Join us after the 2pm show on Sunday, April 23, 2017 for a panel of Muslim-American youth will share reflections on Paradise and their own experiences growing up in the United States, moderated by Imam Ishmael Fenni.
Munazza Alam is a first year graduate student in the astronomy department. She was a physics major at CUNY Hunter College in New York City, and has worked in various research groups in the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History. Her research interests include exoplanet atmospheres, low mass stars, and brown dwarfs (astronomical objects that form like stars, but cool and fade over time to resemble gas giant planets). To collect data for her research, Munazza has used with world-class telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tuscon, Arizona; the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hilo, Hawai’i; and the Las Campanas Observatory in La Serena, Chile. When Munazza isn’t contemplating the cosmos, she is reading anything she can get her hands on, trying new ethnic foods, and learning new languages.
Omar Rashed is the Community Development Coordinator of the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, MA. He has published five books: 4 books of poetry and 1 book of prose. He participates and leads interfaith and intrafaith dialogues, and he believes in bringing people together and sharing in the 99% of things we share as humans. He believes peace, dialogue, and understanding bear sweeter fruits than war, and that to live peace we must sometimes put aside “being right” and instead choose to *do what is right*. Rashed is married to the most amazing Queen in the world, and is father of one Princess and two littler Princes. He completed a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bachelor’s in Social Work from Rutgers University, and he is currently teaching undergrads online at his alma mater, dishing out the delights he received and passing on the light for the next generation. is the Community Development Coordinator of the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, MA. He has published five books: 4 books of poetry and 1 book of prose. He participates and leads interfaith and intrafaith dialogues, and he believes in bringing people together and sharing in the 99% of things we share as humans. He believes peace, dialogue, and understanding bear sweeter fruits than war, and that to live peace we must sometimes put aside “being right” and instead choose to *do what is right*. Rashed is married to the most amazing Queen in the world, and is father of one Princess and two littler Princes. He completed a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bachelor’s in Social Work from Rutgers University, and he is currently teaching undergrads online at his alma mater, dishing out the delights he received and passing on the light for the next generation.
Sumbul Siddiqui is a progressive Pakistani Muslim woman who is a candidate in the 2017 Cambridge City Council election. Sumbul is an attorney at Northeast Legal Aid (NLA), a nonprofit legal services organization that provides free legal services to low income communities in Essex and Northern Middlesex counties. A first-generation immigrant from Pakistan who grew up in Cambridge public housing and attended Cambridge Public Schools, Sumbul has a deep and long-standing commitment to the economic development of low-income and immigrant communities, and works to ensure that the voices of those communities are heard. Sumbul earned her law degree from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from Brown University. Sumbul also completed an AmeriCorps fellowship at New Profit, a nonprofit venture philanthropy fund that invests in social entrepreneurs. In addition to her work as an attorney, Sumbul is currently a board member of Cambridge School Volunteers, Inc., a commissioner on the Cambridge Human Services Commission, and a board member of the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston. You can learn more about Sumbul at VoteSumbul.
