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Su'ad Abdul Khabeer (born 1978) is an American scholar, writer and artist from Brooklyn. [1] She is known for her book Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States and her work both within and outside of academia exploring the intersections of race, religion and popular culture in the United States. [2]
Khabeer was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, between the Crown Heights and Flatbush neighborhoods. [1] She was raised by her mother, Amatul Haqq, a public school teacher, artist, and activist, whom Khabeer cites as being influential to shaping her career. [3] She received a Bachelor of Science at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a diploma in Arabic and Islamic studies from Abu Nour University in Damascus, and a PhD in Philosophy in Cultural Anthropology from Princeton University. [4]
She currently teaches at the University of Michigan as an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies. [5] She also is a co-founder of Sapelo Square, [5] a website that showcases the Black Muslim experience in the United States. Sapelo Square exhibits historical sources and analyses in a variety of forms to the public, highlighting Black Muslim creativity and events while also covering racism and the obstacles to equality that the community faces. Additionally, it offers resources to community members on an assortment of different topics. [6]
Khabeer's book, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hip in the United States, is the product of a 2-year ethnographic study and also draws on autobiographical experience of growing up as a Black Muslim in the "Hip Hop era" of the '90s. [7] It challenges hegemonic norms of racism in American culture and the dominance of Arab and South-Asian identities within American Muslim communities, showing that Black Muslims defy these norms. [7] In addition the book situates Hip Hop as rooted in resistance and political consciousness, and as crucial to shaping Black Muslim identity over the past 40 years. [8]
Alongside her book, Khabeer created a performance ethnography called Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life which is an embodied exploration of the diversity of experiences of Muslims in the United States using poetry, theater and movement. [9] Though she works in academia, she also emphasizes the importance of art in critically exploring and fighting against stereotypes and larger power structures through the arts. [10] Her current work, entitled Umi's Archive, is an exploration of Black Muslim women and the ways their stories have (and haven't) been told through the lens of her mother’s life, [11] made up of letters, photographs, marriage certificates, and diary entries. [11] The project approaches Black Women as a widespread resource of knowledge, something not always valued in academic spaces. [12]
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