Dr. Adnan Aslan is a professor of philosophy of religion who worked on religious pluralism, problem of evil, Sufism and Islamic philosophy. He received an MA degree from the Department of History and Philosophy of Religion, at Kings College London, in 1990, and a Ph.D. from Religious Studies at Lancaster University, England in 1995. He published several scholarly articles, encyclopedia entries, book chapters and books both in English and Turkish generally in various disciplines including the field of philosophy of religion. His Ph.D. thesis was published under the title of Religious Pluralism in Christian and Islamic Philosophy: The Thought of John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (London: Rutledge Press 1998). It was translated into Turkish, Persian and Indonesian languages.
He worked at the Center for Islamic Studies (ISAM) in 1996-2010. He was a professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at 29 Mayıs University in Istanbul in 2010-2011. He served as the Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Süleyman Şah University in Istanbul, for five years. He was an adjunct professor at the Department of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, Holy Cross College, Indiana University of South Bend and Southwestern Michigan College. In these higher institutions he taught Philosophy of Religion, Islamic Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, Logic, and A Philosophy for Life. Currently, he is dean of academics at Respect Graduate School, and teaches courses such as “Survey in Islamic Thought,” “Introduction to Philosophy of Religion” and “Critical Thinking in Philosophy” in MA in Islamic Studies.
Dr. Halim Calis is a scholar of Islamic Studies specializing in Qur’anic Studies, Sufism, Islamic Theology, and Ottoman Intellectual History. He holds M.A. degrees in Islamic Theology (Marmara University, Turkey) and World Religions (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, USA). He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2018, where his dissertation examined Akbarī scriptural hermeneutics in the works of Shams al-Dīn al-Fanārī (d. 1431), the first Ottoman shaykh al-Islām.
Since 2015, Dr. Calis has been teaching graduate courses in Islamic Studies at Respect Graduate School (USA), where he also served as the founding dean. His research explores Islamic intellectual traditions, particularly focusing on the interplay of ontology, epistemology, and scriptural interpretation. Dr. Calis has published on various topics within Islamic Studies, including Qur’anic commentary, Sufi hermeneutics, and theological discourse, and he continues to contribute to scholarly discussions in these areas.
Fluent in English and Turkish, with reading proficiency in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and French, Dr. Calis actively engages in academic conferences, interfaith dialogue, and the study of Islamic intellectual traditions. His ongoing projects include a three-volume work on Qur’anic Arabic and a critical edition of al-Fanārī’s Qur’anic commentary in Arabic.
Dr. Albert Frolov is a Canadian scholar of Islamic and Christian theology with expertise in philosophy of religion, mysticism, and comparative theology. He holds advanced degrees in theology and philosophy, including a Master of Theological Studies from Emmanuel College (University of Toronto) and a Candidate of Philosophical Sciences in Philosophy of Religion from Kazakh National University. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in Theology at Regis-St. Michael College (University of Toronto), where he is also a Research Fellow at the Lonergan Research Institute. His dissertation explores the dialectics of the kataphatic and apophatic dimensions of religious-mystical experience in the theologies of Bernard Lonergan and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.
Dr. Frolov held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Toronto’s Department of Historical Studies, working under Prof. Shafique Virani on esoteric Qur’anic interpretation. He also served as a visiting research scholar at Villanova University, contributing to a project on religious understandings of altruism.
He has taught courses in world philosophy, the history and philosophy of modern science, Islamic thought, and the relationship between faith and reason at institutions such as Respect Graduate School (USA) and Suleyman Demirel University (Kazakhstan). Currently, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Kanz Magazine, a semi-academic journal affiliated with Respect Graduate School.
Dr. Frolov has studied Arabic intensively, including two years of formal training in Egypt, and is fluent in Arabic, Russian, Turkish, and English. His publications appear in peer-reviewed journals and interdisciplinary platforms, covering topics such as Qur’anic inclusivism, Avicennan epistemology, and mystical theology in the Islamic tradition. He is currently completing an English translation of Mullā Ṣadrā al-Shīrāzī’s Tafsīr Āyat al-Kursī and continues to engage in academic conferences, interfaith dialogue, and theological research.
