I am now an ISPU Fellow

MFAH | Artful Thursday: High Notes – Thursday, September 15, 2011 @ 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM. Billie Holiday’s wavy intonation has its roots in the muezzin’s call to prayer. The syncopated riffs and rhythms of blues guitar legend John Lee Hooker echo a traditional call-and-response, with painful lyrics about life, love, and faith. The be-bop and cool-jazz improvisations of John Coltrane are informed by numerous musical and meditative traditions, including those of Islam. Also indebted to this tradition are the folk rock of Steve Earle and the hip-hop of Mos Def. In this month’s Artful Thursday lecture, Hussein Rashid…

“On Common Ground”: CIW, faith leaders come together in NYC for “an extraordinary conversation”… – Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Hussein reflected a bit on human rights as that which we owe one another but “from a faith perspective, human dignity is vouchsafed by the divine, it is something is inherent and promised to us, over which we have no agency except to forget that we have it.  And that’s an important way to think through, ‘How do we assure dignity?’”   Appreciating the expertise that farmworkers brought to creating the Fair Food Program’s human rights solution and how important it is…

The al-Ghazali Lecture Hussein Rashid is the founder of islamicate, L3C, a consultancy focusing on religious literacy and cultural competency. His work includes exploring theology, the interaction between culture and religion, and the role of the arts in conflict mediation. To share his research on Muslims and American popular culture, he writes and speaks about music, comics, movies and the blogistan. He currently is a fellow with the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, and also is working with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan as a content expert for their “America to Zanzibar” exhibit.