American Islamic College (AIC) President, Daoud S. Casewit was invited to share the floor with Cardinal Blase J. Cupich at the Keough School of Global Affairs of the University of Notre Dame on Wednesday, November 20, 2019. The dialogue took place to commemorate the meeting of Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt and Saint Francis of Assisi 800 years ago. The relationship that grew from that encounter has served as an example of interfaith dialogue and a reminder that respect of differences can and should be sought. The event was organized by the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. Its Executive Director, Mahan Mirza, moderated the robust discussion.

“Interfaith conversation promotes dialogue between Catholic, Muslim leaders” – NDSMC Observer

“Catholic and Muslim leaders champion interfaith dialogue, learning at Notre Dame event” – Ansari Institue

“Muslim, Catholic traditions ‘must include the desire to get to know the other,’ Cardinal Cupich says” – Chicago Catholic

“Religious Retirement Fund/Muslim-Christian Relations” – Archdiocese of Chicago Radio (33rd-minute mark)

Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:30 pm Talk
Where: Reception Hall, Dormitory Bldg, American Islamic College

Hoda Katebi is the Chicago-based angry daughter of Iranian immigrants. She is the voice behind JooJoo Azad, the award-winning political fashion platform hailed from BBC to the New York Times to the pages of VOGUE; author of the book Tehran Streetstyle, a celebration and documentation of illegal fashion in Iran; host of #BecauseWeveRead, a radical international book club with over 30 chapters worldwide; and founder of Blue Tin Production, an all-women immigrant and refugee-run clothing manufacturing co-operative in Chicago. Hoda is an abolitionist and community organizer, working with Believers Bail Out to bail Muslims out of pretrial incarceration and immigration detention centers, and was previously part of campaigns to divest from aparthied israel and end local surveillance programs and police militarization. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2016, and runs on saffron ice cream & colonizer tears.

Registration: pacttype.eventbrite.com

Learn how to use your unique personality type to achieve inner peace, communicate successfully, and reduce stress with different personalities.

About this Event

In this unique, fun, hands-on and interactive workshop, you will discover your unique true self, your values, joys, communication style, and your push-buttons. You will breathe a sigh of relief when you are able to see yourself and the world around you from a positive perspective. You will learn how to stop reading differences, feedback, and disagreements personally. Come to this training to learn how to navigate all of your important personal relationships at home or in the workplace. Join us to learn the requirements of personal success.

Learning Benefits: By the end of this training, you will be able to

– Discover the qualities and characteristics of your personality.
– Gain an awareness and appreciation of personality differences.
– Empower self-esteem and inner self-image
– Understand what your motivators and push-buttons are.
– Enrich your communication skills.

Come to this training to learn how to navigate all of your important personal relationships at home or in the workplace. Join us to learn the requirements of personal success.

Testimonials

“I wish my husband had come with me. Today I have learned why we both always have the same fight different night” (A comment from an anonymous lady)

“Now I know my daughter is a normal person. I sometimes thought she is weird and was about to take her to a psychologist” (A comment from an anonymous lady)

About Dr. Talaat Pasha

Dr. Pasha holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Linguistics from the University of Utah. He is the director of the Arabic Language Institute at the American Islamic College in Chicago.
Dr. Pasha is a certified facilitator in personality types (MBTI® and True Colors® MMTC®). He is also an active community member, public speaker, education consultant, personal and professional development facilitator. Dr. Pasha is a certified instructor in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) by the National Council of Behavioral Health.

Course Description: Ebru, often referred to as the “dance of color on water”, is an authentic Turkish art that has been considered a spiritual art for cen­turies. This unique art form is produced by sprinkling color pigments into a trough of oily water and utilizes special brushes to create various designs that are then transferred onto a sheet of paper or other surfaces. This class will cover a variety of techniques that partic­ipants will use to create their own masterpieces.

Instructor: N. Kaya
First day: January 16, 2020
Date & Time: Thursdays 6:30 – 9:00pm
For Credit: $750 + $75 material fee
Audit: $375 + $75 material fee

AIC students can enroll to this course by submitting a Course Registration Form to the Registrar at registrar@aicusa.edu.

Non-AIC students can enroll to this course by visiting the Non-Degree Students page.

Dates: Wednesday, July 10 & 17, September 4, October 2, November 6,  2019
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm each day
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Dr. Talaat Pasha holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Linguistics from the University of Utah, MA in theoretical linguistics from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), BA in English language and literature from Egypt and BA in Islamic Studies and Chaplaincy from the renowned Al-Azhar University, Egypt. Dr. Pasha has taught and lectured at several universities in Egypt, University of Illinois, University of Utah, Middlebury College, Henry Ford College, University of Bahrain, and University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. He is currently the director of the Arabic Language Institute at the American Islamic College in Chicago.

Dr. Pasha’s teaching interest is Arabic language, Arabic syntax, morphology, and rhetoric, Arabic linguistics, and critical discourse analysis. The courses Dr. Pasha has taught include the following: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Readings In Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic, Introduction To Sociolinguistics, Introduction To Linguistics, Current Issues In Arabic, Strategies Of Teaching Writing In Arabic, Strategies Of Teaching Reading Arabic.

