Hussein Rashid

Academic. Speaker. Educator. Advocate.

Books

Books Media Appearances Religion Resources

Harvard Islamica Podcast

Hussein

In this episode, Dr. Hussein Rashid talks about his recently published volume, Islam in North America: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2024), which he co-edited with Huma Mohibullah and Vincent Biondo. Hussein discusses his trajectory as a scholar and how beginning his academic career in the post-9/11 world led him to believe in the importance of public-facing and accessible scholarship. The chapters of the book cover a wide range of topics related to Islam in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Caribbean and explore themes of race, gender, class, and sexuality, among others. Hussein sheds light on the long and little-known history of Muslims in North America, the changing perception of Muslims in the American imagination, and how Islamophobia/anti-Muslim bias and the racialization of Muslims manifest in the past and present.

Books Events Inter-faith Religion

Event: Building the Beloved Community in Our Time

Hussein

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

Books Events Religion Teaching

Event: Book Talk: Islam in North America

Hussein

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

Books Networks Religion

Chapter on Ihsan in Pillars Fund Khayal

Hussein

I’m honored to have contributed a chapter on “Ihsan: Aesthetic Ethics,” in the digital book Khayal, sponsored by the Pillars Fund. From their description:

In January 2020, we assembled a group of brilliant Muslim poets, writers, activists, scholars, historians, and artists to develop a roadmap for telling authentic Muslim stories. And for more than three years, these MNC Fellows were vital thought partners, helping us build our Culture Change program from the ground up. 


To honor their contributions to Pillars, we’ve assembled “Khayál: A Multimedia Collection by Muslim Creatives,” a publication co-authored by the brilliant minds of the MNC Fellows.


Visit the link below to page through this digital, multimedia collection and learn about the creative inhale with Zaheer Ali, examine Malcolm X’s letters with Maytha Alhassen, dive into philosophy with Hussein Rashid, explore Su’ad Abdul Khabeer‘s memories of ’90s Brooklyn, go behind the scenes of Omar Offendum’s hip-hopera Little Syria, and experience Asad Ali Jafri’s comic from the future.


We hope this collection inspires you as much as it inspired us.


Cover by Alaa Musa

The full archive can be downloaded from here.

KhayālDownload
Books

New Chapter: In Cyber Muslims

Hussein

Cyber Muslims: Mapping Islamic Digital Media in the Internet Age

Through an array of detailed case studies, this book explores the vibrant digital expressions of diverse groups of Muslim cybernauts: religious clerics and Sufis, feminists and fashionistas, artists and activists, hajj pilgrims and social media influencers. These stories span a vast cultural and geographic landscape-from Indonesia, Iran, and the Arab Middle East to North America.

These granular case studies contextualize cyber Islam within broader social trends: racism and Islamophobia, gender dynamics, celebrity culture, identity politics, and the shifting terrain of contemporary religious piety and practice.

The book’s authors examine an expansive range of digital multimedia technologies as primary “texts.” These include websites, podcasts, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channels, online magazines and discussion forums, and religious apps. The contributors also draw on a range of methodological and theoretical models from multiple academic disciplines, including communication and media studies, anthropology, history, global studies, religious studies, and Islamic studies.

12. Defining Islamic Art: Practices and Digital Reconfigurations, Hussein Rashid

Book cover for Cyber Muslims
Book cover for Cyber Muslims
Books

New Chapter: In Are the Arts Essential?

Hussein

Are the Arts Essential?

Across twenty-five highly engaging essays, these luminaries join together to address this question and to share their own ideas, experiences, and ambitions for the arts. Darren Walker discusses the ideals of justice and fairness advanced through the arts; Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us how artists and cultural institutions helped New York overcome the economic crisis of the 1970s, bringing new investment and creativity to the city; Deborah Willis traces histories of oppression and disenfranchisement documented by photographers; and Oskar Eustis offers a brief history lesson on how theaters have built communities since the Golden Age of Athens. Other topics include the vibrancy and diversity of Muslim culture in America during a time of rising Islamophobia; the strengthening of the common good through the art and cultural heritages of indigenous communities; digital data aggregation informing and influencing new art forms; and the jazz lyricisms of a theater piece inspired by a composer’s two-month coma.

9781479812622

Books

New Book: Teaching Critical Religious Studies

Hussein

Teaching Critical Religious Studies: Pedagogy and Critique in the Classroom

Are you teaching religious studies in the best way possible? Do you inadvertently offer simplistic understandings of religion to undergraduate students, only to then unpick them at advanced levels?

This book presents case studies of teaching methods that integrate student learning, classroom experiences, and disciplinary critiques. It shows how critiques of the scholarship of religious studies-including but not limited to the World Religions paradigm, Christian normativity, Orientalism, colonialism, race, gender, sexuality, and class-can be effectively integrated into all courses, especially at an introductory level.

Integrating advanced critiques from religious studies into actual pedagogical practices, this book offers ways for scholars to rethink their courses to be more reflective of the state of the field. This is essential reading for all scholars in religious studies.

 

9781350228412

Books Media Appearances

“Are the Arts Essential?”: Finding and Fostering Community Through the Lens of Urdu – YouTube

Hussein

"Are the Arts Essential?": Finding and Fostering Community Through the Lens of Urdu – YouTube.

Wajahat Ali, renowned writer and TED Talk speaker, sits down with Director of the Building Bridges Program Zeyba Rahman and scholar Hussein Rashid to discuss their essay, "An Urdu of the Twenty-First-Century United States." In this lively conversation, the coauthors reveal the impetus behind the piece, which was published in the New York University Press anthology titled “Are the Arts Essential?,” talk about Urdu as an allegory for cross-cultural connection and unity, and reveal why the arts are “a superpower” to be found in every profession, practice and personal pursuit.

More on the book Are the Arts Essential?

Books Media Appearances Religion Teaching

Interview on Ms. Marvel’s America

Hussein

In their co-edited volume, Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal (University Press of Mississippi, 2020), Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid focus on the superhero Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. The first Muslim superhero to headline her own series, the teenager Kamala Khan is also a second-generation Pakistani immigrant who lives in New Jersey. Her complex identities and storyline in the comic world of Marvel welcomes a multifaceted exploration, one that exists at the nexus of religion, gender, culture, race, and much more. By bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines including literature, cultural studies, religious studies, pedagogy, and communications, the edited volume engages in a fascinating conversation around the character of Ms. Marvel. The book contains accessibly written essays from and about diverse voices on an array of topics, such as fashion, immigration, history, race, and fandom. The volume also includes an exclusive interview with Ms. Marvel author and cocreator G. Willow Wilson by gender studies scholar Dr. Shabana Mir. This text is a fantastic classroom resource that can work in numerous courses on Islam, such as those that focus gender or American Islam to broad courses on religion, such as religion and popular culture. The text is also useful text for educators, such as those in primary and secondary school, who may want to incorporate Ms. Marvel in their own curriculum.

 

 

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