{"id":1104,"date":"2016-04-18T12:09:01","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T18:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/2016\/04\/18\/dr-amir-hussain-talked-about-islam-and-the-building-of-america\/"},"modified":"2016-04-18T12:09:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T19:09:01","slug":"dr-amir-hussain-talked-about-islam-and-the-building-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/2016\/04\/18\/dr-amir-hussain-talked-about-islam-and-the-building-of-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Amir Hussain:”American values and Islamic values are intertwined and are not as different as imagined.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 14, 2016, Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies\u00a0at Loyola Marymount University, gave a lecture on Islam and the building of America at Pacifica Institute Los Angeles branch. Dr. Hussain teaches courses on Islam\u00a0and specializes in the study of contemporary Muslim societies\u00a0in North America.\u00a0Hussain is the author and editor of 5 books and over 50 scholarly articles and book chapters. He is currently finishing a book on how American Muslims have woven themselves into the fabric of American life, titled, \u201cMuslims and the Making\u00a0of America.\u201d From 2011 to 2015 he was the editor of the Journal of American Academy of Religion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hussain talks about the notion that Muslims are newcomers to America, which has a little bit of truth to it. The majority of self-identified Muslims are recent immigrants. However, there is a very important group, African-American\u00a0Muslims, who were\u00a0here before America was\u00a0an independent country.About 10 percent of West African slaves were Muslims.\u00a0Hussain\u2019s\u00a0recent book, \u201cMuslims and the Making of America,\u201d\u00a0challenges the idea that Muslims are alien to American\u00a0values and seeks to demonstrate that there has never been an America without Islam.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Islam<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently,\u00a0when\u00a0President Obama spoke about\u00a0Muslims\u00a0at the Cairo University, he said\u00a0\u201cThey have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.\u00a0And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Quran that one of our Founding Fathers \u2013 Thomas Jefferson \u2013\u00a0kept in his personal library.\u201d\u00a0He\u00a0had purchased the\u00a0Quran\u00a0in 1765, which eventually ended up in the Congress.\u00a0Hussain points out that\u00a0Jefferson was definitely a fan of religious\u00a0liberty and was\u00a0quite proud of writing\u00a0the\u00a0Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hussain mentions Muhammad Ali as his great hero\u00a0and\u00a0has dedicated his book to him and Ahmet Ertegun,\u00a0a Turkish-American Muslim who co-founded\u00a0Atlantic records.\u00a0In the 1950\u2019s, he had an influence on jazz music and signed many famous artists. In the 21st<\/sup>century,\u00a0many Muslim rap and hip-hop artists\u00a0spoke their faith through the lyrics of theirmusic. Hussain explains that\u00a0Muslim influences on American music are evident\u00a0just like many other aspects of the American culture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He concludes by restating that American values and Islamic values are intertwined and are not as different as\u00a0imagined.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 14, 2016, Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies\u00a0at Loyola Marymount University, gave a lecture on Islam and the building of America at Pacifica Institute Los Angeles branch. Dr. Hussain teaches courses on Islam\u00a0and specializes in the study of contemporary Muslim societies\u00a0in North America.\u00a0Hussain is the author and editor of 5 books and over 50 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,44],"tags":[358,50,52,285],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recent-events","category-slideshow","tag-amir-hussain","tag-islam","tag-lecture","tag-los-angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificainstitute.org\/orange-county\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}