Exploring Religious Literacy: Interview with AC4

NYCC ‘19: Wilson, Shammas, Alfageeh & Henderson on Orientalism in comics & the White, Western gaze – The Beat. Rashid began proceedings by citing theorist Edward Said and describing Orientalism as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” The othering that Orientalism does to Asian and Arab cultures, he continued, is “a tool of colonization, a means of convincing people that some people are less worthy of their humanity.” The panellists nodded along, taking this definition as their starting point for discussion.  In turn, each panelist presented some examples of where we see Orientalism in…

As Ismailis, We Should all Care about Climate Change. | IsmailisRiseUp. Our generation is faced with a daunting task: stop climate change. But how? Dr. Rashid, who has witnessed his home city of New York transition from a sub-temperate to a sub-tropical climate in his lifetime, explains that it is more than just individual responsibility. There are individual choices that we can make but ultimately when a handful of corporations are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is hard to place responsibility on individuals. That does not mean, however, that we as individuals do not have…

The Power of Names – Sacred Matters Magazine. In many popular media reports, the default often seems to be Sunni Islam. It is unclear why this has become the baseline for what Islam is. Some academics have suggested, going back to the origins of the discipline of Religion, that Sunni Islam most closely resembled Protestant Christianity, which was constructed as the truest of religious groupings. As a result, structures that mirrored Protestant Christianity were elevated to true expressions of those traditions. Perhaps it has to do with the tyranny of the majority, so that by virtue of being the most…