The Middlepath Podcast (TMP)

FOLLOW TMP: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/themiddlepath_podcast/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/middle_path_ FACEBOOK | https://www.facebook.com/themiddlepathpodcast Nasheed by Maher Zain Zaid Shakir is a prominent American Muslim scholar and a professor emeritus and board observer of Zaytuna College. He has taught courses in Arabic, Islamic spirituality, contemporary Muslim thought, Islamic history and politics, and Shafi’i fiqh at the College. He speaks and writes on a wide range of topics, and he travels frequently across the United States to support institution-building projects in the Muslim community. In 2007, he was a signatory of the 2007 letter “A Common Word Between Us and You,” an appeal for peace and cooperation between Christians and Muslims, and in 2016, he presided over the public memorial for Muhammad Ali. He speaks and writes on a wide range of topics and has become a voice of conscience for American Muslims as well as people of other faiths. He is regularly included as one of the Western world’s most influential Muslim scholars in The Muslim 500, an annual ranking edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin. In addition to formerly serving in the US Air Force, Imam Zaid holds a Bachelor's in Islamic Law and Arabic Language from Abu Nour University in Damascus, an M.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University, a B.A. in International Relations from the American University in DC as well as multiple ijazahs in the Islamic sciences.

FOLLOW TMP: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/themiddlepath_podcast/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/middle_path_ FACEBOOK | https://www.facebook.com/themiddlepathpodcast Abdurrahman Morsi is a Muslim TikToker and Content Creator as well as a full-time Dental student. TikTok: @egypturk Instagram: @egyptturk Youtube: Egypturk

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/41D2NWP6ppdw5OT8K5uCx8 FOLLOW TMP: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/themiddlepath_podcast/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/middle_path_ FACEBOOK | https://www.facebook.com/themiddlepathpodcastBuffins, Tamari, Zaid, and Rashid have a frank conversation about what it was like to attend Islamic private schools for most of their lives. The schools they attended are located in Tampa, FL.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/41D2NWP6ppdw5OT8K5uCx8 APPLE PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-middlepath-podcast-tmp/id1587527751 FOLLOW TMP: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/themiddlepath_podcast/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/middle_path_ FACEBOOK | https://www.facebook.com/themiddlepathpodcast Imam Khalid Latif is the University Chaplain for New York University and Executive Director of the Islamic Center at NYU. He was appointed the first Muslim chaplain at NYU in 2005. He was also appointed the first Muslim chaplain at Princeton University in 2006. Spending a year commuting between these two institutions, he finally decided to commit full-time to New York University's Islamic Center where his position was officially institutionalized in the spring of 2007. Under his leadership, the Islamic Center at NYU became the first ever established Muslim student center at an institution of higher education in the United States. He is also the co-founder of Honest Chops, the first-ever all-natural/organic halal butcher in NYC and its spinoff restaurant Burgers by Honest Chops, the Muslim Wedding Service, an agency specializing in providing charismatic and inspirational marriage officiants for wedding ceremonies, and a partner in the MKO Group, an investment group that owns and operates multiple Edible Arrangements franchises in Manhattan. Each of these ventures was started to help generate revenue to assist people in need. In 2019, Imam Latif co-founded and became the board president of Pillars of Peace, a non-profit established in order to address a gap in appropriate services for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence from all backgrounds and in particular within the Muslim community. Pillars completed a successful $1M capital campaign for "The Noora House", an emergency confidential shelter for women and children, in less than two weeks and is expected to open in the Spring of 2022. He has been featured in numerous media outlets including the Huffington Post, BBC, NPR, CNN, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Colbert Report, Katie Couric, Newsweek, Time, BET and GEO TV. He has been named a Global Interfaith Visionary by the United Nations Temple of Understanding (2010), one of 100 NYC Luminaries by the New York Public Library (2011), one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talaal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (2009 & 2010), a Millennial Leader for Social Justice by Auburn Seminary (2011), listed to the Christian Science Monitor's "30 Under 30" list (2012)

Magda Saleh is the Executive Vice President of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) and Board Chair of a Bayaan Academy, a K-12 Islamic School in Tampa, FL Previously, she helped establish and lead UAF (Universal Academy of Florida) as principal before moving to AYA (American Youth Academy) two prominent Islamic Schools also in Tampa.

