Lars Gule (born June 24, 1955 in Oslo) is a Norwegian philosopher, social commentator and post doctor research fellow (at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, HiOA ). Gule became known to the public in 1977 when he was arrested in Beirut with explosives in his luggage. From 2000 to 2005 was Secretary General in Norwegian Humanist Association.

Lars Gule studied history, philosophy and social science at the University of Bergen and received his doctoral degree at the same university in 2003 when he defended the dissertation Social Development and Political Progress in Two Traditions A Conceptual and Comparative Analysis of Western and Arab-Islamic Ideas of Social and Political Change and Improvement.

In 1987 he administered the Middle Eastern Languages ​​and Culture subject as well as The Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities , both at the University of Bergen. In 1989, he was associated with the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) Human Rights programme as a PhD student and administrator. He later returned to the University of Bergen (Centre for Development Studies) as coordinator of the research programme Nature, Society and Water (1998–2000).

Khalid Yasin (also known as Abu Muhammad and Abu Muhammad Khalid Yasin) (born in 1946) is an American convert from Christianity to Islam who lectures in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.Yasin lives in Manchester, England and has operated a "da'wah" organization which has had various names. It was dissolved in 2010.Yasin frequently travels overseas to spread his faith. He has called himself a "media-bedouin," remarking that the bedouins are willing to settle wherever there is "water and shelter". Yassin is outspoken about a variety of issues in his speeches and media appearences.

Yasin was born in Harlem, New York and raised in Brooklyn as a Christian along with nine siblings. Although not an orphan, he grew up in foster homes from the age of three, along with some of his siblings, until he was fifteen. He describes each foster home as having a different Christian denomination, so he covered a wide spectrum of Christianity. He was put up for adoption due to his family's financial state.

Yasin has described his youth in "the ghetto", where it was "Me and my two brothers Sam and Julius, against the world. We had nothing but converting and accepting Islam now we have everything". When first reading about Islam, he often used Encyclopedia Britannica as a reliable source on Islam and its concepts. Yasin felt the grief of African-American people, and he was especially influenced by the turbulent 1960's and figures like Malcolm X.

Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips (born Dennis Bradley Philips on 6 January 1946 in Jamaica) is a contemporary Islamic scholar, teacher, speaker, and author, resident in Qatar. He appears on Peace TV, which is a 24-hour Islamic satellite TV channel broadcasting to many countries around the world.

Philips was born on 6 January 1946 in Jamaica, but grew up in Canada, where he converted to Islam in 1972. He received his B.A. degree from the Islamic University of Medina and his M.A. in Aqeedah (Islamic Theology) from the King Saud University in Riyadh, then to the University of Wales, where he completed a PhD in Islamic Theology in the early 1990s. Philips comes from a family of educators, as both his parents were teachers and his grandfather was a Christian minister and Bible scholar.

In 1994 he founded (and continues to direct) an Islamic Information Center, now known as Discover Islam, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Islamic Online University has been founded by Dr. Bilal Philips as a completely tuition-free institution that is offering an online intensive, undergraduate, and graduate courses in Islamic Studies. The university offers a four year bachelor of arts degree in Islamic studies program.