Date: Thursday, October 7, 2021
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm talk, including Q & A
Location: In Person & Zoom

Multiplexity is derived from the age-old Arabic term ‘marātib’ which literally means hierarchy or levels. We devised the term “multiplexity” to refer to the multiple levels of existence, known as marāṭib al-wujūd, knowledge and truth. In social research, multiplexity would indicate a concept of the human being consisting of body, mind, and soul as well as a concept of social action (a’māl) at various observable and unobservable levels.

Diverse versions of what we call multiplex approach can be found in many world cultures and religions and it is also deeply rooted in the traditional Islamic disciplines including philosophy, kalām, fiqh, and taṣawwuf. Multiplex approaches stand in contradistinction to reductionist frameworks that rely on single-layered ontologies. In social sciences, such frameworks include social constructionism which reduces social phenomena to concepts or discourses, or behaviourism which tries to explain human behaviour solely in biological or psychological terms and considers human actions to be predetermined by fixed natural forces or biological qualities. Thus, we believe, exploring the idea of multiplexity will contribute to the critique of the reductionist ontologies emanating from positivism and idealism in the social sciences.

Prof. Şentürk holds a PhD from Columbia University, Department of Sociology (1998), and specializes in civilization studies, sociology of knowledge, human rights and Islamic studies with a focus on social networks, human rights, and modernization in the Muslim world. Among his books are in English, Narrative Social Structure: Hadith Transmission Network 610-1505 (2005); Malcolm X The Struggle for Human Rights (2019), Comparative Theories and Methods (2020), Human Rights In The Ottoman Reform: Foundations, Motivations And Formations (2020) and in Turkish; Modernization and Social Science in the Muslim World: A Comparison between Turkey and Egypt (2006); Ibn Khaldun: Contemporary Readings (2007); Open Civilization: Towards a Multi-Civilizational Society and World (2010); Human Rights are due for Humanity (2021). Prof. Şentürk’s work has been translated into Arabic, Japanese and Spanish.

This event is a live, public event. You are invited to join us online or in-person. All attendees will receive a link. Please indicate in your registration if you will attend in-person, signaling that you agree to AIC’s COVID-19 policy. Please see AIC’s COVID-19 campus policy here.

In-person attendees: Proof of ID and vaccination will be checked by a trained and designated staff member upon entrance to the building. Those without proof of vaccination will be required to show ID and proof of a negative COVID test within 48 hours of the event. Live streaming of the event is available for those who do not wish to provide this information. Please note that these safety measures are to ensure the safety of everyone in attendance.

American Islamic College has kept a careful watch upon unfolding events and remains vigilant in monitoring the CONTINUING Covid-19 pandemic. After much consultation and in cooperation with the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), we have extended our emergency shift from face-to-face, on site education to online/remote learning for the duration of the fall semester (August-December, 2021). The College (including the library) will remain open so that students can consult the administration and use the collection and computers for their research. Students are also welcome to use campus computers to attend their Zoom classes if they do not have the tools or internet access at home.  We are confident that there will be no lapse in the quality of course content or standards during this period of emergency.

Our commitment to your well-being remains paramount, and so we urge you to contact us if you experience problems or complications as a result of this pandemic arrangement. Be assured that health, wellness, and safety guidelines are strictly observed at the College. More information on this can be found here.

AIC is committed to science-based, medically approved practices that safeguard the health and safety of everyone at the College and within the wider community.  Vaccination is thus strongly encouraged and both mask-wearing and social distancing are required whenever anyone is on campus.  This includes the dormitories and the masjid or prayer hall.  Individuals who choose not to be vaccinated for any reason (medical, religious, or other) are urged to be especially meticulous in their mask wearing, social distancing, and hygiene (esp. hand washing), and we recommend that they voluntarily get themselves tested on a weekly basis as an extra precautionary measure.

We have a shared responsibility for safeguarding each other.

In accordance with federal, state, and local guidelines, AIC has adopted the following policy for large-attendance public events on campus.

Guests’ decision to attend a public event on campus serves as their acknowledgement of the potential risks posed to them by COVID-19, particularly for those unvaccinated.

• Face masks must be worn by anyone coming to campus regardless of vaccination status. In other words, both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals must wear a mask and socially distance when on the College property.
• Social distancing will be observed and enforced.
• Proof of ID and vaccination will be checked by a trained and designated staff member upon entrance to the building. City mandate requires vaccination. Those without proof of vaccination may join virtually. Live-streaming of the event will be available for those who do not wish to provide this information at the door. Please note that these safety measures are to ensure the safety of everyone in attendance.

Visitors traveling to Illinois must fully comply with the City of Chicago Travel Advisory before coming to campus.

For CDC regulations, please visit: https://www.cdc.gov/

For Illinois Department of Health, please visit: https://www.dph.illinois.gov/

For Chicago guidelines, please visit: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid19-vaccine/home.html

For questions or concerns, please contact the main office at 773.281.4700 x. 202 or email programs@aicusa.edu.

Date: Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm talk, including Q & A
Online Platform: Zoom

The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them.

This story of Syrian Muslims in Sioux Falls, Dearborn, Ross, Michigan City, and Cedar Rapids recreates what the Syrian Muslim Midwest looked, sounded, felt, and smelled like—from the allspice-seasoned lamb and rice shared in mosque basements to the sound of the trains on the Rock Island Line rolling past the dry goods store. It recovers a multicultural history of the American Midwest that cannot be ignored.

