[160] 'New Muslim Cool' Explores Islam Through Hip-Hop At MTSU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 21, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

‘NEW MUSLIM COOL’ EXPLORES ISLAM THROUGH HIP-HOP AT MTSU
Documentary Traces One Man’s Self-Reinvention Amid Post-9/11 Tensions

(MURFREESBORO) – Journalist, activist and political analyst Bakari Kitwana will lead a town hall meeting on the intersection of Islam, hip-hop and identity among a new generation of American youth with a panel discussion and viewing of the documentary film “The New Muslim Cool” at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 10, in Room 221 of MTSU’s Learning Resources Center.
The 2009 film, which has been screened at the Sundance Film Festival and aired nationally on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), follows Puerto Rican rapper Hamza Perez as he steers away from his former life as a drug dealer and embraces Islam. Yet, as he rebuilds his life with a message of faith through hip-hop music, the FBI raids his mosque, challenging him to embark on an even deeper exploration of his religion, profiling, tolerance and American identity.
“New Muslim Cool” was an Official Selection of the Rooftop Film Festival and Lincoln Center Independents Night and the winner of the Freedom Award at the Al Jazeera International Film Festival.
Following the screening, Bakari Kitwana will moderate an interactive panel discussion about the film with Perez, the subject of the documentary, and Nura Maznavi, staff attorney with Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit sister organization of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers and counsel for its Program to Combat Racial and Religious Profiling.
Perez is an artist, community activist and educator who works for a national nonprofit organization as a youth and jail counselor and as the vice principal of a private Islamic elementary school. He performs with his brother, Juan Suliman Perez, as part of the hip-hop group M-Team and the interfaith poetry project Crossing Limits.
Kitwana is Senior Media Fellow at The Jamestown Project, a think tank based at Harvard University Law School, and CEO of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues on Hip-Hop, which conducts town hall meetings around the country on issues facing the hip-hop generation.
The author of four books, Kitwana’s most recent offering is this year’s Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era (Third World Press). He holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degrees in English and education from the University of Rochester.


--more--


MUSLIM
Add 1


This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Center for Popular Music, the MTSU Department of History, the Office of Intercultural and Diversity Affairs, the MTSU School of Music and MTSU Student Programming.
For more information, contact Miyakawa at 615-904-8043 or miyakawa@mtsu.edu.

--30—


Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. This fall, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.