Hussein Rashid is a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. His dissertation focuses on racial and ethnic self-identification in South Asian immigrant communities in the US. He has passed qualifying exams in Urdu Language and Literature, Indo-Muslim cultures, Islam in America, and Islamic Civilizations with a focus on Shi’i thought. He completed a Masters in Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, which focused on comparative Muslim-Hindu theologies in South Asia. He earned is BA from Columbia College of Columbia University with majors in Biology and Middle Eastern and [South] Asian Languages and Cultures.
Hussein has worked in several positions that affect the South Asian and Muslim majority worlds. Starting in 1996 he aided President Lennart Mari of Estonia in trying to establish commercial relations between Estonia and India, Pakistan, and Iran. During 2003 he worked with the Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Program’s Afghan Legal History Project to create position papers on the draft Afghan constitution. He also advised a 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate’s foreign policy team on the religious issues in Iraq. He then consulted for a South Asia PAC.
He has presented papers focused on the impact of 9/11 on Muslim adolescents throughout the US, and papers about Muslim blogs. In 2006 he was named one of the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. His current research interests are on the representation of Muslims in graphic novels. He is an occasional speaker for the Interfaith Alliance, Faith in Public Life, and a teacher at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. His recent media appearances include Air America Radio and CBS Evening News. He writes for Religion Dispatches, and at his own blog islamicate (islamicate.com).
He blogs at Islamicate and The Devil’s Advocate and recently at Talk Islam.
You can find out more about him at husseinrashid.com.
Ismailimail 
Hussein Rashid’s article at CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/10/rashid.papal.trip/index.html
Pope’s moral authority for peace
The pope cannot and should not be a political broker in the region. He is a religious leader, and that conflict is not religious. He should lend his moral voice to talking down the religious language that is increasing around the conflict. Until recently, many of the most eloquent spokespeople among the Palestinians were Christians, including Hanan Ashrawi and the late Edward Said.
It is a conflict of nations, Palestine and Israel, not Jews and Muslims
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/10/rashid.papal.trip/index.html
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