In this episode, Nihal interviews the Muslim chaplains of Columbia and Yale Universities. They discuss how young people can learn to be confident on college campuses in the United States through a combined effort of companionship and knowledge. This episode was recorded last summer.

Ebad(ur) Rahman is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Columbia. He completed his Ph.D. in the Religion Department at Columbia University in 2022. Ebad earned his B.A. from New York University, with a concentration on Islam in America, and studied in a four-year pilot seminary program in California. His research interests include Qur'anic Studies, Islamic thought in the 18th - 20th centuries, and Islam in America.

Omer Bajwa serves as Director of Muslim Life in the Chaplain’s Office at Yale and has been engaged in religious service, inter-religious engagement and educational outreach since 2000. He earned his Graduate Certificate in Islamic Chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary, has an MA in Near Eastern Studies and an MS in Communication from Cornell University, and a BA from Binghamton University. His interests include Islam in the United States and the intersections of culture, media, politics and spirituality. He regularly lectures about these and other topics around the country. Additionally, Omer mentors contemporary Muslims on exploring their intellectual and spiritual lives in today’s world. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming book, “Mantle of Mercy: Islamic Chaplaincy in North America” by Templeton Press. He loves taking long hikes with his family and friends, and when not working, he can often be found sampling local desserts.

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Many times people find the hadith tradition very cumbersome to navigate. Whether it is understanding how to engage with hadith in a modern context, what terms such as "strong" or "weak" mean, or how a non-scholar should engage with the tradition.

As the United Nations has reiterated multiple times, Israel is in violation of international law through its settlements. The Israeli government’s disproportionate response to Hamas’s October 7th attack has resulted in the United Nations declaring that  “there is an ongoing campaign by Israel resulting in crimes against humanity in Gaza.” They describe the situation in Gaza as an “occupation [that] needs to end” in which “there must be reparation, restitution and reconstruction, towards full justice for Palestinians” and a “call for prevention of genocide.” Amnesty International has declared that the Israeli government is guilty of “war crimes” due to their mass extermination of civilians in Gaza, and the leveling of entire apartment complexes in their unfolding ethnic cleansing campaign of the Palestinian people. This is in addition to their 280 page report from 2021 concluding that the Israeli government is guilty of apartheid and has violated international law.

In light of all of this, the question arises: what can we do? Nihal sat down with Mohamad Habehh at American Muslims for Palestine to speak about how people througout the world can stand up for the people of Palestine.

Mohamad Habehh serves as the Director of Community Outreach of American Muslims for Palestine NJ Chapter. He is a graduate from Rutgers-Newark where he studied social work and political science and served as the President of the Students for Justice in Palestine student organization on campus. He also serves as an advisor to the city of Hackensack on the access for all board and is an active community member in the Islamic Center of Passaic County where he serves as a volunteer coordinator and educator. Mohamad is currently working on achieving his Master’s degree from Al-Manara institute in Islamic studies.

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Faith in Fine Print is hosted by Nihal Khan and is the official podcast of Maktab Academy. ⁠⁠www.maktabacademy.net

This week marked the 28th commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide. In this episode, Nihal speaks to Dr. Ermin Sinanović, a political scientist who is an expert on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is also trained as an Islamic scholar from the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Nihal and Dr. Ermin discussed the state of Muslims in Bosnia after the break up of Yugoslavia, Serbian and Croat aggression against the Bosniak Muslim population, and what the future looks like for Bosnia. They also discussed the moral failing of the United Nations in safeguarding the Bosniak Muslims, and how the Dutch soldiers stationed in Bosnia allowed the genocide to occur.

While this was a difficult episode to record, many Muslims either do not know what happened to Bosnian Muslims barely 30 years ago, or they have forgotten. As such, we must continue to keep their memory alive through such discussions.

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Ermin Sinanović is executive director of the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World (CICW) at Shenandoah University, where he is also Scholar in Residence. He holds a MA and PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University, two bachelor's degrees (Islam and Political Science) from the International Islamic University Malaysia, and a master's degree from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Follow him on Twitter @SinanovicErmin

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Faith in Fine Print is hosted by Nihal Khan and is the official podcast of Maktab Academy. ⁠www.maktabacademy.net

Knowing our history as Muslims is imperative when it comes to knowing our narrative. The importance of understanding our collective Muslim history is directly correlated with how we engage with our faith. Do we accept our sources to be true and telling of our past, or should we trust orientalist sources to recall our own narrative? In this episode, Abu Ayyub Marulanda discusses the importance of engaging with Islamic history to recall our past after living with historical amnesia. While speaking about how Muslim Spain allowed him to reconnect with his ancestry and lineage, Abu Ayyub and Nihal discussed the need to read Muslim sources, becoming familiar with them, and reclaiming Muslim agency. They also reflected about life in Istanbul and how the Ottomans discovered the grave of the companion Abu Ayyub al-Ansari.
Abu Ayyub Marulanda is a teacher and student of Islamic history. He writes and teaches at InTheShadeOfTheMinaret.com, Imam Ghazali Institute, and offers tours of Istanbul at Istanbul Spiritual Tours. Having spent over a decade overseas, he loves to explore the vestiges of our legacy. Combining this passion for history, together with travel and the sacred sciences; he teaches history in a fun and informative way. An avid reader, he loves bringing little-known sources to the classroom, while his illustrations and maps adorn course slides and posts. He currently lives in Istanbul with his family. Follow him @abu_ayyub_chronicles.
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Faith in Fine Print is hosted by Nihal Khan and is the official podcast of Maktab Academy.
www.maktabacademy.net

This episode covers the macro and micro elements associated with producing deliberate communities. How do Muslims construct deliberate communities? How has industrialization lead to the pandemic of loneliness on a grand scale? How do we curate culture organically? How does Islam function in an urban vs. suburban setting? These are some of the questions that Imam Ahmad Deeb and Ahmed Askary discussed with Nihal Khan.

