Dua Institute in Lower East Side (NYC) with Ustadh Zaid Khan

Our Instructor for the Fall semester at DUA Institute will be Ustadh Zaid Khan, InshaAllah.

Ustadh Zaid was born and raised in Brooklyn. Having memorized the Qur’an at an early age by Qari Ruhullah he studied Arabic at Darul Uloom NY in 2001 by Mufti Ruhul Amin, and then traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa where he enrolled in the 6 year Alim program at Darul Uloom Azaadville, graduating in 2007 and specializing in Fiqh studies for an additional year in 2008. Since returning he has been teaching classes and weekend intensives, doing youth programs, and giving Jummah Khutbahs and talks in NY. He graduated with a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University, is currently specializing in Hadith studies by Mufti Ruhul Amin, and works as the director and instructor of DUA Institute's Islamic Studies program. He is also involved with Young Muslims, MIST-NY, Darul Uloom NY, ICNA, and Annaseeha Basketball League.

North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS) Presents 44 th Annual Conference “Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities” Cosponsored By: Middle East Studies Brown University, Providence, RI Saturday, September 19, 2015

https://naaims.org/uploads/44th_NAAIMS_Program_Schedule_-_Brown_University.pdf

“Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities,” NAAIMS 44th Annual Conference

September 19 @ 8:30 am - 6:00 pm

NAAIMS invites you to attend its 44th Annual Conference addressing “Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities.” This event is cosponsored by Middle East Studies | Brown University.

The conference which is scheduled for Saturday, September 19, 2015 and will be held at the Metcalf Research Building, Friedman Auditorium, addresses a topic of profound historical concerns.

Sectarian difference and conflict has been part of Islamic history from early times, beginning in a tangible, if not fully established, way during the First Civil War in the mid-1st/7th century. By the late 3rd/9th century, Islamic heresiographers began to document a wide variety of real or reified sectarian identities within the Islamic community. This sectarian history has always been tempered, however, by a well-established Islamic principle that allowed for a certain degree of theological and legal pluralism within the Muslim community, and the fairly widespread acceptance of the idea that the unity of the Muslim ummah was best achieved through the tolerance of a certain degree of diversity. Indeed, some might argue that “sects” and “sectarianism,” as they are understood in a Christian context, do not actually exist in the Islamic world, given that the unifying fundamentals of Islam – its scripture, its central beliefs and practices – are essentially the same across all interpretations of Islam, and communal boundaries have historically been more porous and informal between, for example, Sunnis and Shi`is than between certain Christian sects and denominations.

Nonetheless, conflict has waxed and waned between Sunnis and Shi`is, and among Shi`i groups, and there have been varying degrees of intolerance for smaller sectarian groups in the Islamic world. Today, sectarian intolerance and violence, particularly between Sunnis and Twelver Shi`is seems to be growing increasingly acute, not only in the Middle East, but also in South and Southeast Asia as well. This conference aims to explore the conceptual and religious significance of such sectarian divisions in Islam, as well as the practical and material manifestations of those divisions in Muslim communities both historically and in the contemporary world. The conference aims to examine the issue both in the context of Muslim majority countries, and among minority Muslim communities in North American and Europe. It seeks to investigate not only the religious and historical origins and bases for sectarian differences in the Islamic world, but also the social, political, and economic conditions that generate, exacerbate, or ameliorate sectarian tensions.

 For Program and details, read more here

Registration fees are waived for Brown University students, faculty and administration officials. Please email the event organizer, Layla Sein, at conferences@naaims.org with the completed registration form.

Non-participants (who are not part of Brown University), please register at the link listed below.Regular registration fee is $105.00 for non-students. Students do not pay a registration fee.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/naaims-44th-annual-conference-sectarianism-in-islam-and-muslim-communities-registration-17481662122

Pope Economics / Pope Ecology - September 24th

6:00 PM–8:00 PM    MAISON FRANÇAISE EAST GALLERY, BUELL HALL

PANEL DISCUSSION:

Pope Economics / Pope Ecology

A panel discussion with Edouard Tetreau, Andrew Revkin, Erin Lothes, and Anthony Annett, moderated by Joan Walsh 

Part of a series of events in anticipation of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference

On the occasion of Pope Francis' to the U.S., invited panelists discuss the implications of the papal encyclical on climate change and the pope’s call for drastic changes in lifestyle, production and consumption from unsustainable practices to more prudent care of "our common home" in order to avert environmental catastrophe. Edouard Tetreau is an economic consultant, essayist and author whose newest book, Quand tombera le mur de l'argent is being published in connection with the pope's U.S. trip.  Andrew Revkin has reported on climate change since the 1980s, mainly for The New York Times. He currently writes the paper's Dot Earth blog and is Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University.Erin Lothes is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the College of St. Elizabeth and an expert on the encyclical and energy issues. Anthony Annett is a Climate Change and Sustainable Development Advisor at the Earth Institute. The conversation will be moderated by Joan Walsh. 

