Khalilah Sabra
Encyclopedia
Khalilah Sabra is an American Muslim advocate
and author best known for her work with refugee
s in the Middle East, and literary contributions to the Joe L. Kincheloe
and Shirley R. Steinberg
series Transgression: Cultural Studies and Education.
, a district in western Los Angeles, California, United States. Westwood is best known as the home of the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA). She attended Saint Bernadette School, a private, Roman Catholic elementary school in New Haven, Connecticut
, founded in 1956 and merged with Saint Bernadette Catholic Church. She later attended Hamilton High School, a public high school in Westside of Los Angeles, California.
earning a graduate degree. Postgraduate work was completed at UCLA in Paralegal Studies.
ed by some of the most famous scholars of that time, including Sheikh Ahmed Naufal, director of the Islamic University of Jordan, and the Palestinian scholar Abdallah Azzam. In the late 1980s she was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood
(Ikwan Al-Muslimeen), the only American female at that time. The organization dissolved itself in the United States and reorganized itself as a moderate organization, forgoing the name Ikwan Al-Muslimeen. For two years she worked at the Institute of Islamic Studies as an ESL instructor. She then lived and worked in refugee camp
s in Afghanistan
and in Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon
, and has since advocated for the rights of women living under oppressive regimes and cultural transgressions prevalent in Third World
societies.
The Joe L. Kincheloe
and Shirley R. Steinberg
series Transgression: Cultural Studies and Education is multicultural education
al set of strategies and materials for U.S. education that were developed to assist teachers in the promotion of democracy while responding to the many issues created by rapidly-changing demographics.
, the teaching approach that attempts to help students question and challenge the beliefs and practices that dominate, providing a theory and practice helping students achieve critical consciousness
. Critical pedagogue Ira Shor
defines critical pedagogy as "Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)
Sabra has been on numerous media outlets insisting that the American courts and public adhere to due process
during trials of alleged terrorist, insisting that "men must be proven guilty in a court of law."
She has gone on record as saying that government-initiated torture
is a crime whether it is committed by the CIA
or any government entity in the United States or elsewhere.
Khalilah Sabra designs and implements programs that educate non-Muslims about her moderate version of Islam that denounces violence and extremism
. Khalilah Sabra's advocacy activities include supporting international human rights, national civil rights
, the promotion of democratic immigration protocols, and the advancement of the recognition of Muslim rights, and the rights of other marginalized citizens.
Sabra is critical of Muslims in America, accusing the masses of being proactive advocates and lobbyists for religious rights and social equality
.
An anti-war
advocate, Sabra believes that the United States exceeds its authority by its presence in Iraq
, and that its presence continues to create an environment of hatred for the American government throughout the Middle East along with its support for Israel. She has lived throughout parts of the Middle East and Europe.
In 2007, she became North Carolina
Director of Civil Rights for the Muslim American Society
.
She is married to a Lebanese national.
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...
and author best known for her work with refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s in the Middle East, and literary contributions to the Joe L. Kincheloe
Joe L. Kincheloe
Joe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book-chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban...
and Shirley R. Steinberg
Shirley R. Steinberg
Shirley Ruth Steinberg is a university educator who is currently teaches at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 2010, she was a research professor at the University of Barcelona. She is known for her notions of Critical Multiculturalism, Kinderculture, Christotainment, and Postformal...
series Transgression: Cultural Studies and Education.
Early life
Her early life was lived in WestwoodWestwood, Los Angeles, California
Westwood is a neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the home of the University of California, Los Angeles .-History:...
, a district in western Los Angeles, California, United States. Westwood is best known as the home of the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA). She attended Saint Bernadette School, a private, Roman Catholic elementary school in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, founded in 1956 and merged with Saint Bernadette Catholic Church. She later attended Hamilton High School, a public high school in Westside of Los Angeles, California.
