Events
Muslim Identity in the Pakistani Diaspora
Nov 19 2009 7:00PM - 9:00PM
Lecture Details
Thursday, November 19
7-9 pm
CIIS Main Building, Namaste Hall
$15 per lecture
$60 for the Focus on Islam series
In this lecture author Ali Eteraz will use episodes from his coming of age memoir, Children of Dust (HarperOne), to springboard into a discussion about the way Pakistani immigrants socialize, engage in religious activity, and assimilate. Having grown up in a conservative family he will focus especially on the culture of the devout. He will also take a look at the various tracks of religious learning available to young Muslims.
About the Presenter
Ali Eteraz is a writer and free-lance journalist. Born into a nomadic family in Lahore, Pakistan, he was raised in the Middle East, Pakistan and the Caribbean, and has lived in ten American states. He studied philosophy in college, where he wrote his honors thesis on Nietzsche. Later he attended law school where he earned a fellowship in public service and interned on human rights cases. After a short stint working in the area of corporate litigation he switched to a writing career. He is currently a contributor to The Guardian, True/Slant, and Dawn, Pakistan's largest and oldest English language daily. His articles have appeared in Dissent, Foreign Policy, Parabola, Open Democracy and Alternet, among others, and have been linked by hundreds of blogs, including NYTimes, The Atlantic and Time Magazine. Ali is the author of the prose work Children of Dust, which was released on October 13 2009 by Harper One, an imprint of Harper Collins. Upon reading an early excerpt from the book, the late philosopher and literary critic, Richard Rorty, stated he was "particularly impressed" by the "powerfully written" work.