Moderator Joan Walsh is the author of What's the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Salon.com's editor in chief for six years, Walsh is a regular on MSNBC’s "Hardball with Chris Matthews," “Politics Nation,” “All In with Chris Hayes” and "The Reid Report." She has appeared on many other national shows including "Real Time with Bill Maher" and "Now" on PBS. 

Event co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, and the Alliance Program. Funding provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

http://ircpl.org/event/pope-economics-pope-ecology/

 http://maisonfrancaise.org/pope-economics-pope-ecology

"It has been well said, however,

that the fact that twilight exists should not persuade us that day cannot be distinguished from night."

Robert Larmer, Water Into Wine? An Investigation of the Concept of Miracle (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), p. 53.

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

-T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

Source: Four Quartets, East Coker, II. Quoted by Dr. Cornel West last night in his course at Union.

Radical Love with Professor Cornel West and David Kim

A critical examination of literatures and approaches to the theological, moral, and political conditions for the possibility of radical love in our times. Through discussions of essays, theory, plays, and the arts by Baldwin, King, Malcolm X, Kushner, Berlant, Rauschenbusch, Bonhoeffer, Hansberry amongst others, the course will ask "what are the limits and aspirations of a love-driven politics and a theology of love in the 21st century?"

Policing the Crises: Stuart Hall and the Practice of Critique Thursday, September 24, 2015 - Saturday, September 26, 2015 The Diana Center Event Oval at Barnard College and SUNY, Stony Brook, Manhattan Campus

http://heymancenter.org/events/policing-the-crises-stuart-hall-and-the-practice-of-critique/

Upcoming Conference at Columbia: Rethinking Islam, Democracy, and Identity in Pakistan and India: The Role of Sufism September 25-6

http://ircpl.org/event/rethinking-islam-democracy-and-identity-in-pakistan-and-india-the-role-of-sufism/

September 25 @ 9:00 am - September 26 @ 5:00 pm

The conference schedule and complete list of participants is now available here.

In contemporary politics, Sufis have been very much a part of the discourse, politics, and practice of Islam in the modern world. Western analysts often perceive Sufis as potential allies, and many incidents of violence against Sufis reinforce the notion that Sufism can be the antidote to intolerant and fundamentalist Islam. Yet Sufi practices and politics are much more complicated than these simple assertions would suggest.

This part of the Sufi Islam project, focused on South Asia, aims to increase our understanding of how Sufi groups have positioned themselves politically and socially in the modern world and with what consequences. This workshop will convene an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the impact of local politics and socio-cultural processes, global policy strategies, and scholarly commitments on the development of Sufism in recent decades while placing these recent developments within a deeper historical context.

Book Launch Party for This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press 2015)

Moustafa Bayoumi's first book, How Does It Feel to Be A Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin Press 2008), became an instant classic: a primer to help understand life after September 11th. The book offered an intimate portrait of Arab youth in Brooklyn, who experienced Islamophobic racism and looking for how to name it. In 2010, Moustafa found himself the target of xenophobia when Brooklyn College assigned it to all incoming freshmen and the right-wing media went on the attack. As The New Yorker wrote, “It all fits perfectly with the growing sentiment that Muslims—led by President Obama, of course—are working to destroy America.... It’s a shame that Moustafa Bayoumi’s book, a thoughtful and highly regarded portrait of the group living with this growing antagonism, has to be at the heart of it.”

Join us as we celebrate the launch of Bayoumi's newest book, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press 2015). The essay collection chronicles the dangers and absurdities that face many targets of Arabs and Muslims today. The dangers: Bayoumi discusses the sweeps immediately after 9/11 that led to the deportation and incarceration of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, as well as the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance unit, which operated with cooperation from the CIA. The absurdities: in the last few years, Bayoumi has played an extra in Sex and the City 2, he’s appeared as a terrorist suspect in a detective novel, and been asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. As Vijay Prashad writes: "Moustafa Bayoumi’s calm and precise voice takes you into the world of governmental paranoia and its social costs. What does it mean to be an American Muslim today? Read him. Beautiful writing for an ugly world." Moderated by Zohra Saed, co-editor of One Stories, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature.

This event is co-sponsored by New York University Press.

Thursday, October 1, 2015 7:00pm

Asian American Writers' Workshop

112 W 27th Street

New York, New York 10001

http://aaww.org/curation/launch-party-for-moustafa-bayoumi/ 

Arabic books by Shaykh Mawlana Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi

http://abulhasanalinadwi.org/arabic01.html

See bio at: http://tahasafeer.blogspot.com/2012/02/pdf_26.html

Also see Prof. Qasim Zaman's new book which covers Nadwi extensively