Secret History of Muslims in the US

Thanks to the folks at Faith in Public Life/Bold Faith Type, I see that part of my appearance at the Newseum is online.

Enforced disappearance: Why a whole community is going missing – Home – Herald. Gatherings such as the one at Baitul Huda are common for Ahmadi communities living in various parts of the United States. According to Professor Hussein Rashid of the department of religion at Columbia University, they are more a manifestation of a shared insecurity than of anything else. “Staying together does not tell anything about the community except the fact that they are a minority, and a besieged minority,” he says. “This is often the case with immigrant groups and those who are persecuted in their home countries…

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…