{"id":11632,"date":"2025-01-13T18:04:19","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/?p=11632"},"modified":"2025-01-21T17:16:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T17:16:21","slug":"professor-najeeba-syeed-highlights-interfaith-collaboration-following-l-a-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/2025\/01\/13\/professor-najeeba-syeed-highlights-interfaith-collaboration-following-l-a-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Najeeba Syeed Highlights Interfaith Collaboration Following L.A. Fires"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"El-Hibri<\/a>Najeeba Syeed, El-Hibri Endowed Chair and executive director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University, was interviewed by national media about the devastating fires in Southern California, which have destroyed at least a dozen houses of worship in the Los Angeles area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a January 11 interview<\/a> with Religion News Service, Syeed called attention to the long history of interfaith cooperation in Altadena, CA, where religious leaders have banded together to support victims of the fires even as they mourn the loss of sacred spaces.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“They\u2019re helping their own communities, but they\u2019re also stepping up and stepping beyond and helping each other,\u201d she said. “That\u2019s part of the story\u2014faith communities, even when they are damaged, still show up for the broader community.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Religion News Service published a January 16 column<\/a> by Syeed highlighting the ways that local youth have led volunteer recovery efforts across faiths, ethnicities, and languages. “[Our teens’] continued service and their steady moral compass make me excited to see the world they will run,” she wrote. “A world in which we don\u2019t need a litmus test on your beliefs before we offer care, where your story is important to share no matter which income bracket you come from. A world in which the measure of our humanity is how much we show up for each other with an embodied empathy that asks, “What do you need, dear friend, who I may not know? Let me be there for you.””<\/p>\n

Syeed was also interviewed for a January 17 Sojourners article<\/a> about calls from local leaders to focus on equity and justice in rebuilding. In it, she lifted up the long-standing interfaith connections in Pasadena and Altadena. “People knew each other in the neighborhood and worked together before the fires,\u201d she said. “What you\u2019re seeing now is an outpouring of those relationships.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Najeeba Syeed, El-Hibri Endowed Chair and executive director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University, was interviewed by national media about the devastating fires in Southern California, which have destroyed at least a dozen houses of worship in the Los Angeles area.\u00a0 In a January 11 interview with Religion News Service, Syeed called attention to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":11645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[3409,4026,4027],"class_list":["post-11632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-in-the-news","tag-interfaith","tag-interfaith-at-augsburg","tag-interfaith-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11646,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11632\/revisions\/11646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}