Meet the Author – Dr Ali Allawi and Julia Katerina – The Islamic College

The Path of the Perplexed is a new rendering of the classic work of Khwaja Abdallah Ansari of Herat’s Manazil as-Sa'irin. The book, co-authored with Ms Julia Katarina, is designed for modern spiritual seekers who desire to attain higher spiritual stations through a rigorous year-long programme of exercises, litanies and dhikrs. The book maps out the process by which seekers could reawaken and regain the essential inner faculties for such an achievement.

Dr Ali Allawi was born in Baghdad Iraq in 1947. He attended universities in the US and graduated from MIT (1968) and Harvard University (1971). He worked in economic development, first with the World Bank Group in Washington, and then as the managing director of an emerging markets investment bank. He was active in the opposition to the dictatorship in Iraq and subsequently served in the post 2003 Iraqi government as Minister of Trade and Minister of Finance. In 2020, he was named as the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. He was also active academically as a writer and scholar, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard, Princeton and Oxford universities. He was a Research Professor at the National University of Singapore. He has published many award-winning books of biography, politics, economics and on Islam, all published by Yale University Press.

Ali Allawi has been a long time adherent of the 'gnostic/Sufi tradition.

Julia A. Katarina (MSc, MA) has a MA degree in Islamic Studies. She is also a mezzo-soprano, multi-instrumentalist, music psychologist, music lecturer, writer, editor, translator, and founder of UnityMusic (موسيقىتوحيد).