S. Zakiya Islam
On Thursday, March 8, 2012, we held our annual members only book discussion. The topic was Islam.
We are especially pleased to have S. Zakiya Islam as our facilitator for this program.
S. Zakiya Islam's life has been devoted primarily to teaching, helping the needy and, through it all, searching for the Truth.
Zakiya's passion for wisdom study led to her decision to take an early retirement from the Philadelphia School District and join the Ph.D. program at Temple University in the Department of Religion. Zakiya is currently working as an adjunct faculty member at Neumann University.
Zakiya was raised with an interfaith psyche grounded in the Islamic tradition which was supplemented with a life experience straddling four continents.
For three decades Zakiya has taught both in the formal and informal format from the elementary to the undergraduate level. A decade of this has been in different countries and she has thus developed an insight into multiple cultures.
Since Zakiya has been in the United States she has been simultaneously involved in volunteer work with adult literacy, including adult english as a second language teaching and the Threshold program for prisoners.
Zakiya's other passion is to volunteer for the service of the elderly, assist new immigrants to adapt to this clime and culture and help inner-city children and youth.
Zakiya provided us with a thoughtful evening and helped all of us see Islam in a rich light.
If interested in continuing your education and insights into Islam, Zakiya recommends talking to young people who practice the faith and has suggested three books:
- Islam: An Introduction by Annemarie Schimmel
- Muhammad: Man of God by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- The Heart of the Qur'an: An Introduction to Islamic Spirituality by Lex Hixon
Zakiya also brought several copies of a recently translated version of the Qur'an that she recommended to us: The Holy Quran translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