Arshia Ali-Khan is the interim CEO of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) a nonprofit organization that funds legal work and programming to defend Muslims and Muslim organizations against injustice in American courtrooms, prisons, and communities.

FOLLOW TMP: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/themiddlepath_podcast/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/middle_path_ Sh. Yassir Fazaga was born in Eritea in Northeast Africa and moved to the United States at the age of 15. He has a Bachelors Degree in Islamic Studies from the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in Fairfax, Virginia and has a Masters in Marriage & Family Counseling from California State University of Long Beach. He has completed his 2nd Masters in Middle Eastern Studies at UT Austin, Texas and is a licensed counselor. Sheikh Yassir has served as the Religious Leader of Orange County Islamic Foundation (OCIF) in Mission Viejo, California. He was the Director of Mental Health Department at Access California Social Services Agency in Anaheim, where he helped families with different challenges in life which include: domestic violence issues, communication problems, marital matters, generational gap, difficult teens, some mental and personality disorders, divorce, grief, and single parenting, among others. He has done numerous interviews about Islam on television and radio stations around the globe. He speaks on Islam and related topics for conferences, churches, high schools, colleges and universities. He served on the advisory board of the Islamic Studies program at Claremont Graduate School and is listed on the “Who is Who among America’s Teachers” where the best students choose their best teachers and was featured on the Today Show on “Spirituality in America”. He was one of the co-hosts of weekly “WiseLiving” TV program and a regular guest speaker on Peace TV. Sh Yassir Fazaga is a unique talent in North America. His skill set of being a traditionally trained and experienced Imam along with being a clinically experienced and credentialed psychotherapist is extremely rare. He was one of the first to meld the two disciplines together about 20 years ago and continues to be one of a handful of people that have this experience. Due to his unique credentials, he is considered an expert in the field and has been speaking widely on the topic of Islam & Psychology for many years.

Khaled A. Beydoun, a native of Detroit, is a leading scholar on national security, the War on Terror, and civil rights. He is the author of the critically acclaimed American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear , and co-editor of Islamophobia and the Law. His next book, The New Crusades: Islamophobia, the World and the Wars Between will be published in 2021. Beydoun's research investigates modern modes of policing and their impact on Arab and Muslim communities. A Critical Race theorist, he is specifically interested in the War on Terror's impact on the First Amendment liberties of these and other disproportionately affected groups in the United States. His work has been published in top law journals, including the University of California Law Review, the Northwestern Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Harvard Civil Liberties-Civil Rights Law Review and more. In addition to his scholarly work, Beydoun is regarded as a leading public intellectual on Islamophobia, in the United States and abroad, and matters germane to policing and profiling of Muslim populations. His insights have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Guardian, the BBC and more. In addition to his public commentary, Beydoun is an established advocate, earning the coveted Racial Equality Fellowship from the Open Society Foundation and serving on the Michigan Advisory Committee of the United States Commission for Civil Rights. Before joining the faculty at Wayne Law, Beydoun taught at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville School of law. He also served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and still served as a Senior Affiliated Faculty Member at the University of California-Berkeley Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP). He earned his law degree from the UCLA School of Law, an LL.M. from the University of Toronto, and his A.B. from the University of Michigan. He will earn his M.Ed. in Technology, Innovation and Education from Harvard University in May of 2021.

