Community Outreach
Through community partnerships, IGS organizes forums, film screenings and special events reaching a broad audience.
Meeting Minnesota's Muslims
About
The National Resource Centers in International Studies and in Asian Studies at the University of Minnesota, both housed in the University’s Institute for Global Studies, are hosting a series of broad educational community interventions to boost public knowledge and understanding about Islam and the Muslim worlds by the American public at large and the Minnesota public in particular. The goal is to inform and to educate the community, to create opportunities for structured dialogue that includes faculty expertise and community voices, and to highlight the plurality of Islamic cultural and social practices. These interventions will take a variety of forms ranging from lectures by faculty experts, seminars, round tables, and workshops, to cultural events.
Minnesota is in a unique position. On the one hand, the caricature of Lake Wobegon captures the dominant culture and the way many Minnesotans think about themselves. On the other hand, in 2007 Minneapolis sent the first Muslim to the US House of Representatives, and the state of Minnesota is home to one of the largest Islamic immigrant and refugee communities in the nation, particularly immigrants and refugees from the Horn of Africa (Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia), the former Yugoslavia, as well as from the Middle East and South Asia.
Events
World Refugee Day - June 20, 2008 - www.tcworldrefugeeday.org
IGS and KFAI will host an interview booth where event participants are encouraged to ask questions and share their knowledge in an effort to start the program's dialogue. We want to hear YOUR questions. We also want to hear YOUR answers! All questions and answers will be posted to our new website in July 2008. Stop by our booth at this free event to learn more about how you can become involved in Meeting Minnesota's Muslims.
Islam and Education Open House - August 2008
A New Website
A new website with interactive features is slated to launch in July 2008. Please check back often for more information.
Partners
Al-Amal School
Faculty/Graduate Student Partners: Cawo Abdi, Hakim Abderrezak, Catherine Asher, Ragui Assaad, William O. Beeman, Sid Benraoune, Martha Bigelow, Giancarlo Casale, Nahid Khan, Helga Leitner, Bali Sahota, Martin Sampson, Catherine Squires.
Interested in lending your expertise to this project? Please contact IGS Outreach Coordinator, Molly McCoy at outreach@umn.edu.