph Bruchac is a well-known Native author and storyteller who has written more than 120 books for both children and adults. His work is heavily influenced by his Abenaki ancestry, and he has worked extensively with other family members on projects involving the preservation of Abenaki culture and language. (The Abenaki are a tribe of traditionally Algonquian-speaking peoples of northeastern North America.) Dr. Joseph Bruchac has contributed two children’s books to our Wisdom Tales Press imprint: A Peacemaker for Warring Nations: The Founding of the Iroquois League (April 2021), illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden, and The Hunter’s Promise: An Abenaki Tale (September 2015), which was illustrated by Bill Farnsworth. Dr. Bruchac also contributed “Forewords” to the books Spirit of the Earth: Indian Voices on Nature, edited by Michael and Joseph A. Fitzgerald, and Horse Raid: The Making of a Warrior, told and illustrated by Paul Goble.

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Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Amadou Hampâté Bâ (c. 1900-1991) was a well-known Malian diplomat and author of the last half of the twentieth century. His fiction and non-fiction books in French are widely respected as sources of information and insight on West African history, religion, literature and culture, and life.

From the time of his youth, Mr. Bâ was a student and disciple of an extraordinary Malian Sufi master, Tierno Bokar. Shaykh Bokar has become known as “the sage of Bandiagara,” the town in Mali where he lived for most of his life. Tierno Bokar was remarkable for his universalist attitudes and tolerance towards orthodox religions, for his parables and aphorisms, for his teaching methods, for the trials of his difficult life, and, finally, for the love and light that seemed to emanate from his person. All of this is known to us thanks to Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s testimonial to his teacher, Vie et enseignement de Tierno Bokar: Le sage de Bandiagara, which has finally been translated into English and published by World Wisdom as A Spirit of Tolerance: The Inspiring Life of Tierno Bokar.

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