Patricia Telesco is the co-author of Sacred Beat: From the Heart of the Drum Circle. She has been participating in drum circles for many years and lives in Amhearst, N.Y. Contact via Bonni Hamilton, director of publicity for Red Wheel/Weiser.

“Faith & Philanthropy,” a report from the Independent Sector.

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”.