Diffused Congruence: The American Muslim Experience

Episode 139: What is Palliative Care and Its Implications with Dr. Aziz Ansari and Omer Mozaffar

We continue making our way through our Chicago recordings with a very special conversation about Palliative Care, a topic that is hardly discussed in the Muslim communities but can impact the lives of young and old alike within the community. Palliative care specifically deals with relieving serious health-related suffering, be it physical, psychological, social, or spiritual for patients with serious illness like cardiovascular disease, cancer, major organ failure, end-stage chronic illness, acute trauma, or extreme frailty related to old age. It includes pastoral considerations, and more broadly can have profound implications on legal matters such as Living wills and other advance directives, the necessity of families having discussions about of quality of life and long terms care, among other issues. 

About Our Guests
Dr. Aziz Ansari, is a Professor of Medicine and is the Associate Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Optimization and Revenue Integrity at Loyola University Medical Center. He is a practicing and board-certified hospitalist and palliative care physician.

Omer Mozaffar serves as the Muslim Chaplain at Loyola University Chicago where he addresses theological, personal, social matters for students of all sectarian outlooks. He has received Islamic studies training both through traditional and academic sources.  Across the Muslim community, for nearly three decades, he has been giving sermons, officiating weddings, leading classes at Islamic centers.

Episode 138: Habeeb Quadri, Educator Extraordinaire

Next stop in Chicagoland takes us to Skokie where Parvez and Omar had the honor of sitting with author, educator and school administrator, Habeeb Quadri. We had an in-depth conversation about his experiences growing up in Chicago, what inspired him to become an educator, and his journey from teaching inner city schools in Detroit and Chicago to serving as Principal and Superintendent of a renowned Islamic school.

It was also a great opportunity for Parvez and Habeeb, who have known each other for over 30 years to reconnect, reminisce about cutting their teeth as youth activist in the 90s with Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) and the organization's resurgence in recent years.     

About Habeeb Quadri
Habeeb Quadri has served as principal of the Muslim Community Center Academy (MCCA) since 2002, where he has focused on changing school culture, financial turnaround, and transforming educational standards. He led MCCA to become one of the first Islamic parochial schools to receive national accreditation by implementing a comprehensive improvement plan that engaged stakeholders at all levels.

Habeeb is on the principal advisory board and a part-time staffer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Principal Center and the founder of High Quality Educational Consulting. He was one of five private school leaders to be selected for the 2019 class of nationally distinguished principals by the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

He has lectured throughout the United States, Canada and abroad on Islam, society, and social problems confronting Muslim youth and the community at large, including workshops for the U.S Department of State, weekend and full-time Islamic schools, public schools and universities. 

Habeeb holds an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from Wayne State University and a B.A. in the Teaching of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has pursued continued advanced studies with Harvard University’s Professional Development Program.

Episode 137: Ahmed Rehab and ”the Chicago Way”

Next stop on Parvez & Omar's Chicago sojourn is the beautiful CAIR offices on historic State Street in downtown where they had the privilege of sitting with Ahmed Rehab. Ahmed's ability to articulate a clear and convincing analysis of contemporary social and political issues while maintaining a fidelity to Islam's normative teachings and practices made for a wide ranging and thought-provoking interview.      

 

About Ahmed Rehab

Ahmed is Executive Director of the Chicago Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as well as CAIR's National Strategic Communications Director. CAIR is the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group.

A prolific writer and lecturer on contemporary social issues including civil rights, media relations, and Islam-West relations, Ahmed lectures at various University campuses in Chicago and around the nation.

Ahmed comments regularly as a guest on various local TV and cable news programs, as well as on radio stations. He has been interviewed by news publications such as the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Herald, the Washington Post, the Orlando Sentinel, the Economist, the Boston Globe, Crain's Business Magazine, Germany's Die Zeit, and many more. His Op-Ed's have been published in numerous newspapers around the country.

Episode 136: Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia

Parvez and Omar have the opportunity to sit with Shaykh Amin Kholwadia and learn about his lifelong journey towards Islamic scholarship, from childhood, schooling, coming to America, and ultimately, the establishment of Darul Qasim, an institute of traditional Islamic higher learning headquartered in the Glendale Heights suburb of Chicago.

About Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia

Shaykh Amin is continually engaged with a diverse following of mentees. His deep knowledge in the Islamic tradition and his aggressive engagement with contemporary issues facing everyday Muslims in the West has endeared him to young Islamic scholars and professionals all over. 

Shaykh Mohammed Amin is a Muslim scholar, mentor, and the founder of Darul Qasim, an institute of traditional Islamic higher learning headquartered in the Glendale Heights suburb of Chicago. Shaykh Amin is an active advocate of the classical Sunni tradition of Islamic scholarship and a passionate promoter of traditional Islamic sciences and methodologies of teaching and learning. He is regarded internationally as an expert theologian and an authority in the fields of Islamic philosophy and theosophy.

Episode 135: Umair Haseeb, from Chicagoland to the Maghreb and Back

Parvez and Omar are joined by Umair Haseeb.  They discuss his family background, growing up in Chicagoland, the spark that led to his spiritual awakening, and his studies towards Islamic scholarship abroad.

About Umair Haseeb

Umair Haseeb formally studied Arabic, the basics of Islam, and Quran in Chicago, which lead him to move to Morocco and Sahara to pursue a full time study of Arabic and Islamic Law. He received his ’Shahada’, or degree as well licenses directly from their Scholars, after studying at The Qarawiyyin in Fes, Morocco. He holds licenses in Legal Theory (Usul), Maliki Law, Grammar, Theology, and the Prophetic biography. He currently serves as the Imam of the “Sayyida Fatima Project at CIC”, under the auspices teacher Shaykh Muhammad el Emam, serving the South West Side of Chicago, as well as doing post graduate work at al Azhar University- Cairo

Episode 134: Professor Adnan Zulfiqar’s Work in Law, History and Religion

Parvez and Omar visited the Stanford University campus to sit with Professor Adnan Zulfiqar to discuss his journey and his work in the fields of law, history and religion, as well as some of the research he is currently doing in the areas of criminal law & procedure, Islamic jurisprudence, and rule of law in the Global South.  We found Adnan's experiences to be extraordinary and his insights to be enlightening, and we think you'll really enjoy the discussion!

 

About Adnan Zulfiqar

Adnan Zulfiqar is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of law, history and religion whose research focuses on critically examining the frameworks underlying legal discourses in both domestic and global contexts. His primary fields of inquiry are criminal law & procedure, Islamic jurisprudence, and rule of law in the Global South.

His most recent work centers on studying how Muslim jurists conceive of and utilize legal obligations, particularly in the context of revolution and war; rethinking approaches to the diffusion of human rights norms; and, exploring questions relating to police discretion in the United States. His scholarship has appeared in a number of publications, including the Yale Journal of International Law, Journal of Comparative Law (U.K.), West Virginia Law Review, NYU Journal of International Law & Politics and the Journal of Islamic Law [Harvard].

Professor Zulfiqar is a Regional Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Middle East Center, Editor at Harvard Law School's SHARIASource and faculty affiliate at the Rutgers Center for Transnational Law and the Center for Security, Race & Rights. 

During the 2022-23 academic year, Professor Zulfiqar was an External Faculty Fellow in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center.

He earned his J.D. (law), M.A. and Ph.D. (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.L.S. (International Affairs) from Georgetown University and a B.A. (Religion and Anthropology) from Emory University. He is proficient in multiple languages and has spent over a decade in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Episode 133: Shaykh Jabir Tarin on Islamic Scholarship, Muslim Mental Health, HFSAA and more!

Parvez and Omar return from a short post-Ramadan hiatus and meet with Shaykh Jabir Tarin to discuss his path as a young man to scholarship, his work in the growing and important field of Muslim mental health and counseling, as well his involvement with the Halal Food Standards Alliance of America (HFSAA).

About Shaykh Jabir Tarin

Shaykh Jabir Tarin is a registered associate marriage and family therapist. He has served as a teacher at several Islamic institutions, including Dua Seminary, where he teaches the Islamic Sciences, and Nur Institute. Shaykh Jabir has previously served as a therapist and spiritual and religious leader through the Muslim Mental Health Initiative at UC Berkeley and served the greater community through the Khalil Center. Currently, he passionately maintains similar roles through Wasilah Connections. Shaykh Jabir’s professional interests include providing mental health and spiritual training to the City of Fremont, integrating Islamic spirituality with mental wellness, and teaching Islamic theology to young adults and college students.

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.