How New York's Muslims Are Responding To Manhattan Truck Attack : NPR.
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks to Hussein Rashid, a professor in the religion department at Columbia University and a native New Yorker, about how the Muslim community in New York is reacting to Tuesday's terrorist attack.
Cold stones – The Immanent Frame.
When I first received the invitation to contribute to “Is This All There Is,” I thought immediately of the great speculative fiction author Douglas Adams. The question called to mind the title of his novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. An open question about endings demanded an equally amorphous valediction. My goal was to write a series of seemingly unconnected vignettes, which would ultimately connect to a point and work in the number “42.” Inspired by recent resignation letters from the executive branch of the US government, which used the initial letters of paragraphs to spell out the words “RESIST,” and “IMPEACH,” I thought it might be fun to do something like “SKYWALKER,” “CYCLOPS,” or “MS. MARVEL.” Unfortunately, I realized quickly that I lacked the fortitude and creativity to do something like that. However, in keeping with the spirit of Adams, there is a secret message embedded within the text, but the cryptographic key has yet to be determined.
Hussein Rashid Archives – PEN America.
In America, people are always finding ways to try to silence things they don’t understand. Right now, it’s religion; before, it was race.
Hijacking Jihad: Reclaiming Islam's 'Personal Struggle'.
Over the last two decades, the term “Jihad” has exclusively been defined as a holy war perpetrated by extremists. As such, when the average American hears the term “Jihad,” they conflate Islam with terror. Although the term has been hijacked by extremists, many Muslims in the US and around world don’t recognize Jihad’s contemporary application. For these Muslims, the term, which literally translates to “struggle,” is a personal struggle, or a mission. For example, someone’s “Jihad” could be giving up smoking or to strive to be a better neighbor, friend, husband, or wife.
Believer, religious studies, and the public « The Immanent Frame.
When we ask what sort of religious studies work Believer does, we are truly asking, what is the nature of our field and what sort of work do we do? As Edward Said, amongst others, noted, we are now academics, not intellectuals. We talk in guild-speak for ourselves, and are not invested in public engagement, even to our first public, our students. We have a conflicted relationship with public engagement. On one hand, we recognize the need to share our knowledge, but on the other we fear being in the public.
Is It Hateful To Believe In Hell? Bernie Sanders’ Questions Prompt Backlash | UPR Utah Public Radio.
Hussein Rashid, founder of the religious literacy consultancy Islamicate L3C, doesn’t agree that the belief itself is a problem.
“I think we have to accept that there are theologies that are what I would call exclusionary, that only certain people will go to heaven and certain people will go to hell. They are not inherently Islamophobic or anti-Semitic,” Rashid said. “It’s when it turns into action that we start getting worried. “
Trump’s statement on Ramadan is almost entirely about terrorism – The Washington Post.
“He could not recall the honor of being on stage with one of the icons of American life, but could remember to deny part of America’s story,” said Hussein Rashid, founder of islamicate, a consultancy focusing on religious literacy. “With his depth of understanding of religion, and the company he keeps, I fully expect him to honor the Ku Klux Klan as representatives of Christianity during his Christmas message.”
Do Muslims Have to Be Democrats Now? – The New York Times.
“As a Muslim, I’d vote for Jesus, but the Republicans won’t let him in, and the Democrats don’t believe in him,” said Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Barnard College, who concedes that he’s a tad bitter about his political options.
In “The Promise,” A Reminder That U.S. Apathy to Genocide Endures | Religion Dispatches.
Collectively, we are comfortable condemning the mistakes of the past, but never learning from them. As we turn Syrian refugees away, advocates for human decency pointed out that today’s refugee crisis had echoes to the Jewish refugee crisis of the early 20th century. Critics responded that the situation was different: those were Jews and these are not; that was in the 20th century and this is the 21st century. We note every difference to avoid taking action, and always condemn the mistakes of the past in the same way, because they are the same mistakes.
We Must Learn from the Armenian Genocide – Truman Doctrine Blog – Medium.
Yet, as we see, the disease is not cancer, but autoimmune. The desire to create a nation-state causes the population to turn against itself, resulting in a body that is weakened and must collapse because of the lack of healthy, diverse cells. Armenians are part of the Turkish nation and present in every strata of society. However, because they are ethnically distinct, they are targeted by the Ottomans, who hold no claim to greatness at the end of World War I. The Ottomans inflict the powerlessness they feel onto a minority population within their own borders.
Hussein