The debut of 'Omar,' a thoroughly American opera : NPR. Hussein Rashid is a scholar specializing in Muslims in U.S. popular culture. Like Alryyes, he was an advisor on this opera. Rashid says that in his autobiography and other writings, Omar Ibn Said offers some coded language and certainly ambiguity in his actual beliefs. Rashid points to one chapter from the Qur'an that Said quotes in the autobiography that addresses God's power and sovereignty: the Sura al-Mulk. "The way I understand this, and the way several other scholars understand this," Rashid explains, "is that this is Omar talking about being... Continue reading

‘Ms. Marvel’: More options for who gets to save the world - CSMonitor.com. “This is the power of story,” says Dr. Rashid. “It’s not lecturing at you. It’s saying, ‘Here’s this character’s experience. We’re inviting you to that experience and inviting you to think and reflect on your own experiences.’ And that’s the work of great art.” Continue reading

‘Ms. Marvel’: More options for who gets to save the world - CSMonitor.com. “This is the power of story,” says Dr. Rashid. “It’s not lecturing at you. It’s saying, ‘Here’s this character’s experience. We’re inviting you to that experience and inviting you to think and reflect on your own experiences.’... Continue reading

More On That Now: A Spoleto Discussion Series | Spoleto Festival USA 2021The Crusades, 1000 years later Tuesday, January 18, 2022 6:00pm ET REGISTER Registrants will receive an access link via email on the day of the discussion. Test your historical knowledge: Who “won” the holy wars? It may come as no surprise to hear there are varying perspectives on the Crusades’s causes and repercussions. By some accounts, nation-states and Islam emerged, while other accounts describe a region ravished and sectarian. Dating back over a millennium, these conflicts are a foundational example of how religion and ideology have been used... Continue reading

More On That Now: A Spoleto Discussion Series | Spoleto Festival USA 2021. The Crusades, 1000 years later Tuesday, January 18, 2022 6:00pm ET REGISTER Registrants will receive an access link via email on the day of the discussion. Test your historical knowledge: Who “won” the holy wars? It may... Continue reading

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Beyond Omar Tuesday, December 14, 2021 6:00pm ET Register here: https://ticketing.spoletousa.org/5137/5139 The story of West African Muslims in the United States does not begin or end with Omar Ibn Said. While Said’s autobiography shares a remarkable first-hand account, the enslaved Muslim experience in America was not monolithic. During this talk, panelists Dr. Muhammad Fraser-Rahim (Professor, The Citadel) and Okolo Rashid (Co-Founder, President, and CEO, International Museum of Muslim Cultures) will discuss the lives and faith of several enslaved African Muslims, such as Ibrahima Abdur Rahman and Ayuba Suleiman Diallo—both princes in their homelands—and Salih Bilali and Bilali Mohammed, who worshipped... Continue reading

I joined Nikki Sanchez on the Scoot Over Podcast, hosted by Aymann Ismail, to talk about the uses of history. The official description is: History is written by the victors is a famous phrase, but rarely do we dig into what it actually means and its consequences for how we understand who we are. Aymann speaks with two academics who are teaching the rest of us to resist the neat and convenient historical narratives we learned in school . Hussein Rashid, PhD, is a freelance academic based in New York City, on the land of the Lenape people. His work... Continue reading

'Marvel's Voices': Hussein Rashid Discovers Layers of Identity Through 'Ms. Marvel' Comics | Marvel. In the context of the US population, I am a statistic. I fill a whole bunch of categories if you want to play human bingo. My parents migrated from Tanzania, in East Africa, and I’m ethnically South Asian. I get to be even more specific, because I’m an Isma’ili Shi’ah Muslim. That means I’m a religious minority, in a religious minority, in a religious minority. Born in Manhattan, and growing up in Queens, New York, I wasn’t different. Everyone was different to everyone else. That was... Continue reading