Preorder Book: NYU Press or Amazon

Edward Curtis is a publicly-engaged scholar of Muslim American, African American, and Arab American history and life.

His thirteen books have been called  “essential,” “exemplary,” “approachable,” “groundbreaking,” “must-read,” “wonderful,” and “a model of clarity.” Muslims in America: A Short History (Oxford, 2009) was named one of the best 100 books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly, and his two-volume Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History was deemed one of the “best reference works of 2010” by Library Journal. Curtis’ most recent works include Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest  (New York University Press) and Arab Indianapolis (Belt Publishing). In addition to works written for general readers, Curtis has penned scholarly articles for the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Religion and American Culture.

Curtis engages both national and local audiences in his work. He has contributed interviews and articles to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press, among other media outlets. He has also taught community college instructors and K-12 teachers how to integrate information about religion and Muslim American history and life across the curriculum. Curtis enjoys collaborating with multiple community partners, which include Nur Allah Islamic Center, Al Huda Foundation, and Masjid Al-Mu’mineen. He is currently directing the Arab Indianapolis community history project.

Dr. Curtis is William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of the Liberal Arts and Professor of Religious Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.  He is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Academy of Religion, and the National Humanities Center.

Curtis holds a doctorate in religious studies from the University of South Africa, a master’s in history from Washington University, and a B.A. in religion from Kenyon College. He grew up in Southern Illinois. Learn more at: www.edward-curtis.com

Listening While Muslim: Music at the Intersection of Faith, Culture and Politics
An Online Interactive Summer Seminar

Convened by

Asad Ali Jafri (DJ, Curator and Executive Director of the South Asia Institute); and
Abdul-Rehman Malik (Journalist, Educator and Lecturer, Yale Divinity School)

5 Sessions x 2 hours starting Thursday June 10, 2021(/h5)

PWYC – suggested contribution of $99
(Please indicate your contribution during registration)

This special seminar is aimed at cultural workers and others who want to engage with “Listening While Muslim” as a practice.

We’ll take a deep dive into Muslim music and sound practices, intentionally centering the ways in which Muslim culture is actively expressed through the lived experience of artists and cultural producers. We’ll also explore how do particular theologies, histories, cultural sensibilities and feelings inform the way in which Muslims hear and produce music, and what meanings do they give to the sounds that they hear and produce? More broadly, given the myriad of ways in which “Muslimness” is expressed, we’ll explore whether we can even talk about something called “Muslim culture”?
We will look closely at how Muslim sound and musical forms are in conversation with the social and political realities of the times and places in which they developed. In particular, we will focus on the narratives and lived experiences of cultural producers themselves, exploring how their music shapes and presents Muslim identities.

Special consideration will be given to artforms which have emerged as a result of America’s violent racial past, namely Jazz and Hip Hop. Questions of race, power, violence, gender justice, political freedom and economic in/equality will be woven into our explorations. A weekly playlist will be provided alongside essential readings.

Come ready to engage, explore, discuss and listen while Muslim!

Registration is limited.

Date: Every Thursday (April 15, April 22, April, 29, & May 6)
Time: Noon (12:00pm CT)
Online Platform: Facebook Live

Date: Tuesday, April 6, 2021
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm talk, including Q & A
Online Platform: Zoom

Nur Amali Ibrahim is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. He is broadly interested in the governance of populations and forms of citizen politics in the contemporary moment. His first book, Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility (Cornell University Press, 2018), examines Muslim student activism in Indonesia following the nation’s political transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

March 19, 2021

As-salaamu ‘alaykum:

This past Tuesday, as we were hosting a panel on Gendered Islamophobia here at the American Islamic College, news began to surface of a vicious, murderous, misogynistic, racist attack on Asian women in Atlanta. Now, as the U.S. House of Representatives holds its first hearings on anti-Asian discrimination in three decades, we at the American Islamic College join our sisters and brothers worldwide in praying for the victims – the murdered, wounded, and forever traumatized survivors – and we raise our collective voice to condemn these criminal acts and the ideologies of misogyny and anti-Asian racism that inspired them.

The faculty, staff, and students of AIC stand committed to diversity, equity, and the inclusion of all individuals, genders, groups, races, and faiths, and so we stand against the bigotry, supremacism, misogyny, and violence that plagues our nation and our world. This is truly a pandemic of another kind, a sickness that afflicts our souls and infects the systems in which we live. The Qur’an teaches us that the unjust killing of a single soul is tantamount to killing all of humankind, and so we mourn these victims and embrace their families as our own. More, we pledge to make their lives matter by working harder to transform our nation and our world in our commitment to the dignity and sanctity of every life, in our commitment to love, to mercy, to justice, and to pathways of peace.

Timothy J. Gianotti, Ph.D.
President

Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 pm CT
Online Platform: Zoom

Organized by: American Islamic College and Partnership to End Gendered Islamophobia

Moderator:
Shabana Mir

Panelists:
Darakshan Raja, Sahar Pirzada, Yazan Za3za3

Description:
Building upon a history of shared values and intersecting work, the Partnership to End Gendered Islamophobia brings together HEART, Justice for Muslims Collective and Vigilant Love to build analysis, tools and power to dismantle Gendered Islamophobia. This panel discussion is specifically tailored towards community members, organizers, and scholars. We will focus on what is Gendered Islamophobia is and ways to strategically organize, advocate and build coalitions to dismantle this structural form of violence. This panel will also include a conversation with organizers and the recently launched grassroots policy platform on abolishing the War on Terror.