American Citizenship Series: A Conversation on Religious Pluralism

Recent controversies over mosque building have exposed longstanding schisms in Americans' attitudes toward minority religions. How might we move beyond "tolerance" of religious diversity toward a more robust commitment to religious pluralism?

The IAH will host a conversation, “Religious Pluralism in American Society,” March 1 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Hyde Hall University Room. The panel is part of a series on American citizenship that will lead up to the March 16 Weil Lecture on American Citizenship, to be delivered by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

The March 1 conversation is free and open to the public.

Panelists are:

Abdullah Antepli
Antepli is a Muslim chaplain at Duke University and adjunct faculty of Islamic studies. His work at Duke focuses on three primary areas: religious leadership for Duke's Muslim community; pastoral care and counseling for persons of any faith, or of no ascribed faith; and intra- and interfaith work.

Laurie Maffly-Kipp
Maffly-Kipp, professor and chair of religious studies and adjunct faculty in American studies at UNC, researches and teaches about African-American religions, religion on the Pacific borderlands of the Americas and issues of intercultural contact. She also has taught on American religious history, ethnicity and race in America, religious contact and conflict in the Americas, popular religious movements in the U.S., and Mormonism and the American experience. (IAH Faculty Fellow spring 2008, Leadership Fellow spring 2002, IAH Faculty Fellow spring 1998, IAH Faculty Fellow summer 1990)

Timothy Marr
Marr, an associate professor of American Studies at UNC, analyzes the historical processes of American cultural and religious formation from changing transnational perspectives. He became interested in American involvement with the Islamic world while teaching in Pakistan for three years during the Russian phase of the war in Afghanistan, is the author of The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (Cambridge 2006), and is presently writing a history that explores the century-long intercultural relationship between U.S. Americans and the Muslim Moros of the southern Philippines. (IAH Faculty Fellow spring 2009, IAH Ethics Fellow fall 2004, IAH Faculty Fellow spring 2003)

Omid Safi, moderator
Safi is a professor of Islamic studies at UNC, specializing in progressive Islamic thought, the social and intellectual history of pre-modern Islam, and Islamic mysticism, or Sufism. He recently published Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne, 2009), a religious biography of Muhammad.

An additional free, public panel on civil discourse in American society will take place Feb. 22.

Both events are co-sponsored by the Campus Y, the Three Cups of Tea Community Dialogue, UNC student government and the Difficult Dialogues Initiative.