Education
Sabra studied Criminal Justice at California State UniversityCalifornia State University
The California State University is a public university system in the state of California. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, the other two being the University of California system and the California Community College system. It is incorporated as The Trustees of the...
earning a graduate degree. Postgraduate work was completed at UCLA in Paralegal Studies.
Conversion to Islam
Her conversion to Islam was mentorMentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
ed by some of the most famous scholars of that time, including Sheikh Ahmed Naufal, director of the Islamic University of Jordan, and the Palestinian scholar Abdallah Azzam. In the late 1980s she was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood
Muslim Brotherhood
The Society of the Muslim Brothers is the world's oldest and one of the largest Islamist parties, and is the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states. It was founded in 1928 in Egypt by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna and by the late 1940s had an...
(Ikwan Al-Muslimeen), the only American female at that time. The organization dissolved itself in the United States and reorganized itself as a moderate organization, forgoing the name Ikwan Al-Muslimeen. For two years she worked at the Institute of Islamic Studies as an ESL instructor. She then lived and worked in refugee camp
Refugee camp
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
s in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and in Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon
Southern Lebanon
Southern Lebanon is the geographical area of Lebanon comprising the South Governorate and the Nabatiye Governorate. These two entities were divided from the same province in the early 1990s...
, and has since advocated for the rights of women living under oppressive regimes and cultural transgressions prevalent in Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
societies.
The Joe L. Kincheloe
Joe L. Kincheloe
Joe Lyons Kincheloe, , was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book-chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban...
and Shirley R. Steinberg
Shirley R. Steinberg
Shirley Ruth Steinberg is a university educator who is currently teaches at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, in 2010, she was a research professor at the University of Barcelona. She is known for her notions of Critical Multiculturalism, Kinderculture, Christotainment, and Postformal...
series Transgression: Cultural Studies and Education is multicultural education
Multicultural education
Multicultural education is a set of strategies and materials in U.S. education that were developed to assist teachers to promote democracy while responding to the many issues created by rapidly changing demographics of their students. Multicultural education means to ensure the highest levels of...
al set of strategies and materials for U.S. education that were developed to assist teachers in the promotion of democracy while responding to the many issues created by rapidly-changing demographics.
Career
Sabra is the author of An Unordinary Death: The Life of a Palestinian, a work on critical pedagogyCritical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
, the teaching approach that attempts to help students question and challenge the beliefs and practices that dominate, providing a theory and practice helping students achieve critical consciousness
Critical consciousness
Critical consciousness, conscientization, or conscientização , is a popular education and social concept developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, grounded in Marxist critical theory...
. Critical pedagogue Ira Shor
Ira Shor
Ira Shor is a professor at the City University of New York, where he teaches composition and rhetoric. In collaboration with Paulo Freire, he has been one of the leading exponents of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...
defines critical pedagogy as "Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)
Sabra has been on numerous media outlets insisting that the American courts and public adhere to due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
during trials of alleged terrorist, insisting that "men must be proven guilty in a court of law."
She has gone on record as saying that government-initiated torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
is a crime whether it is committed by the CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
or any government entity in the United States or elsewhere.
Khalilah Sabra designs and implements programs that educate non-Muslims about her moderate version of Islam that denounces violence and extremism
Extremism
Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards...
. Khalilah Sabra's advocacy activities include supporting international human rights, national civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
, the promotion of democratic immigration protocols, and the advancement of the recognition of Muslim rights, and the rights of other marginalized citizens.
Sabra is critical of Muslims in America, accusing the masses of being proactive advocates and lobbyists for religious rights and social equality
Social equality
Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...
.
An anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
advocate, Sabra believes that the United States exceeds its authority by its presence in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, and that its presence continues to create an environment of hatred for the American government throughout the Middle East along with its support for Israel. She has lived throughout parts of the Middle East and Europe.
In 2007, she became North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
Director of Civil Rights for the Muslim American Society
Muslim American Society
The Muslim American Society is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 that describes itself as an Islamic revival and reform movement....
.
She is married to a Lebanese national.