This week, many Muslim Americans will begin observing the holy month of Ramadan. A time of intense spiritual discipline, and fasting during the daylight hours from dawn to dusk, Ramadan allows for contemplation of one’s relationship with God, intensive prayer, charity, and study of the Quran. As the seasons of Lent and Ramadan cross over this year, Dr. Najeeba Syeed, Executive Director of Interfaith at Augsburg University, joins State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s weekly radio show and podcast, to talk about how these diverse traditions provide us with an opportunity to strengthen relationships with our neighbors across faith and place.

Najeeba is the inaugural El Hibri Endowed Chair and Executive Director of Interfaith at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, where she also serves as faculty advisor for Augsburg’s Interfaith Scholars. In this role, she partners with campus leaders on initiatives related to interreligious learning and living. Over the past two decades, she has been a professor, expert practitioner, and public speaker in conflict resolution, interfaith studies, mediation, education, deliberative democracy, and social, gender and racial equity. She joins Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, host of State of Belief, to speak about her background and what the broader interfaith and American community can learn from the teachings of Ramadan.

And Paul shares some impressions from his recent trip to Fresno, California, full of encounters with a broad community of diverse interreligious activists there.