Hussein Rashid Archives – PEN America

Scholars of religion and biblical literature object to having conference badges coded and scanned. Hussein Rashid, independent scholar of religion, also tweeted that he’d seen nothing in his conference registration documents to suggest QR codes were a possibility. The society was therefore retroactively changing its terms of attendance, he said, raising the possibility that someone could refuse to be scanned, be denied entry and later challenge the academy legally.

Aziz Ansari has a funny suggestion to end Islamophobia. Here’s why it’s important. – The Washington Post. The azan is meant to remind the listener of God’s majesty. Revealed to prophet Muhammad, it puts the believer in a state of awe and humility. For every claim that we may understand God, we are reminded that God is greater than anything we may conceive. That moment of being lost in the transcendence of God, in the tradition of prophet Muhammad, is an ecstatic one. It is not about bells or dancing. It is about exercising the gifts God has created in…

Terror in Paris: The Muslim Community Responds – The Takeaway. Over the last year, Muslim refugees fleeing the brutality of war in Iraq and Syria have sought asylum in a number of Western European countries, including France. But many lifelong French citizens are Muslim—the Muslim nation of Algeria was actually part of France in the 20th century.   Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Hofstra University, explains how the Muslim community is responding to these attacks.