Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
Date: Friday, April 11th, 2008 Time: 10:00AM – 12:30PM Place: Auditorium, Hunter College School of Social Work 129 E. 79th Street , New York City (Light refreshments will be served following the presentation.) Principle Investigator: Dr. Irene Chung, Associate Professor, Hunter College School of Social Work This study explores ethnic-specific and immigrant-specific issues in conjunction with … Read more
In New York City, as well as nationwide, an increasingly significant number of children speak a language other than English at home. Sound educational policies, speech/language interventions and parenting practices largely rely on our understanding of the processes through which Asian American children develop proficiency in both their home language and English. In this presentation, … Read more
Educational Changes in Mongolia Timeline of Mongolia’s Educational System from 1911 to 2003 1911 – The first formal and secular education in Mongolia begins. 1935 – 55% of all party members in Mongolia are illiterate. Only 2.7% of all children are enrolled in secular state schools. 13% of all children are enrolled in monastic schools. … Read more
Professor Bayoumi’s talk will begin with an overview of Islam, from its beginnings in seventh century Arabia through its rise into Asia and Africa. He will detail several important concepts to Islamic thought, including the five pillars of Islam, the idea of “tawheed” or the one-ness of God, and the notion of “taqwa” or God-consciousness.
The lecture will then trace the rise of Islam in the United States, from its beginnings in the Atlantic slave trade through the early history of Asian immigrants in the twentieth century to the rise of Malcolm X in the 1950s and 1960s. Opposing the dominant narrative of Islam among African American communities as a stance of rejection and exclusion (as seen through the history and thought of the Nation of Islam), this talk instead will seek to build a counter narrative of universal belonging that was developed with historic connections between African American and Asian American Muslims.
Although later eclipsed by the media success of the Nation of Islam, this community of Muslims, which was largely a multi-racial and pan-ethnic movement, was the major Muslim community in the United States roughly between the years of 1920 and 1950.
Many of these Muslims were at the forefront of the be-bop movement of jazz in the 1950s, and through an examination of this cultural connection the lecture proceeded to argue that conversion to Islam was particularly attractive for African Americans since it offered participation in a religion of both universal belonging and particular racial pride (in a kind of Afro-Asiatic identity). Thus, Islam, as shared between Asian Americans and African Americans, became a way of apostatizing against the defining and demeaning racial logics of the United States and opened a system of belief that viewed the racial and national divisions of the world as contemptibly parochial.