(Iran, 1978) got his first lesson on the tombak, the traditional Persian vase drum at age six. At age nine he had excelled his teacher and at age ten won the annual tombak competition in his country. From the age of 20 he is regarded the best tombak player in the world. He developed more than 30 new beating techniques. Mohammad Reza Mortazavi recorded several CDs and gave concerts and media performances across Europe. He lives in Germany where he won the 2003 Newcomer-Weltmusikpreis RUTH. He gives solo concerts, but also works together with musicians and theatre makers. So in 2011 hcollaborated in ballet productions by choreographer Jochen Ulrich (†2012) at the Linzer Landestheater. In November 2012 his most recent CD Geradeaus was released, at the label flowfish.music, founded by Mortazawi himself.

(The Hague, NL 1987) is a talented tv host, chairman and columnist. His parents emigrated to the Netherlands from Pakistan. At the age of 18 Umar Mirza began as a columnist and editor of the multicultural platform Wijblijvenhier.nl and developed his outlook on the Netherlands in contributions on various weblogs, opinion sites, in magazines and collections of essays. In addition he regularly sits on panels, chairs meetings and leads debates. Since 2009 he is a guest lecturer at Fontys Hogeschool voor Journalistiek in Tilburg and since 2011 has hosted tv programmes for NTR (Mijn moskee is top). Umar did the minor People and Society at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam and in 2012 completed his Master's at the Technische Universiteit Delft. He was elected one of the twelve Best Graduates of the Netherlands. He is working on a new television programme. www.umarmirza.nl.

(Turkey, 1973) is an award-winning Turkish writer, political thinker, and speaker. After leaving her home country in 2016, she wrote How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism. In 2021, she published Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World, now translated into Dutch for the first time, and in 2025 Nation of Strangers was published, with the Dutch translation appearing in 2026. Her work is translated and published worldwide. She currently lives in Berlin and serves on the advisory boards of Progressive International and DemocracyNext.

(Indonesia, 1948) is considered one of the most important Indonesian writers of today. His novels A Shooting Star at Dawn and The Dancer appeared in Dutch, German, English, Japanese and Chinese translation. The novels are part of the trilogy Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, about an 11-year old village girl who works as a dancer and prostitute and who, in the unruly days of the 1965 coup unwillingly became the mascot of the Communist Party. Tohari grew up in the Javanese village of Tinggarjaya. He developed his own vision on Indonesian Islam, thereby honouring and preserving local Indonesian traditions. Early 1970s he moved to Jakarta where he worked for the newspaper Harian Merdeka and the magazine Amanah. He was already writing short stories, poems and essays. After having lived in Jakarta for two decades he returned to his source of inspiration, the countryside. In 2009 Tohari founded the magazine Ancas (Vision) in his region of birth to promote the local language, Banyumasan. In addition, he runs an Islamic school, promotes Javan folk art and is an advisor for the Ministry of Culture.