Sarah Husain is a poet, activist and editor of Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (2006). She is based in New York City.

Mona Eltahawy is a speaker, writer and commentator who focuses on issues concerning Islam. She is based in New York City.

Paul Barrett was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (2006). He currently directs the investigative reporting unit at BusinessWeek. Contact via Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publicity.

H. Allen Orr is a biology professor at the University of Rochester in New York. He wrote a Jan. 11, 2007, essay, “A Mission to Convert,” in The New York Review of Books that critiqued recent books on atheism.

Joan Konner is a professor emerita and dean emerita of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and is author of The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts, which was published in June 2007.

Susan Jacoby is the New York-based author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.

The Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society is a web-based group that aims to promote an “Islamic Enlightenment”.

The Council for Secular Humanism is considered one of the leading free-thought groups. Based in Amherst, N.Y., the CSH is an umbrella for a range of other organizations. They include the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which includes The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and a publishing house, Prometheus books. “Camp Inquiry” is a summer camp sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, which is […]

Allan Luks is former executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters in New York City and former director of the Institute for the Advancement of Health. He is an author of The Healing Power of Doing Good (Fawcett Columbine, 1992) and coined the phrase “helper’s high” in Psychology Today to describe feelings of well-being reported by individuals […]