2024

Event: Muslim Community Gala hosted by Williams MSU and MCLA MSA

The Muslim Student Union (MSU) is pleased to invite students, staff, faculty, and community members to the 2024 Muslim Community Gala, an evening dedicated to community and charitable giving. This event, hosted by Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, will bring together members of our local and academic communities for a night of charity, inspiration, and meaningful connection.

Event Overview:
⋆ A Formal Sit-Down Dinner

⋆ Keynote Address by Dr. Hussein Rashid, Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Lecturer on Religion and Public Life, Harvard Divinity School

https://events.williams.edu/event/muslim-community-gala-hosted-by-williams-msu-and-mcla-msa

Event: Religion and Democratic Ideals: Rematriation, Land, and Healing

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2024, 6 – 7:30PM

This event is free and open to the public.

A liberal democracy should produce societies that are inclusive, equitable, dynamic, and responsive to the needs of citizens. This series will focus on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. We will discuss the outcomes we want from a democratic system and how such an analysis can help us construct pathways to achieving those goals.

This fourth session, “Rematriation, Land, and Healing,” features co-founder of Women of Bears Ears, Cynthia Wilson, and board member of Women of Bears Ears, Doreen Bird. Assistant Dean for RPL, Hussein Rashid, will act as moderator.

How we steward our land—and the lands of others—brings up essential questions of belonging, indigeneity, and spiritual and political governance. How do different types of stewardship impact how we enact democracy in and with the land we occupy? This session examines how we relate to the natural world around us and the possibilities—and obstacles—for strengthening those relationships through our democratic institutions.

Read this Q&A with Hussein Rashid, assistant dean for RPL, about the series and register for all four events.

 

Location Zoom Webinar

Sponsor Religion and Public Life

Contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu

Register

Media: WBUR on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Four previously unknown recordings of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani singer known as the ‘King of the Kings of Qawwali’ who died in 1997, have been rediscovered on a warehouse shelf in England. They’re released on a new album called “Chain of Light.”

Michael Brook — the Canadian guitarist and composer who recorded the newly released tracks with Kahn back in 1990 — and Hussein Rashid, a scholar of Muslim and U.S. culture, join us.

Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s unknown recordings discovered

Event: Religion and Democratic Ideals: Media, Religion, and the Nation

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2024, 6 – 7:30PM

Religion and Democratic Ideals: Media, Religion, and the Nation

This event is free and open to the public. Register_Button

A liberal democracy should produce societies that are inclusive, equitable, dynamic, and responsive to the needs of citizens. This series will focus on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. We will discuss the outcomes we want from a democratic system and how such an analysis can help us construct pathways to achieving those goals.

This second session, “Media, Religion, and the Nation,” features Zeba Khan, San Fransisco Chronicle, Jesse Holland, George Washington University, and Syreeta McFadden, Borough of Manhattan Community College. Assistant Dean for RPL, Hussein Rashid, will act as moderator.

For decades, news media in the U.S. has been critiqued as reproducing structures of power and exclusion, including those in religions. While entertainment media has worked towards more inclusive storytelling recently, historically all media has been inconsistent in representing and engaging marginalized communities. This panel will examine how media framing creates our understanding of what the United States is and will discuss how we can be more literate media consumers.

Read this Q&A with Hussein Rashid, assistant dean for RPL, about the series and register for all four events.

Location Zoom Webinar

Sponsor Religion and Public Life

Contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu

Register

Event: Building the Beloved Community in Our Time

Monday, SEPTEMBER 30, 2024 @ 15:30 EST

RSVP REQUIRED

Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, President of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community, will be sharing the vision outlined in his book, and discussing with Dr. Hussein Rashid and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik. Taylor previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. and the senior political director at Sojourners. Taylor is a graduate of Emory University, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

RSVP to AKaram@Lead-Integrity.com latest by September 27

Abrahamic Faiths in Discussion Around Building the Beloved Community.pdf

Event: Religion and Democratic Ideals: Political Futures

TUESDAY, September 24, 2024, 6 – 7:30PM

This event is free and open to the public. 

A liberal democracy should produce societies that are inclusive, equitable, dynamic, and responsive to the needs of citizens. This series will focus on where religion intersects with democratic ideals and institutions. We will discuss the outcomes we want from a democratic system and how such an analysis can help us construct pathways to achieving those goals.

This first session, “Political Futures,” features RPL Organizing Fellow, Josh Wolfsun, and RPL Arts and Popular Culture Fellow, Angélique Roché. Assistant Dean for RPL, Hussein Rashid, will act as moderator.

Moving from the exigencies of the moment, this conversation focuses on creating new communities, generating solidarity, imagining different economies, and asks how we can make the politics of the possible a reality.

Read this Q&A with Hussein Rashid, assistant dean for RPL, about the series and register for all four events.

 

Location Zoom Webinar

Sponsor Religion and Public Life

Contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu

Register

Event: Book Talk: Islam in North America

This event is free and open to the public. 

Co-editors Hussein Rashid and Huma Mohibullah discuss “Islam in North America: An Introduction.” After providing students with an introductory grounding in the field, chapters take a multidisciplinary approach, and focus on the expressions of Islam in its diverse forms. Students are encouraged to think beyond simple identifiers of “Muslim,” “American,” “Canadian,” or “Mexican”, and to consider how these identifiers exist in conversation with one another, and with others such as gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability.

The book provides a much-needed resource for students and instructors that acknowledges that Muslims navigate their identities in a world where Orientalist ideas continue to dominate politics, policy, and public imagination.

Featuring co-editors Hussein Rashid and Huma Mohibullah.

Please register by noon on Friday, September 20. Light snacks will be provided. Registration will still be accepted following this date.

Location Divinity Hall Room 114

Sponsor Religion and Public Life

Contact rpl@hds.harvard.edu

Register

Event: Dialogues on Divinity

Dialogues on Divinity: A Love That is Holy and True: Interreligious Discovery

Monday, May 20, 2024

6:30pm – 7:30pm

Cathedral
Community at the Crossing

Dialogues on Divinity: A Love That is Holy and True: Interreligious Discovery
As faithful witnesses to the word of God in the Torah, the Qur’an and the Gospel, members of different religions share a desire to live a life of love and justice, worthy of God’s promises. Join local scholars of Judaism, Islam and Christianity as they engage in dialogue on the pursuit of what is holy and true.

Dr. Burton Visotzky, Jewish Theological Seminary
Dr. Celia Deutsch, Barnard College
Dr. Hussein Rashid, Harvard Divinity School
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, Dean of the Cathedral

Tickets are pay what you can and be bought from here: https://www.stjohndivine.org/calendar/47805/dialogues-on-divinity-a-love-that-is-holy-and-true-interreligious-discovery

Video: Antisemitism and Allyship: Allyship is a Two-Way Street

Panel on Allyship is a Two-Way Street

Rabbi Burt Visotzky (moderator), Nathan and Janet Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies Emeritus, JTS
Rev. Dr. Dennis McManus, Professor of Dogmatics and Director of Spiritual Life, St. Patrick’s Seminary and University
Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, Associate Dean of the Division of Religious Leadership, JTS
Rev. Dr. Lisa Jenkins Brown, Senior Pastor, St. Matthew’s Baptist Church
Dr. Hussein Rashid, Assistant Dean for Religion and Public Life, Harvard University