Join this interactive community conversation with Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi & Imam Ahmad Deeb, examining the generational differences in gender expectations.
We will discuss what Muslim women and men expect from one another and the origin of those expectations.
Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi is a public speaker, teacher, writer, spiritual counselor, mentor, and Mental Health Advocate. Imam Ahmad Deeb is an Imam, counselor, and Certified Coach Outreach Ambassador for Bayan Islamic Graduate School.
6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (Maghrib to Isha) | Friday, December 30 | MCC Conference Room | In person or watch online at mcceastbay.org/live
Questions? events@mcceastbay.org
Sponsored by Bayan Islamic Graduate School, West Valley Muslim Association and MCC East Bay
Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States with her family at age two. She credited her Islamic journey to 1996 when she began attending Islamic classes in Hayward, California. These classes were taught by her teacher and mentor since then, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.
One of her main areas of focus is to help create a strong sisterhood for the women in the community by leading halaqas (spiritual study circles) and support groups while offering individual spiritual counseling and mentoring. She noted that many spiritual problems reflected the community’s deep and complicated mental health issues and would be better served by focusing on mental health. Thus, along with her cousin, Dr. Nafisa Sekandari, co-founded a website called Mental Health 4 Muslims (www.mentalhealth4muslims.com).
Imam Ahmad Deeb
His grandfather Dr. Sheikh Ramadan Deeb, one of the oldest living scholars in Damascus, is a renowned Syrian scholar who built important bridges between western and eastern scholarship. He grew up watching his father, Shaykh Abdallah Deeb, lead a Muslim community in Orlando, Florida.
But, even though he was born into a family of Muslim scholars, Imam Ahmad Deeb struggled as a teenager seeking answers to fundamental questions about religion.
It wasn’t until University, when he began attending a local halaqa and listening online to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, that Imam Deeb felt his mind and his heart begins to find a connection to Islam. Upon graduation, he turned his focus to seeking knowledge at a higher level.
Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya al-Husayni al-Ninowy, a family friend, invited him to join a Madina Institute pilot program he was starting in South Africa. Imam Ahmad Deeb spent a year at the Madina Institute in Cape Town. When he returned, he continued studying with local scholars, including his father and began a Master’s in Islamic Studies at Bayan Islamic Graduate School in Claremont, California.
Today, Imam Ahmad Deeb is the Imam at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, located in one of the oldest Muslim communities in North America. He is the co-founder of Pillars Seminary alongside Shaykh Ismail Bowers, which focuses on teaching the foundational Islamic sciences to busy professionals, as well as the co-founder of Itqaan Institute, dedicated to developing a love of God through a relationship and mastery of reciting the Qur’an, with his father as the primary teacher and leader.
His story intersects with many familiar names: Shaykh Ramadan Deeb, Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya al-Ninowy, Shaykh Abdallah Deeb, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Dr. Sherman Jackson, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad / Timothy J. Winter, Shaykh Jihad Hashim Brown, Shaykh Ismail Bowers, Ustadh Arthur Richards Jr., Dr. Ali Shahata, Imam Mohamed Masri.