Muslim and Prison Abolition: Join Believers Bail Out

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Time: 6:00 pm Light Refreshments; 6:30 pm Talk
Where: Conference Room, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Believers Bail Out is a volunteer-led effort that posts bail for Muslims brothers and sisters that are held in pretrial and immigrant incarceration using zakat. We seek to create sustainable change by focusing on three areas of concern: prison industrial complex, anti-Muslim racism, and anti-blackness. Join us to learn more about these concepts with Dr. Maryam Kashani, founder and assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“And do you realize what is the steep road? It is the freeing of a human being from bondage” (The Holy Qur’an 90:12-13)

To Volunteer with Believers Bail Out:
If you are interested in helping out our cause and would like to volunteer, join us to learn more about the structure of BBO and how you can help! Sign up on the 31st of March to receive more details!

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.