On the Issues Episode 65: Mehnaz Afridi

My guest today is Mehnaz M. Afridi, the director of Manhattan College Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center. The goal of the center is to “help eradicate human suffering, prejudice, and racism through education.” She is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College where she teaches Islam and the Holocaust. Her research primarily focuses on Islam and contemporary literature. She is also works on the intersections of Judaism and Islam. Her recent work has been on the Holocaust and the role of Muslims, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Mehnaz has taught at Antioch University, National University, American Intercontinental University and Loyola Marymount University. She received her PhD in Islam and Religious Studies from the University of South Africa and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Syracuse University.3 In 2006, she taught in Rome and participated in a seminar sponsored by the National Endowment of Humanities on how Muslims and Jews influenced and Italian Culture in Venice, Italy. She has been invited by the University of Munich to present her work on Egypt: A Nexus of Anti-Semitism and has published an article entitled Sacred Tropes: The Qur’an Cruel or Compassionate, published by Brill. She is the author of The Shoah Through Muslim Eyes.

In today’s episode, we discuss the misperception of the relationship between Jews and Muslims, what approaches can be taken to create reconciliation between Israelis and Arabs, the rise of antisemitism in the United States, and the future of religious coexistence.