Talk will be followed by book reading, discussion, and signing

Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:15 pm Talk followed by Q&A
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Leading While Muslim examines the lived experiences of American Muslim principals to determine whether global events, political discourse, and the media coverage of Islam and Muslims post 9/11 have affected their leadership and spirituality. This book is intended to help readers to gain an understanding of the adversities that American Muslim principals have experienced post-9/11 and how to address these adversities, particularly through decisions about educational policy and district leadership.

Dr. Debbie Almontaser is an internationally recognized, award-winning educator, entrepreneur, speaker and authority on cross-cultural understanding. She is an influential community leader and the Founder and CEO of Bridging Cultures Group Inc., a for-profit business that provides professional development and coaching for companies, universities, firms, and K–12 education personnel. Dr. Almontaser was the founding and former principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, NY. A twenty-five-year veteran of the NYC Public School System, she taught special education, inclusion, trained teachers in literacy, and served as a multicultural specialist and diversity advisor. Currently, she is the Board President of the Muslim Community Network (www.mcnny.org) and sits on the boards of the Yemeni American Merchants Association, Therapy and Learning Center Preschool, eMgage National, and ADC National. She frequently lectures, serves on panels, facilitates teacher and public workshops on cultural diversity, conflict resolution, Arab Culture, Islam, Muslims in America, interfaith coalition building and youth leadership at schools, universities, libraries, museums, faith-based organizations, churches, synagogues, as well as national and international conferences. Dr. Almontaser is also known for her leadership role in organizing the historic Yemeni Bodega Strike Rally and I Am a Muslim Too Rally.

Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:15 pm Talk followed by Q&A
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Professor Haq’s area of expertise is Islamic Theology and Muslim World Studies. He has been principal of two Muslim day schools in Chicago for 13 years. He taught courses on Islam in various local universities; Benedictine, Loyola, U of I, and Catholic Theological Union. Currently, he teaches at Elmhurst College. Mr.Haq served on Chicago Committee of Human Rights Watch and on Governor Pat Quinn’s Muslim Advisory Council. Professor Haq currently serves on Board of Cardinal Bernardin Center at C.T.U. Mr.Haq is an honorary Imam in various local mosques and serves on Muslim-Catholic and Muslim-Jewish Scholars Committees. Professor Haq studied in various Religious seminaries in Pakistan & holds Ijaza in Tafseer, Hadith Fiqah & Tasawwuf. He also holds a Masters in sharia from International Islamic University Islamabad and a Masters in Humanities from Drew University in New Jersey.

Date: Thursday, March 28, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm
Book: $14 (Cash, Credit, or Check Acccepted)
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Sara Bawany is a social worker, a writer, and a poet with a passion for bringing to light some of the most taboo issues in the South Asian and Muslim community. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Sara received her Master’s degree in Social Work and her Bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Islamic Studies. She currently serves as a clinical social worker at the Muslim Community Center for Human Services, providing free mental health counseling and mental health education to the community. She published her first poetry book recently, titled – “(w)holehearted” which you can find on Amazon. The book touches on themes of identity, mental health, domestic violence, femininity, relationships, spirituality, forgiveness, and a variety of social justice issues.

(w)holehearted is a play on words to emphasize the idea of appearing whole and intact as a human being, but with fissures, scars, and brokenness peeking through from behind the tough exterior. it is the facade that many of us peruse our lives carrying, often neglecting our pain, our mental health, and most importantly, the way we are more prone to hurting others when we lack this self-awareness. (w)holehearted seeks to encompass as many stories as possible, touching on several topics, namely, spirituality, feminism, colorism, domestic violence, intersectionality, mental health and more. It aims to depict that anyone with the darkest past and pitfalls can still save themselves from drowning in the difficulties that not only plague our world, but also plague our hearts.

Date: Friday, March 22, 2019
Time: 7:00 pm
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

In recent years, “religious doubt” and a “crisis of faith” have emerged as a pervasive concern in American Muslim communities and discourses. Within this discourse, there is a tension in how religious questioning, doubts, and challenges to authoritative doctrine are understood — between seeing such questioning as a matter of needed internal reform or critique on the one hand, versus seeing it as an internalization of pervasive Islamophobic discourse. In this talk I will be exploring this tension, and community leaders’ emphasis on internalized Islamophobia, particularly at the intersection with concerns of gender justice. What is the place of Islamophobic discourse in this ever-growing sense of a crisis of faith? And how does this focus on internalized Islamophobia help us understand what is at stake in this discourse?

Zaid Adhami was born in Damascus, Syria, and raised in Southern California. He received his PhD in 2017 from Duke University in Religious Studies. He is now Assistant Professor of Religion at Williams College, in Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife Saadia Yacoob (also a professor of Religion at the college) and 3 year-old daughter Ruqaiya. His research and teaching interests engage a number of fields: Islam in the United States, anthropology of Islam, theories of religion and secularization, Islam and race, as well as Islamic theology and philosophy.

Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:15 pm Talk followed by Q&A
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

In this lecture, Nazanin Sheikhi will speak about her experience in reviving historical/traditional design and in some cases traditional techniques in architectural projects over the last twenty years, mainly focusing on Islamic and Far Eastern Design.

Nazanin Sheikhi has professional experience in Graphic Design, Illustration and Architectural Design. She has a Bachelor’s in Graphic Art and a Master’s degree in Art Research, both from Faculty of Fine Art, Tehran University, Iran. She operated her own private design office in Tehran from 1987 to 1995, while also a graphic designer and illustrator of children’s books and weekly children’s magazines for the national telecommunications company, Soroush Publications, Tehran, Iran. She won the prize for innovation, creativity and artistic distinction at the 3rd Biennial Exhibition of Iranian Graphic Designers, in Tehran in 1992. She moved to Germany in 1996 and worked on the design of the domes for the Federal Territory Mosque in Kuala Lumpur and in 1997 moved to Malaysia where she designed the domes for Bukhary Mosque and Palace of Justice law courts. In 2002 established NAZANIN SHEIKHI DESIGN SDN. BHD. together with Nicholas Stone. She specialized in Authentic/ Traditional Architectural Design, undertaking many projects, reviving historical designs and techniques. She is currently based in Chicago and continues to work in the architectural design field in the US.

Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Time: 6:00pm Light Refreshments; 6:15pm Talk
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

In the figure of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak (118-181/736-797), we find a paragon of the fields of ḥadīth, zuhd, and jihād, as attested to by the large number of references to him in the classical Islamic texts. His superior rank as a ḥadīth transmitter earned him the title “commander of the faithful” in ḥadīth. He contributed to Islamic law at its early phases of development, practiced jihād, composed poetry, and participated in various theological discussions. In addition, Ibn al-Mubārak was a pioneer in writing on piety and was later regarded by many mystics as one of the earliest figures of Sufism. Ibn al-Mubārak’s position during the formative period of Islamic thought illustrates the unique evolution of zuhd, ḥadīth, and jihād; these form a junction in the biography of Ibn al-Mubārak in a way that distinctively illuminates the second/eighth-century dynamics of nascent Sunnī identity. Furthermore, Ibn al-Mubārak’s status as a fighter and pious figure of the Late Antique period revealed a great deal about the complex relationship between the early Muslim community and the religiously diverse setting which it inhabited. This critical and comprehensive lecture on ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak situated him within the larger context of the social and religious milieu of Late Antiquity. This talk also explored the formation of Sunnī identity in the second Islamic century and demonstrated the way in which it manifested itself through networks of pious scholars who defined, preserved, and passed on what they understood to be normative Islamic practice and beliefs from one generation of Muslim intellectuals to another.

Dr. Feryal Salem is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, as well as Director of the ATS affiliated Master of Divinity in Islamic Studies program and Muslim Chaplaincy program. Her research interests include Islamic philosophy and theology in the post-classical period, interfaith dialogue, and the development of Muslim thought in the contemporary era as it came into conversation with aspects of modernity. Dr. Salem is the author of The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak and the Formation of Sunni Identity in the Second Islamic Century (2016) published by Brill in its prestigious “Islamic History and Civilization” series. She was recently named one of “25 Influential American Muslims” by CNN for her work in higher education. Dr. Salem serves on a number of professional boards across the country and regularly travels internationally to engage in scholarship on Islam with academics from a range of diverse institutions.

Dr. Salem has also taught at Hartford Seminary where she was Assistant Professor of Islamic Scriptures and Co-Director of its Islamic Chaplaincy Program. She received her Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

“The Nationalists have claimed Malcolm. The Socialists have claimed Malcolm. Now, it’s time for you Muslims to claim Malcolm . . . because he was a believer.” Betty Shabazz, the widow of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X describes how her husband’s legacy had been taken up and interpreted in ways that reduced the significance of his Islamic beliefs and practices. In recent years Muslims in the United States, from all ethnic and racial backgrounds have returned to Malcolm X as an American Muslim figure. This presentation discussed how particular Muslims in the United States articulate a Muslim legacy of Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, fifty years after his assassination and considers how invocations of Malcolm enjoin Muslims in the United States to take on the difficult task of reactivating the full force and implications of his words.

Maryam Kashani is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A filmmaker and anthropologist, her research is concerned with the lived experience of Muslims in the United States through the lenses of epistemology, gender, race, visual culture, and political economy. Her book project is based on ethnographic research and filmmaking conducted amongst Muslim communities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and at a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California. The related film works, Our Look Was As If Two Lovers Or Deadly Enemiesand Signs of Remarkable History premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates in March 2015. Her films and videos have been shown at film festivals, universities, and museums internationally.

Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Time: 6:00pm Light Refreshments; 6:15pm Talk
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Maryam Kashani is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Trained as an anthropologist and filmmaker, she is currently working on a book manuscript drawn from her ethnographic fieldwork and filmmaking at Zaytuna College and with Muslim communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Medina by the Bay will examine Muslim knowledge practices and institution-building in relation to issues of gender, race, visuality, and displacement, telling an interrelated story of American Muslim subject-making and dueling discourses of wealth and poverty, dissent and assimilation. Her films and video installations have been exhibited at festivals, universities, and museums internationally. Visit http://www.maryamkashani.com/ for details on her projects.

Dr. James T. Robinson gave an insightful talk entitled, “How Much Islam is in Jewish Medieval Thought?” on Tuesday, the 9th of October at the American Islamic College Academic Lecture Forum. Dr. Robinson presented three examples in which Jewish writings have been influenced by Islamic texts. The three examples he pulled from include, 1) The Qur’an, 2) Post Qur’anic tradition, and 3) Ibn Tufayel. Dr. Robinson’s research focuses on medieval Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, and biblical exegesis in the Islamic world and Christian Europe.

Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Time: 6:00pm Light Refreshments; 6:15pm Talk
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Dr. James T. Robinson, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of Judaism, Islamic Studies, and the History of Religions; also in the Program on Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, Fundamentals: Texts and Issues, and the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies; Associate Faculty in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

MPhil (Oxford University)
MA, PhD (Harvard University)

James Robinson’s research focuses on medieval Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, and biblical exegesis in the Islamic world and Christian Europe. His main interests lie in the literary and social dimensions of philosophy, and the relation between philosophy and religion. Specific areas of expertise include ethics, political philosophy, and psychology; the history of philosophical-allegorical exegesis; Karaites and Rabbanites; the translation and reception of Greek and Arabic philosophy and science; Jewish Sufism and Neoplatonism; Maimonides, Maimonideanism, and the Maimonidean controversies; religious polemic; sermons and homiletical literature; and the interactions between the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian intellectual traditions.

Prof. Robinson has published three books and one edited volume: Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, The Book of the Soul of Man (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 20. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought (Leiden and Boston: E.J. Brill, 2009); Asceticism, Eschatology, Opposition to Philosophy: The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Salmon b. Yeroham on Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), a critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic text with annotated English translation and introduction (Leiden and Boston: E.J. Brill, Karaite Texts and Studies, 2012); and The Arabic Translation and Commentary of Yefet b. ‘Eli the Karaite on the Book of Joshua (Leiden and Boston: E.J. Brill, Karaite Texts and Studies, 2014).

Dr. Kaveh Ehsani is assistant professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago.

His current research is about the historical and contemporary impact of oil on society and politics; the historical sociology of warfare; the politics of property relations; the urban process and spatial change in Middle East cities; and on the political economy and geopolitics of post-revolution Iran. He is preparing the manuscript of a book, titled The Urban Life of Oil: Abadan and the Making of Modernity in Iran.

His recent publications include, Working for Oil: Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry”, co-edited with T. Atabaki and E. Bini (Palgrave, 2018); “The moral economy of Iranian protests,” (with Arang Keshavarzian) Jacobin (2018); “Pipeline politics in Iran”, South Atlantic Quarterly (2017); “War and resentment: Critical reflections on the legacies of the Iran-Iraq War” Middle East Critique (2017); “Oil, state, and society in Iran in the aftermath of WWI”, in The First World War and its Aftermath: The Shaping of the Middle East”, ed. T. Fraser, (Haus, 2015); “The cultural politics of public space in Tehran’s Bookfair”, in H. Chehabi, et.al. eds. Iran in the Middle East: Transnational Encounters and Social History (I.B.Tauris, 2015); “Oil and beyond: Expanding British imperial aspirations, emerging oil capitalism, and the challenge of social questions in the First World War”, in The World During the First World War, eds. H. Bley & A. Kremers (Klarte Verlag, 2014), 261-290, co-authored with Touraj Atabaki; “Radical democracy and public space”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 46:1 (2014); “Politics of Property in the Islamic Republic of Iran”, in S. Amir-Arjomand & Nathan Brown, eds. The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran (SUNY, 2013).

He has been a longstanding member of the editorial boards of the journals Goftogu (Dialogue) in Tehran, Middle East Report (Merip), and Iranian Studies. He is a regular media commentator about domestic and international Iranian politics.

Date: Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:15 pm Talk followed by Q&A
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College