Week of 7/11 Events

Mon 7/11 - Islam Quiz & Conversation Hour (1 pm)

Tue 7/12 - Islam & Human Rights by Mourad Brahmi (1 pm)

Wed 7/13 - Guest Speaker Reza Aslan on Islam & Modernity (4 pm)

Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is the founder of AslanMedia.com, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues; Abraham's Vision, an educational, conflict transformation organization for Israeli and Palestinian youths; PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world; and the Levantine Cultural Center, which builds bridges between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world through the arts.

Aslan's first book is the International Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age), as well as editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalties, Contentions, and Complexities.

Reza Aslan is Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of BoomGen Studios, the premier entertainment brand for creative content from and about the Greater Middle East and President of AppOvation Labs, a mobile applications company. Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife (author and entrepreneur Jessica Jackley) where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Thursday 7/14 - Guest Speaker, Doug Penhallegon on Comparison and Contrast of the Arab Spring and Eastern European Revolutions (12 pm)

Doug Penhallegon teaches in the History Department at Duquesne University in addition to the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement. He has two Master's degrees from Duquesne, in History and in Liberal Studies. His fields of expertise include contemporary Islamic-Western relations, Middle East politics, and peacebuilding. Doug is the 2010-2011 Commonwealth Speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, where he offers public lectures on the debate over the supposed "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim and Western worlds. He also earned a Certificate in National Security and Intelligence Studies from Point Park University. He has taught history everywhere from below the flightdeck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to a halfway house in Harlem, NY. In the fall of 2011 he will begin a PhD in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations at Kent State University.

Thursday 7/14 - Qur'an Analysis in English (1 pm)

Friday 7/15 - Film Screening: "Witness: Islam & America"