Diffused Congruence: The American Muslim Experience

Episode 132: Raising Muslim Children: Challenges and Insights with Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

Parvez and Omar are joined by Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi, as they discuss the challenges (and joys) of raising Muslim children.  She shares some of her own experiences growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and also offers insights about how to instill a love of the Deen and a strong Muslim identity in our children.

About Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi 

Hosai Mojaddidi has been serving the Muslim community for over 25 years as a teacher, public speaker, author/writer, spiritual counselor, and mental health advocate. She began her Islamic studies over 20 years ago at Zaytuna Institute in the Bay Area California where for several years she served as the lead female organizer and studied aqeeda, seerah, Hanafi fiqh, tazkiyyah an-nafs, tajweed, hadith, Arabic, and other sacred subjects with several resident and visiting scholars. She offers talks throughout the year locally and internationally on a range of topics including spirituality, self-development, seerah, women's issues, family/marriage, youth issues, social media literacy/safety, and mental health advocacy. She teaches weekly and monthly spiritual development classes (tazkiyyah) for adults and youth for multiple local and international organizations and via social media. She also currently teaches Seerah, Qur'an, logical and critical thinking, as well as Islamic studies in her local area. She is a mental health advocate and uses both her social media platforms to promote emotional and spiritual well-being and offers workshops on social-emotional learning for students & educators throughout the year. She’s a wife and mother of two and resides in California with her family.

Episode 131: Shaykha Muslema Purmul’s Journey to Religious Scholarship

Parvez and Omar are joined by Shaykha Muslema Purmul, co-founder and Religious Director at The Majlis.  They discuss her family’s journey from Afghanistan to Southern California, as well as her motivations to pursue her religious studies at Al-Azhar University, and the work she is doing today as Religious Director at The Majlis.

About Muslema Pumul

Muslema Purmul was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and raised in San Diego, California. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a double major in Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. During these years she served a number of different roles at her local MSA at UCSD as well as MSA West. After graduating she left to study in Egypt where she spent the better part of the next 7 years. She completed the Bachelors program in Sharia from al-Azhar University in Cairo and also completed almost two years of graduate work at the American University in Cairo in Islamic Studies. She also attended the International Union of Muslim Scholars “Future Scholars Program” while she was studying in Cairo.

Upon her return to America, she served the Southern California community in various capacities including religious instruction, directing youth and young adult programs, university chaplaincy, and offering community pastoral care at and with local masjids and organizations. She has taught classes and spoken nationally and internationally about issues related to Islamic law and ethics in an array of educational settings including conferences, retreats, universities, libraries, and mosques. Currently she serves as Religious Director at The Majlis, a community organization she and her husband co-founded together seeking to nurture safe community spaces where people can learn and live Islam, based on the traditional sources of understanding the faith, while acknowledging the particular challenges of the American context. She is a mother of two and resides with her family in Southern California.

 

Episode 130: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC, with Shahan Mufti

Parvez and Omar are joined by Shahan Mufti, author of American Caliph, The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC.The new book is the first full account of the largest ever hostage taking on American soil and of the tormented man who masterminded it. Informed by extensive archival research and access to hundreds of declassified FBI files, American Caliph is a riveting true-crime story that sheds new light on the disarray of the 1970s and its ongoing reverberations.

About Shahan Mufti

Shahan Mufti is the chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Richmond and a former daily news reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. His work has been published in Harper’s, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and many others.

He is the author of The Faithful Scribe: A Story of Islam, Pakistan, Family, and War. His second book, American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award in 2020.

Shahan holds a master’s degree in Journalism and Near Eastern Studies from New York University and an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to India in 2004.

He lives with his wife and children in Richmond, Virginia.

Episode 129: Spiritual Manipulation, Charismatic Leadership, and the Dangers of Cults, with Yousuf Azhar

Parvez and Omar sit down with Yousuf Azhar who shares his personal experiences joining and then leaving a Muslim cult, the corrosive spiritual manipulation and abuse he suffered, and the patterns to look out for.  

About Yousuf Azhar

Yousuf Azhar was born in India and migrated to the USA at the age of two.  He studied Arabic at the University of Damascus for one year and has studied general Islamic sciences with various scholars throughout his life.  He now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.  Yousuf is a software testing lead at a Silicon Valley tech company.

