Marriage is a fundamental expression of our humanity
This exclusive Lamppost Education Initiative video features a thought-provoking and frank panel discussion on marriage and relationships in the Muslim Community. This panel consists of Ustadha Zaynab Ansari, Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans, Imam Jihad Saafir, and Dr. Jamillah Karim.
Marriage is a training ground for battling the nafs
A fascinating, non-sectarian look at the distinctions between the Sunni and Shi’ah with Dr. Abdullah bin Hamid Ali and Dr. Khalid Yahya Blankinship. Click the link below for more details.
Ubaydullah Evans
Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans is ALIM’s first Scholar-in-Residence and now Executive Director. He converted to Islam while in high school. Upon conversion, Ustadh Ubaydullah began studying some of the foundational 
books of Islam under the private tutelage of local scholars while simultaneously pursuing a degree in journalism from Columbia. Since then he has studied at Chicagoland’s Institute of Islamic Education (IIE), in Tarim, Yemen, and Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where he is the first African-American to graduate from its Shari’a program. Ustadh Ubaydullah also instructs with the Ta’leef Collective and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) at times.
Dr. Jamillah Karim
Jamillah Karim is an award-winning author, speaker, and blogger. She specializes in race, gender, and Islam in America. She is a former associate professor in the Department of
Religious Studies at Spelman College. She holds a BSE in electrical engineering and a PhD in Islamic Studies from Duke University.
Ustadha Zaynab Ansari
Zaynab Ansari spent a decade studying Farsi, Arabic, and traditional Islam, sitting with 
male and female scholars in seminaries in the Middle East, including traditional scholars in Damascus in the 1990s. Upon her return to the United States, she earned degrees in history and Middle Eastern Studies from Georgia State University.
Since 2014, Zaynab Ansari has served as a scholar-in-residence for Tayseer Foundation, offering enrichment courses and halaqahs to women and youth in the Muslim Community of Knoxville, and working on interfaith dialogue. She is currently an instructor at Tayseer Seminary, which features a one-year intensive in Islamic Studies, drawing students from Tennessee and all regions of the United States.
Ustadha Zaynab has previously written and taught for SunniPath and the Lamppost Education Initiative. She has been a freelance writer for Azizah Magazine, a certified speaker with the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, and a contributor to online Islamic educational portals such as SeekersHub. She has also served as the coordinator of oral histories for the After Malcolm Project, a digital archive of African-American Muslim history. She is part of the teaching faculty of the Ribaat Program, an online Islamic Studies curriculum led by Anse Tamara Gray, a leading woman scholar of traditional Islam. She is also a board member of Tayseer Seminary.
Imam Jihad Saafir
a master’s in Islamic leadership, and is working towards a PH.D in practical theology at the Claremont School of Theology. He is the Founder of Islah LA, a non profit that provides social services in the Los Angeles area.
