Rabbi Issa

Velveteen Rabbi: The voices of American Muslim men. Because I've been blessed to know Hussein for years, I paid special attention to his essay. He writes eloquently about growing up "painfully normal" in Queens, New York. His grandmother and his grade school were both located in Forest Hills, Queens, "one of the most diverse Jewish communities at the time." He writes about how he developed racial identity consciousness first, and religious identity consciousness later. (Indeed: as a good second-generation American teenager, he rebelled against his parents, which naturally meant steering away from religiousness. For a while.)

International Women’s Day: They Speak for Themselves, in America and Egypt – City of Brass. Readers of I Speak for Myself are presented with a kaleidoscope of stories, woven together around the central idea of limitlessness and individuality. A common theme linking these intimate self-portraits is the way each woman uniquely defies labeling, simply by defining for herself what it means to be American and Muslim and female.

A friend of mine wanted to know what I thought of Asma Gull Hasan’s Why I Am a Muslim. I was honest and said I hadn’t read it. While I enjoyed her first book – American Muslims – as an individual and personal voice of being Muslim and American, it did have some factual inaccuracies that I thought weakened it. However, I believe her misperceptions and misunderstandings are common enough in the Muslim community that she can’t be faulted for them. In addition, her first book was her personal experience, not a description of the Muslim American community. I did…