 

Episode 128: Muslims in the Media, with Sue Obeidi and Dr. Eveylyn Alsultany

Parvez and Omar take a visit to Souther California to sit down in person with Sue Obeidi and Evelyn Alsultany to discuss the state of Muslims in the media.

Sue Obeidi is the Director of the Hollywood Bureau for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Obeidi ensures that MPAC’s Hollywood Bureau is a partner with the entertainment industry.

Evelyn Alsultany is a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media and on forms of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism. Alsultany is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Episode 127: The Power of Storytelling, with Ahmed Khan, from the Creative Minority Podcast

Parvez and Omar are joined by a fellow podcaster, Ahmed Khan.  They sit down at Zaytuna College in Berkeley to discuss the power of storytelling, and the inspiration behind some of their respective work in the world of podcasts.

About The Creative Minority Podcast

The Creative Minority seeks to engage with contemporary intellectual issues ranging from but not included to politics, philosophy, theology, sociology, metaphysics, ethics, history, medicine and others. Our speakers include world class academics, theologians, scientists, professors, and celebrities who are at the forefront of shaping academia and culture.

The Creative Minority on Apple Podcasts

Episode 126: The Midterm Elections & The Problem of Democracy, with Shadi Hamid

Parvez and Omar sit down with returning guest Shadi Hamid to discuss the midterm elections and his new book, The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea.  

In The Problem of Democracy, Shadi Hamid reimagines the ongoing debate on democracy’s merits and proposes an ambitious agenda for reviving the lost art of democracy promotion in the world’s most undemocratic regions.  What happens when democracy produces "bad" outcomes? Is democracy good because of its outcomes or despite them? 

About Shadi Hamid

Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an assistant research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he writes a monthly essay on culture and politics. His new book is The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East, and the Rise and Fall of an Idea (Oxford University Press). His previous book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs. Hamid’s first book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014.  He is also the co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam with Will McCants.

Episode 125: Zaki Returns to Discuss Polarization in Social Media, Muslim Twitter and More!

Zaki Hasan, co-founder of the show, returns to catch up with Omar and Parvez.  They discuss the impacts of social media on the polarized state of politics, Muslim Twitter and much more!

About Zaki Hasan

Zaki Hasan has been a media scholar and critic for more than twenty years. His film reviews and analyses have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, HuffPost, and The Philadelphia Weekly, and in 2015 he was inducted into the prestigious San Francisco Film Critics Circle. He also co-wrote Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture, contributed to books on the Star Wars, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, and Blade Runner franchises, and has appeared as an expert panelist on HuffPost Live and Al Jazeera America's The Stream.

Episode 124: A Discussion with a Pioneer in the American Muslim Experience, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi

Parvez and Omar make a trek down to Orange County to sit with a pioneer in the American Muslim experience, Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi and learn about his life's journey from India to Madinah to United States and to discuss his legacy and impact on the American Muslim community.

About Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi

Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi is the imam and religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, Garden Grove; he also chairs the Fiqh Council of North America and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. Siddiqi has previously led the Religious Affairs Committee of the Muslim Students Association, Department of Religious Affairs at the Muslim World League Office to the UN and the United States, Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and Islamic Society of North America. He is also a founding member of the World Economic Forum's Community of West and Islam Dialogue (C-100). Siddiqi is a frequent participant in interfaith events, authors commentary and issues fatwas through the internet hub IslamOnline.net, and lectures widely on Islamic law. Siddiqi was one of the signatories in October 2007 of A Common Word Between Us and You. He is a graduate of the Islamic University of Medina, Birmingham University, and Harvard University.

Episode 123: The Journey of Michael Wolfe

Parvez and Omar sit down with Michael Wolfe to discuss his journey to Islam, his pilgrimages to Mecca, and his work with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF).

About Michael Wolfe

Michael B. Wolfe is an American poet, author, and the President and Co-Executive Producer of Unity Productions Foundation. A secular American born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Christian mother and a Jewish father, Wolfe converted to Islam at 40 and has been a frequent lecturer on Islamic issues at universities across the United States including Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, and Princeton. He holds a degree in Classics from Wesleyan University.