The following video is of a conversation I had with Hassan Abbas on his book The Prophet's Heir, hosted by The Asia Society NY. Continue reading

The Prophet's Heir | Asia Society. Ali ibn Abi Talib is arguably is one of the most important spiritual and intellectual authority in Islam after prophet Mohammad. Through his teachings and leadership as fourth caliph, Ali nourished Islam; but Muslims are divided on whether he was supposed to be Mohammad’s political successor, and he continues to be a polarizing figure in Islamic history. Hassan Abbas provides a nuanced, compelling portrait of this towering yet divisive figure and the origins of sectarian division within Islam. Abbas reveals how Ali assumed the spiritual mantle of Islam to spearhead the movement that the... Continue reading

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From a talk I gave at HGI Manhattan College on 1 April 2021. Continue reading

ITREB USA presents Critical Conversations, a virtual forum featuring faith-based perspectives on the questions of our time. "A History of Islam in America" features Dr. Cristal Chanelle Truscott and Dr. Hussein Rashid and is moderated by Nausheen Husain. Continue reading

ITREB Canada and ITREB USA present Critical Conversations, a virtual forum featuring faith-based perspectives on the questions of our time. Conversations on Lived Experiences of Ramadan features Dr. Alnoor Dhanani and Dr. Hussein Rashid and is moderated by Meena Naik. Continue reading

The Building Bridges project invites you to virtual workshop dialogues about cities, architecture, and contemporary life in Muslim communities. Expert panelists will offer their insights about these topics from global and local Texas frames, including the Aga Khan Trust for Culture initiatives. Learn more about the panelists and this partnership between the Aga Khan Council for the Central US and The University of Texas at Arlington on the project website here. Panelists will be engaging with workshop participants dedicated to developing short documentary film episodes relevant to these conversations. The Building Bridges project organizers will select 4 short film pitches... Continue reading

From Wrongful Arrest to Anti-Prison Activist: Bryonn Bain’s Road to ‘Lyrics From Lockdown’ - Columbia Daily Spectator. “Navigating [these politics] came through people like Bryonn who walked me through that racial consciousness and turned that into something very practical,” New School professor Hussein Rashid, who graduated from Columbia College in 1996, recalls. “We had a lot of agency coming into this protest tradition at Columbia.” As campus activists, Bain and his peers in various campus affinity organizations not only challenged institutional injustice at the administrative level but also at the student level. He and others who fought alongside him on... Continue reading

I have a new academic piece out on The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching. The article is freely available under a Creative Commons license. The abstract is as follows: The practice of teaching Islam in the American context has a particular intellectual pedigree. At this point, the critique of the Study of Religion as emerging out of a normative Christian framework is well-established in the field. Edward Said’s argument for the ways in which Islam is constructed to meet American political interests, rather than an engagement with Muslims and their religion, is nearly forty years old. These power dynamics mean... Continue reading

I recently joined the Guild of Future Architects as a member. You can view my profile here. Continue reading

I'll be giving a talk at Manhattan College's Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center on Thursday, 1 April 2021 at 7PM ET. This is a link to the event. You can register here. The first seven lines of the Qur’an, known as al-Fatiha, are possibly the most frequently recited verses of the Qur’an. This talk explores the importance of these lines in the lives of Muslims, incorporating calligraphy, theology, music, and theology. Prophet Muhammad said that all of the knowledge of the Qur’an is found in these verses. The ways in which Muslims have explored the depths of al-Fatiha allows... Continue reading

A conversation between my co-editor and myself about our new book Ms. Marvel's America: No Normal. A Conversation about the new book MS. MARVEL'S AMERICA from University Press of Mississippi on Vimeo. Continue reading

I was fortunate to moderate a panel on spiritual struggle during the lifetime of Omar ibn Said for the Spoleto Festival. Video is embedded below. Continue reading

In February 2021, I was privileged to be asked to give a talk during Yawm-e Ali. The video is embedded below. Continue reading