Sh. Yassir Fazaga was born in Eritea in Northeast Africa and moved to the United States at the age of 15. He has a Bachelors Degree in Islamic Studies from the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in Fairfax, Virginia and has a Masters in Marriage & Family Counseling from California State University of Long Beach. He has completed his 2nd Masters in Middle Eastern Studies at UT Austin, Texas and is a licensed counselor. Sheikh Yassir has served as the Religious Leader of Orange County Islamic Foundation (OCIF) in Mission Viejo, California. He was the Director of Mental Health Department at Access California Social Services Agency in Anaheim, where he helped families with different challenges in life which include: domestic violence issues, communication problems, marital matters, generational gap, difficult teens, some mental and personality disorders, divorce, grief, and single parenting, among others. He has done numerous interviews about Islam on television and radio stations around the globe. He speaks on Islam and related topics for conferences, churches, high schools, colleges and universities. He served on the advisory board of the Islamic Studies program at Claremont Graduate School and is listed on the “Who is Who among America’s Teachers” where the best students choose their best teachers and was featured on the Today Show on “Spirituality in America”. He was one of the co-hosts of weekly “WiseLiving” TV program and a regular guest speaker on Peace TV. Sh Yassir Fazaga is a unique talent in North America. His skill set of being a traditionally trained and experienced Imam along with being a clinically experienced and credentialed psychotherapist is extremely rare. He was one of the first to meld the two disciplines together about 20 years ago and continues to be one of a handful of people that have this experience. Due to his unique credentials, he is considered an expert in the field and has been speaking widely on the topic of Islam & Psychology for many years.

Zaid Shakir is a prominent American Muslim scholar and a professor emeritus and board observer of Zaytuna College. He has taught courses in Arabic, Islamic spirituality, contemporary Muslim thought, Islamic history and politics, and Shafi’i fiqh at the College. He speaks and writes on a wide range of topics, and he travels frequently across the United States to support institution-building projects in the Muslim community. In 2007, he was a signatory of the 2007 letter “A Common Word Between Us and You,” an appeal for peace and cooperation between Christians and Muslims, and in 2016, he presided over the public memorial for Muhammad Ali. He speaks and writes on a wide range of topics and has become a voice of conscience for American Muslims as well as people of other faiths. He is regularly included as one of the Western world’s most influential Muslim scholars in The Muslim 500, an annual ranking edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin. In addition to formerly serving in the US Air Force, Imam Zaid holds a Bachelor's in Islamic Law and Arabic Language from Abu Nour University in Damascus, an M.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University, a B.A. in International Relations from the American University in DC as well as multiple ijazahs in the Islamic sciences.

Dr. James Jones is Executive Vice President of the Islamic Seminary of America. He is a Professor Emeritus of World Religions and former Chair of both the Dept of World Religions and the African Studies Program at Manhattanville College (Purchase, NY). Dr. Jones’s research focuses on the socio cultural impact of prejudice and the intersectionality between sexism and racism. He has a DMin from Hartford Seminary (Christian- Muslim relations) and a MA in Religion from Yale Divinity School. He is President of the Malik Human Services Institute, a prison chaplain and marriage counselor for more than two decades, and a member of the Association of Professional Chaplains.

Imam and Chaplain Omer Bajwa has served as chaplain at Yale University for the past 14 years and talks candidly about his experience there and the everyday challenges Muslims face at Ivy League institutions in general. Follow @the_middle_path on instagram

Follow @themiddlepath_podcast

Follow @themiddlepath_podcast

Follow @themiddlepath_podcast

Sh. Anwar has served as an Imam for 9 Years in Salt Lake City, Memphis, and Nashville. He earned his undergraduate degree in Film at the University of Utah and studied Islam in Gaza, Palestine, Ma’had Al-Furqan in Kuwait, and the Graduate Theological Foundation. He is currently pursuing his Masters in Islamic Education from the Islamic Seminary of America. In addition to clergy-work, Sh. Anwar works with IERA (Islamic Education and Research Academy), a worldwide organization that aims to spread awareness and dispel misconceptions about Islam.SHOW LESS

Follow @the_middlepath_podcast