The Greene Space at WNYC & WQXR presents MUSLIM/AMERICAN, a five-part event series kicks off with special advance screening of Aasif Mandvi’s “Halal in the Family” on Thursday, April 9th
New York City is home to over 600,000 Muslims, many with strong family ties rooted in cultures from all over the world–Southeast Asia to North Africa, Europe to the Middle East. This spring, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WNYC and WQXR will present MUSLIM/AMERICAN, a five-part interactive, multimedia and live event series examining the cultural intersections of Muslim and American identities.
MUSLIM/AMERICAN kicks off on Thursday, April 9th with the first public screening of actor, playwright and The Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi’s new web show, “Halal in the Family.” Each event in the series will focus on a different medium of expression —TV, Storytelling, Food, Music, Fashion—giving young Muslim artists, writers, chefs, comedians and journalists a platform to engage in conversations about their religious, cultural and ethnic influences.
Notable participants include author Michael Muhammad Knight, punk rock band The Kominas, fashion blogger Winnie Detwa and Asma T. Uddin of altmuslimah.
Tickets are on sale now. All events will also be available as live video webcasts at www.thegreenespace.org. Excerpts will air on WNYC and when the series is complete, on-demand video and podcasts will be available alongside mini-documentaries, art, photography, and listener-generated content inspired by each conversation
Muslim/American Series Schedule
Tickets available at www.thegreenespace.org
MUSLIM/AMERICAN: TELEVISION
Featuring Aasif Mandvi and an Advance Screening of “Halal in the Family”
Thursday, April 9 @ 7 PM Tickets: $25
The Greene Space presents a special advance screening of comedian Aasif Mandvi’s new web series, “Halal in the Family.” The “Senior Muslim Correspondent” for The Daily Show and No Land’s Man author created the show to challenge stereotypes about Muslim Americans. Starring Mandvi and Sakina Jaffrey (House of Cards), Halal follows the lives of an “all-American” Muslim family while taking on the big issues of the day, from government surveillance to online bullying. An advance screening of the first two episodes of the series will be followed by a talk back with Mandvi and co-writer and director Miles Khan. Comedian Dean Obeidallah moderates.
MUSLIM/AMERICAN: EATING HALAL
A Night of Tasting and Talk about Food and Culture
Featuring Chal Chilli’s Ayesha Kiani, Saffron Road’s Adnan Durrani, Honest Chops’ Khalid Latif.
Tuesday, May 5 @ 7 PM. Tickets: $30 includes food tasting and soft drinks
Halal food vendors are more popular than ever before in New York City, reaching a clientele that extends far beyond Muslim Americans. The Greene Space presents a food tasting and discussion of how the halal food scene has evolved and how religion and culture mix in the kitchen. Writer and author Ibrahim Abdul-Matin moderates. After the panel, there will be a cooking demo food tasting from several local halal restaurants
Ayesha Kiani is the owner of Chal Chilli, a halal Thai-Indian fusion restaurant. Adnan Durrani is the founder of Saffron Road, a halal food distributor that sells packaged products in Whole Foods. They’ll be joined by Khalid Latif, who, when he’s not busy acting as the Muslim Chaplain at NYU, runs Manhattan’s largest halal meat butcher shop, “Honest Chops.”
MUSLIM/AMERICAN: MUSIC
A Night of Live Performances and Conversation
Monday, May 11 @ 7 PM. Tickets: $20
The Greene Space will present performances by a slate of artists from a diverse range of genres, including popular Pakistani American punk rock band The Kominas.
MUSLIM/AMERICAN: FASHION
Co-Production with Faith & Fashion (London College of Fashion, UAL)
Wednesday, May 20 @ 7 pm. Tickets: $15
Professor Reina Lewis brings her public talk series Faith and Fashion from London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, to New York to focus on the creativity and controversies that characterize Muslim fashion in America today.
Bringing together fashion designers, bloggers, journalists, educators, entrepreneurs, and activists with a live audience, The Greene Space and Faith and Fashion present an interactive conversation about the ways Muslims in America are contributing to and influencing fashion in its broadest sense, from modest dressing to Islamic and ethnic fashion. Lewis, author of the forthcoming book Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures and a respected media commentator, is joined by Asma T Uddin, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of altmuslimah.com; fashion blogger and cultural commentator Winnie Détwa; and designers Nyla Hashmiand Fatima Monkush whose fashion brand Eva Khurshid New York (2009-11) provided inspirational clothes which were modest yet fashion-forward to savvy New Yorkers and beyond.
MUSLIM/AMERICAN: STORYTELLING
Featuring Sadia Shepard, Alaudin Ullah, Michael Muhammad Knight
Date: TBA. Tickets: $15
Storytellers Sadia Shepard, Alaudin Ullah and Michal Muhammad Knight gather in The Greene Space to discuss the geographical and spiritual journeys that modern day Muslim Americans take to better understand their faith. Sadia, Alaudin, and Michael will read from their work and discuss the great distances they’ve traveled in order to find their own, personal definitions of what it means to be Muslim American. WNYC producer and book critic Mythili Rao hosts.
Sadia Shepard is the author of The Girl from Foreign: A Memoir, in which she investigates her grandmother’s childhood among the Bene Israel, the small Jewish community she belonged to before converting to Islam when she married. Comedian and performer Alaudin Ullah has been featured on HBO, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and PBS. His one-man show “Dishwasher Dreams” is the story of how his father, a Bengali steamship worker, landed in New York in the 1920s. Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of 10 books of essays, journalism, and fiction. He converted to Islam at 16, after reading Autobiography of Malcom X. At 17, he traveled to Islamabad to study at a madrassa; he’s now a doctoral student at UNC.
Major support for The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space is provided by The Jerome L. Greene Foundation. Additional support for the Greene Space comes from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, MetLife Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.”
ABOUT NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
With an urban vibrancy and a global perspective, New York Public Radio produces innovative public radio programs, podcasts, and live events that touch a passionate community of over 14 million people monthly on air, online and in person. From its state-of-the-art studios in New York City, NYPR is reshaping radio for a new generation of listeners with groundbreaking, award-winning programs including Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, On the Media, Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin andCarnegie Hall Live, among many others. New York Public Radio includes WNYC, WQXR, New Jersey Public Radio and The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. Further information about programs, podcasts, and stations may be found at www.nypublicradio.org.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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