University of Minnesota
Meeting Minnesota's Muslims
outreach@umn.edu
612-624-7346


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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.

We invite you to learn more about Islam and the Muslim faith as it is practiced in Minnesota through this series of events and informational programs.

This program is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Department of Education Title VI program, dedicated to international education and public education, in order to complement existing funding.