They also touched on how Istanbul is a microcosm of the problems of the ummah, the power of Islam in urban environments, and how we can move communities past dysfunction and rivalry, through processing the past and being mercifully honest with each other.

Imam Ahmad Deeb is the co-founder of Itqaan Institute and Pillars Seminary. He studied the Islamic sciences under his father Shaykh Abdullah Deeb and with scholars in South Africa. He holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Central Florida and a MA in Islamic Studies and Leadership from the Bayan Islamic Graduate School. His PhD research is focusing on community development in American mosques. 

Ahmed Askary is co-founder of a stealth permanent capital organization and resides in Istanbul. He writes at Post Apathy and tweets @pashadelics.

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Meet Ali Keeler, one of the founders of Al Firdaus Ensemble, a Spain-based musical band which combines between classical, western, Moroccan, Andalusi, and Syrian styles in their music. Known for their Celtic Salawat and Madha Morisco, Nihal sat with Ali and spoke about spiritual expression through art and how to bring people together through art. They also spoke about their new album "Shifa" and the motivations behind its production. This episode will also feature some of their songs from the new album.

Ali Keeler was born in London in 1973 and started learning the violin at the age of seven. During his youth, he played in several orchestras. In 1991, he went on to study classical violin at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where he gained experience playing in a string quartet. He moved to Damascus in Syria in 1998. During his time in Syria, he learnt to sing within the tradition of the maqam in the zawiyas of Damascus and Aleppo, receiving instruction in singing from the well-known munshid Ustadh Mustapha Karim. Applying his musical experience within the Arabic tradition to the violin, he has developed a varied repertoire of Celtic, Arabic, Andalusi and Turkish pieces. In 2006, he moved to Granada and in 2007 helped form the group Al Kauthar. He contributed within the group as the lead singer, violinist, arranger and composer, performing in concerts and festivals in Europe, Turkey and Morocco.

In 2012 he founded the group Al Firdaus Ensemble, with whom he has performed in numerous concerts throughout Europe, the US, North Africa, Turkey, & Lebanon.

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Along with Zeshan Gondal, FFP was honored to have Saaleh Baseer join us once again! Nihal took a journey with Saaleh and Zeshan into a history of South Asia. They spoke about the importance of knowing one's ethnic roots, how Islam developed in South Asia, the Mughal and Ottoman empires, and who some of the major Muslim scholars of South Asia were. They also spoke about the effects of British colonialism on South Asians for generations to come.

Saaleh Baseer is currently completing his MA in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago while also studying at Darul Qasim. He holds a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University and an 'alimiyyah degree from Darul Uloom Azaadville in South Africa. Saaleh seeks to explore how the Mughal sultanate fragmented epistemologically and politically amid the rise of the British. Follow him on instagram @saalehbaseer. 

Zeshan Gondal is Head of Strategy at Zayn Capital, a VC firm investing in startups in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and MENA. He previously worked as a David Swensen Fellow at Yale University, where he advised senior University leadership on strategic financial and operational decisions. Zeshan holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale and is an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School.

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Faith in Fine Print is brought to you by The Mantle, a sacred safe space dedicated to facilitating and demonstrating Islamic Spirituality.

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Death can come upon anyone at anytime. Though, indeed a saddening event, how we prepare for dying may ease the pangs of it on those closest to us. Nihal spoke with Chaplain Sondos Kholoki about how the Muslim community can better prepare for death communally. She spoke about her experiences working as a hospital chaplain, her experiences helping others grieve their loved ones, and how we can frame death in a way wherein we can realistically prepare for it. As of recent, Chaplain Sondos also published a book titled "Musings of a Muslim Chaplain."

Chaplain Sondos Kholaki serves as a hospital staff chaplain and a community chaplain in Southern California. She is board-certified with the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC). Sondos earned a Master of Divinity degree in Islamic Chaplaincy at the Claremont School of Theology/Bayan Islamic Graduate School as the recipient of the Fathi Osman Academic Excellence award and a Bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing from UCLA, where she received the prestigious Regents Scholar award. Sondos completed five units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and served as the program's first Muslim chaplain ministering to all faiths but focusing on Muslim patient care. She is the author of "Musings of a Muslim Chaplain" (2020) and a co-editor of the book, "Mantle of Mercy: Islamic Chaplaincy in North America" (fall 2021). Sondos also serves as Vice President of Healthcare for the Association of Muslim Chaplains (AMC).Sondos enjoys sipping a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, listening to Qur'an recitation by Turkish reciters, and singing her heart out at spiritual gatherings. Sondos is married and has two children.

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Faith in Fine Print is brought to you by The Mantle, a sacred safe space dedicated to facilitating and demonstrating Islamic Spirituality.  

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