Get Schooled @ American Islamic College

Join us on Saturday, April 7, 2018 and experience American Islamic College like never before! A one of kind mission & Fundraising experience you don't want to miss!

Live performances by Amirah Sackett, Jacinda Bullie, Dr. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer & Sevim Surucu!

Live Dance Performance by Amirah Sackett

Amirah Sackett is an internationally recognized hip-hop dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Amirah was honored as one of the first female hip-hop artists to receive the Jerome Travel/ Study grant in 2008 and traveled to Rotterdam, Holland to study and train at Hip Hop Huis, a center in Europe for hip-hop artists. She curated the international festival for women in HipHop, B-Girl Be in 2009-2010 at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, MN. In 2011, Amirah formed the all female, American Muslim trio called 'We're Muslim, Don't Panic'. They were featured in rapper, Brother Ali's music video "Mourning in America". Amirah and her dancers, Iman and Khadijah, were honored to receive the prestigious Sage Cowles Award "Best Ensemble Performance" for the performance of her choreography "Mourning in America" in 2013. In 2014, Amirah traveled to Dhaka, Bangladesh as part of "Next Level", a hip-hop cultural exchange program by the U.S. State Department and University of North Carolina. In April 2016, Amirah was honored to be part of "Caravanserai- American Voices", a Midwest tour of American Muslim hip-hop artists, including The Reminders, Dj Man-O-Wax and fellow dancer Mary Mar a.k.a BGirl Mama. In 2016, Amirah and her work "We're Muslim, Don't Panic" reached viral video fame, after being featured in videos online by PopSugar Celebrity, Huffington Post, AJ+, and Upworthy with millions of views each. She was honored to perform and lecture at Harvard University as a guest of the Graduate School of Education. She was chosen to be a Tedx speaker at TedxAmoskeagMillyard in New Hampshire. Huffington Post featured Amirah in their article "17 Muslim American Women Who Made America Great In 2016". She most recently traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii for a residency funded by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic arts, at a museum dedicated to Islamic art from around the world called Shangri La. She continues to tour, teach, perform around the country and in her hometown of Chicago. Amirah believes hip-hop culture, as a whole, gives voice to those often unheard and is a way to uplift, inspire, and bring change to those communities that need it the most.

Live Poetry by Jacinda Bullie

An activist by temperament, the daughter of a Choctaw woman, Jacinda Bullie aka Jah da Amp Mouth is a humunist, wife, moms, and practicing Muslima. Prior to rhymes, Jacinda was a natural critique of circumstances, interrogating the world through Hip Hop Poetics. In '96, Jacinda aka JahdaAmpMouth, alongside Jaquanda V. and Leida GM., co-founded Kuumba Lynx, a Hip Hop art & culture collective. Jacinda is currently a co-curator of the Chicago Hip Hop Theater Fest. Jah recently co-authored a poetic coloring book entitled FILLINZ...Put Some Respect on It! The book was printed by With A Mighty Roar Publishing.

Live Reading by Dr. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist who uses anthropology and performance to explore the intersections of race and popular culture. Su'ad is currently an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University and is a graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed the Islamic Studies diploma program of the Institute at Abu Nour University (Damascus). Her latest work, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU Press 2016), is an ethnography on Islam and hip hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the US. Su'ad's written work on Islam and hip hop is accompanied by her performance ethnography, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life. Sampled is a one-woman solo performance designed to present and represent her research and findings to diverse audiences as part of her commitment to public scholarship.

In line with this commitment Su'ad leads Sapelo Square, the first website dedicated to the comprehensive documentation and analysis of the Black US American Muslim experience. She has also written for The Root, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Ebony Magazine, the Huffington Post, Religious Dispatches and Trans/Missions, and has appeared on Al Jazeera English. Additionally, Su'ad is a Senior Project Advisor for the US Public Television award-winning documentary, New Muslim Cool and her poetry was featured in the anthology Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak.

Live Ebru class with Sevim Surucu

Sevim Surucu is an Ebru (Turkish Paper Marbling) artist living in Chicago, IL. She graduated from Istanbul University with a Bachelor of Art degree in Landscape Architecture. After working as a landscape architect for a while in Turkey, she moved to the United States. In 2004, she started studying the art of paper marbling because she wanted to combine her love of nature with her love of Turkish Traditional Arts and sharing her prosperous culture to others.

In her marblings, she utilizes traditional flower forms and contemporary designs as well as designs of her own. She held many art fairs, demonstrations and workshops in different states Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, California, Arizona, Utah, North Carolina, New York, Missouri, Texas, Georgia and Florida. She got awarded many times as an "Outstanding Artist" at the art fairs.

Aside from paper marbling, she has a passion to introduce the various Turkish Traditional art forms in the United States, such as Calligraphy (Hat), Illumination (Tezhip), Earthenware (Cini), and Miniature Painting (Minyatur). She recently started studying Tezhip and Hat as part of her dream.

She is married and has three children.

Followed by inspiration by Hind Makki & Ustadh Ubayd'ullah Evans

Hind Makki

Hind Makki is an interfaith educator who develops and delivers workshops on active citizenship and community empowerment. An internationally recognized speaker, she has spoken on the subjects of interfaith cooperation, civic integration, and developing Muslim women's leadership throughout the United States and Western Europe. Hind is also the founder and curator of Side Entrance, a website that documents women's prayer spaces and experiences in mosques, and she serves on the Islamic Society of North America's Mosque Inclusion Taskforce. Her work is focused on challenging misogyny, racism and sectarianism in Muslim communities across the country, and has been featured in a wide variety of media including ABC News, Al Jazeera English, National Public Radio, and The New York Times. Hind is an alumna of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute and holds a degree in international relations from Brown University.

Ustadh Ubayd'ullah Evans

Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans is ALIM's first Scholar-in-Residence. He converted to Islam while in high school. Upon conversion, Ustadh Ubaydullah began studying some of the foundational books of Islam under the private tutelage of local scholars while simultaneously pursuing a degree in journalism from Columbia. Since then he has studied at Chicagoland's Institute of Islamic Education (IIE), in Tarim, Yemen, and Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where he is the first African-American to graduate from its Shari'a program. Ustadh Ubaydullah also instructs with the Ta'leef Collective and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) at times.