A University of Colorado at Boulder alumna who married a Muslim and converted to Islam before becoming a college professor and the mother of eight bicultural children will talk about balancing career, family and religion in an Islam Awareness Week keynote lecture next week.
Jane "Amar" Biddle Merritt El-Yacoubi, a political science professor at Strayer University in Manassas, Va., will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, on "Mayflower Muslim: A Woman's Quest for Truth as a White, Anglo-Saxon Muslim." The daughter of a prominent Philadelphia family, El-Yacoubi met her Muslim husband at CU-Boulder and converted to Islam when she was only 21 years old.
Her talk and all of the other Islam Awareness Week events will take place March 5 through March 8 in room 235 of the University Memorial Center, or UMC.
The CU-Boulder Muslim Students Association is sponsoring the event, which will include: an exhibition of posters, videos and slide shows on display from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday March 5-8; a student panel discussion about being Muslim in America at 7 p.m. Monday, March 5; and three lectures.
"Our goal is to educate the student body and the surrounding community about Islam and break down any misconceptions they may have about the religion," said Abdallah El-Yacoubi, El-Yacoubi's son, the group's president and a student in CU-Boulder's Leeds School of Business.
The event's other featured speakers will include Shaykh Jamaal Zarabozo, a French-born author whose family roots are in Spain. Zarabozo, who holds a master's degree in economics, converted to Islam in 1976 at the age of 16. He has authored several books and currently is working on one titled "Jihad and Western Attitudes Toward War."
Zarabozo will give a talk titled "The Miraculous Qu'ran: My Path to Islam" at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 7.
Hamid Mavani, an assistant professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., has translated several books from Arabic to English and is well known for his activism in promoting interfaith dialogue. He will present a lecture titled "The Prospect of Sunni-Shi'a Reapproachment" at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 8.
The CU-Boulder Muslim Students Association was established in 1980 to help educate Muslims and non-Muslims about the religion of Islam and to counter misunderstandings as a result of negative media images.
To learn more about CU-Boulder's Muslim Students Association and Islam Awareness Week, visit .