Tayseer Allouni (تيسير علوني) (also: Taysir, Tayseer) (also: Alluni, Aluni, Alony) is a journalist from the Al Jazeera news channel. He was born in Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 1955 then in 1983 he moved to Spain where he studied Economics, and has lived there ever since, adopting Spanish citizenship in 1988. He interviewed Osama Bin Laden following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and was controversially convicted on terrorism-related charges in Spain in 2005.

Alluni was born in Deir ez-Zor, Syria in 1955 and went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in economics from a Syrian university. He traveled to Spain in 1985 to continue his studies but due to economic hardships he worked as a trader instead. He married in 1987 and is a father of five children.

After becoming a Spanish citizen in 1988 he held a number of jobs in Spain, including teaching Arabic and working in the municipality taxation office of the city of Ceuta. In 1996, he joined the Arabic service of the Spanish news agency EFE as a translator. During his work there, he started freelancing for Al Jazeera. During this same year he also began working with the Institute of Peace and Dispute Studies in Granada. In 1999, he joined Al Jazeera as their correspondent in Afghanistan and headed the Kabul office for a period of two years before 11 September 2001. During the US war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, he was the only foreign journalist to remain in Kabul and broadcast to the world images of the unfolding events.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden ( /oʊˈsɑːmə bɪn moʊˈhɑːmɨd bɪn əˈwɑːd bɪn ˈlɑːdən/; Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎, ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011), was the founder of Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.

Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, with a US$25 million bounty by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by United States President Barack Obama.

Bruce B. Lawrence (at Duke since 1971) is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University.

A graduate of Fay School and Princeton University, with a Master of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge), he earned his doctorate at Yale University in History of Religions. There he was trained to engage West Asia (aka the Middle East) and South Asia, with particular reference to the cultures and languages, the history and religious practices marked as Muslim. But he also concerns himself with the non-Muslim religious traditions of Asia, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, at the same time that he pursues the turbulent reconnections of Europe to Asia forged in colonial, then post-colonial encounters.

Felipe Andres Coronel (born February 19, 1978), better known by the stage name Immortal Technique, is an American rapper of Afro-Peruvian descent as well as an urban activist. He was born in Lima, Peru and raised in Harlem, New York. Most of his lyrics focus on controversial issues in global politics. The views expressed in his lyrics are largely commentary on issues such as class struggle, poverty, religion, government and institutional racism.

Immortal Technique has voiced a desire to retain control over his production, and has stated in his music that record companies, not artists themselves, profit the most from mass production and marketing of music. He claimed in an interview to have sold close to 200,000 copies of his three official releases.

Coronel is African-Peruvian and was born in 1978 in a military hospital in Lima. His family emigrated in 1980 to Harlem. During his teenage years he was arrested multiple times due in part to what he has said was "selfish and childish" behavior. He attended Hunter College High School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Shortly after enrolling in Pennsylvania State University, he was arrested and charged with assault-related offenses due to his involvement in an altercation between fellow students, the charges stemming from this incident led to him being incarcerated for a year. After being paroled, he took political science classes at Baruch College in New York City for two semesters at the behest of his father, who allowed Coronel to live with him on the condition that he go to school. Honing his rapping skills in jail, and unable to find decent wage-paying employment after his release, Coronel began selling his music on the streets of New York while battling with MCs whenever the opportunity arose. This, coupled with his victories in numerous freestyle rap competitions of the New York underground hip hop scene such as Rocksteady Anniversary, Braggin Rites and others, led to his reputation as a ferocious Battle MC.