Dr. Pasha ’s research focuses on critical discourse analysis, language and ideology, Arabic language and linguistics, pedagogy of Arabic as a foreign language (AFL). Dr. Pasha has a forthcoming book by I.B. Tauris, The (Mis) Representation of Islamism: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Egyptian Newspapersˆ.

Kaya will read excerpts from her novel and hold a discussion on stigmas related to divorce, mental illness, and domestic violence in the Muslim community.

Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:30 pm Talk, 7:00 Discussion followed by book signing
Book: Hardcover: 25$ Paperback 15$ (Books will be available for purchase at the event. Cash, check or credit will be accepted.)
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Kaya Gravitter is a convert to Islam, writer, and journalist. She has articles published in The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and several other media outlets. She received a BA with a double major in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, where she was the editor-in-chief for the diversity newsletter and campus blog. Kaya’s love for writing and her life experiences led her to write a women’s fiction novel After She Said Yes for the women speaking out against their abusers and for the women who still haven’t. Kaya is now working on her next novel.

In December 2015, the political rhetoric against Muslims was escalating. Dr. Larycia Hawkins, an African-American political science professor at Wheaton College—a prestigious evangelical school outside of Chicago—wanted to show support for Muslim women. She posted a photo of herself in a hijab on Facebook. “I love my Muslim neighbor,” she wrote, “because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity….we worship the Same God.”

Within days, Wheaton’s Provost suspended Dr. Hawkins, eventually moving to terminate her tenure. Were the school’s actions a move to protect its Christian theological purity, as it insisted? Or was it, as some suggested, the result of racism and Islamophobia? “Same God,” directed by Wheaton alumna Linda Midgett, a two-time Emmy-award winning writer and director, explores the polarization taking place within the evangelical community over issues of race, Islam, religious freedom…and Donald Trump.

www.samegodfilm.com

Date & Time: October 6, 2019, 2pm
Location: American Islamic College (Auditorium)
640 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL 60613
Free, Limited Parking located in the rear of the main building at address, 613 W. Bittersweet Pl.
Additional Details: Refreshments will be provided.
Tickets: $5.00

This event is sponsored by The InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary along with American Islamic College and The Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace & Justice at The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

American Islamic College (AIC) Board of Trustees Member, Dr. Farid Muhammad, and founding member of the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (iHRAAM), organized the historic inaugural summit event on “Africa and the Global African Diaspora: International Summit of Colleges, Universities, and Ministers of Education,” with the theme “Advancing quality education for all persons of African descent.” The event concluded with the signing of the MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME AND CORE PLANNING GROUP–OFFICE OF HBCU DEVELOPMENT & INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION.

The Summit took place during the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the 23rd of September 2019. Collaborating organizers include, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Regional Bureau for Africa, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), and Office of HBCU Development & International Cooperation (OHBCUD).

The overall objective of this program is to strengthen international partnerships among HBCU, higher educational institutions in Africa and the African Diaspora to advance the quality of education for all persons of African descent.

Keynote speakers
Dr. Ayodele Odusola
Resident Representative, UNDP South Africa

Dr. Reginal Hopkins
Associate Professor, Virginia State University

Keynote address
Ms. Dominique Day
UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

Dr. Farid Muhammad
Chairman and CEO, CPG-OHBCUD/IHRAAM

Speakers panels

• International partnerships to achieve quality education and training for all persons of African decent
• Institutionalizing financial sustainability of educational organizations serving peolpe of African descent.

Read more from the UN site below:

SDG4: Advancing quality education for all persons of African descent.

“23 Sep 2019 – The technologically interconnected nature of today’s world creates new opportunities for institutions of higher education to work together, across the world, to achieve shared academic and educational goals. Through distance learning, colleges and universities can co-teach classes on any subject, with students based in any country, with instruction in any language. The same technologies can help education institutions share institutional knowledge and best practices that together strengthen their internal operations and build capacities to provide instruction of the highest quality. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as mandated by the UN Secretary General and the General Assembly, is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) integrator in the United Nations System. Contributing to this mandate with the scale and breadth of colleges and university systems provides new opportunities for accelerating progress on the SDGs. The African continent – and countries with a large African diaspora – host thousands of institutions of higher education, with over 200 Historically Black Colleges and Universities / Primarily Black Institutions in the United States, alone. The variety of academic subjects, number of courses, and number of students of African descent (which likely numbers in the millions) all provide opportunities, through academic partnerships, to strengthen educational institutions and outcomes. The overall objective of the event is to strengthening international partnership among HBCU, higher educational institutions in Africa and the African Diaspora to advance quality of education for all persons of African descent.”

New students at The Lutheran School of Theology (LSTC) visited American Islamic College (AIC) on Friday, August 30, for a Dialogue Luncheon.

AIC President Daoud Casewit welcomed the group and Dr. Feryal Salem, Director of the Muslim Chaplaincy Program, led the discussion on Islamic prayer. AIC’s Resident Imam and alumnus, Ahmet Sahin, gave a profoundly rich Khutba on the Muslim perspective of religious pluralism. Joined by AIC students, the group continued the dialogue over dessert after attending the Jummah service.