The premiere on Saturday night was a smashing success. The theater was overcrowded and we had to turn hundreds of people away. Thank you to ISNA for all of their support. Please stay tuned here for updates on future screenings. We have many invitations in the coming months from around the country and the world. We will keep you updated and look forward to seeing all of our friends and supporters.
Here is an article by Frankie published in The Guardian over the weekend:
“America is a very frightened country.” It was last October, and I was sitting face to face with Noam Chomsky at MIT, a man the New York Times has called “arguably the most important intellectual alive“. Chomsky was answering a question posed by Akbar Ahmed, American University’s chair of Islamic studies, that he described as “striking”: What is American identity?
As a young American brought up to believe I’m part of a superpower, Chomsky’s identification of fear as essential to what it means to be American caught me off guard. Privileged to be witnessing a conversation between two world-renowned academics in the fields of anthropology and linguistics, I listened.
Tomorrow, July 4th at 9:00, the much anticipated film will launch at the Islamic Film Festival during the Annual ISNA convention.
Craig Considine wrote an article on it in the Pakistan Link.
About nine months ago, I embarked on the unprecedented ‘Journey into America’ with my tutor and professor, Ambassador Akbar Ahmed of American University. We set out to study Islam in America, the Muslim experience in the US, and the various interpretations of American identity.
We visited over 75 cities, we entered into 100 mosques, and we interacted with thousands and thousands of Americans from all walks of life. We spoke with descendants of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, we voyaged on boat to Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia to retrace Islam’s roots in America, we shared the story of the Somalians living in Grand Island, Nebraska that were fired at a meatpacking plant for praying during Ramadan, and we ventured into the middle of the Pacific Ocean to meet with Muslims in Hawaii.
From his excellent blog on the Huffington Post, John Milewski wrote a piece entiled “In Search of the ‘Muslim World’” on the film after seeing an advance copy. Please see Milewski’s regular postings from Huffington Post.
Tonight I had the privilege of screening an advance copy of a powerful new documentary that will premiere on the Fourth of July. The film, Journey Into America, will make its debut during the 46th annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) this weekend in Washington, DC.
The film is one of the byproducts of a remarkable nine-month, 75-city exploration of America conducted by the brilliant anthropologist and Islamic scholar, Akbar Ahmed, and his outstanding team of former students. The film portrays the experiences of Muslim-Americans. It does that, but also ends up doing much more since it has a lot to say about the American experience beyond that of any one hyphenated group. The Muslim-America revealed in the film, provides much food for thought about how we think about any designated group of Americans and in this case, Muslim-Americans. For me it brought to mind the impulse of those of us in media to talk about diverse groups of people as if they think and act alike based on some shared affiliation.
From American University’s American Today, here is a story by Mike Unger on our project featured on the front page of american.edu
What is the American identity?
AU professor and renowned Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed poses that seemingly simple, yet impossibly complex question at the beginning of Journey Into America, a new documentary film chronicling his nine-month, 75-city tour of the country.
Last September, Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a team of four other young Americans and I were in Omaha for a research project and filming a documentary. As we checked into the hotel, we read about a problem that some Somali Muslim workers from Grand Island, Neb., were having with management regarding prayer during work hours in the month of Ramadan. More than 200 legal immigrants were fired during the dispute.
This became a perfect case study for our project, “Journey into America.” Should the factory workers assimilate and not take a break for prayer like everyone else, or should they be allowed to hold on to their customs and traditions? How can they be accepted by the majority and become more American? And on whose terms?
The world premiere of “Journey into America” is premiering on Saturday, July 4th. This feature film will be shown around Washington and throughout the United States.
The film shows Akbar Ahmed in his journey to over 75 cities and 100 mosques asking hundreds of Muslims and non-Muslims what it means to be “American.” From a bishop and an imam in Las Vegas to Somalis in small-town Nebraska to Noam Chomsky in Boston, this is the first film of its kind giving insight into the diverse and closed Muslim community in America and how they are fitting into American society. It ends on the hopeful note of coming together as a nation based on our pluralist identity going back to the Founding Fathers.
Craig’s hometown newspaper, The Needham Times, wrote an excellent article on his own journey and the project and film “Journey into America”.
Craig Considine’s journey toward learning about Muslims in the United States began almost eight years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, in a Needham High School classroom. A junior at the high school at the time, he was sitting in a history class when a teacher burst in the room and said the World Trade Center was hit.
As I sat in the American University class “Dialogue or Clash of Civilizations, taught by Akbar Ahmed, American University’s Chair of Islamic Studies” little did I know that four years later I would be completing and starring in a major motion picture. This July 4th at 9 PM the film Journey into America will premiere at the Washington DC Convention Center as a part of the Islamic Film Festival at the Islamic Association of North America’s (ISNA) annual convention.
Tomorrow, July 4th at 9:00, the much anticipated film will launch at the 
