Islam and Religious Freedom in a Post-Christian America

Professor, author, and attorney Asma Uddin will discuss what leads people to feel threatened by religious freedom for all and why Muslims in the United States are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon. Most importantly, she will explore what can be done about it. She will be joined by award-winning journalist Emma Green of The New Yorker, whose writings on religion, politics, and cultural conflicts have won numerous prizes.

Asma T. Uddin is a religious liberty lawyer and scholar working for the protection of religious expression for people of all faiths in the U.S. and abroad. Uddin is widely published on the topic, including two books: When Islam Is Not a Religion (2019) and The Politics of Vulnerability (2021). Uddin is currently a Visiting Assitant Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, Uddin served as Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and as a Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Religious & Society Program in Washington, D.C. She served two tersm as an expert advisor on religious liberty to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), was a term-member of the Council on Foreighn Relations, and has held fellowships at Harvard, Georgetown, and UCLA’s law schools.

In addition to her legal work, Uddin writes and speaks on Muslims and gender. As the founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com, she managed the web-magazine and organized vigorous debates and conferences on the multifaceted issues of gender, politics, and religion. Uddin has advised numerous media projects on American Muslims, including most recently as Executive Producer for the Emmy and Peabody nominated docu-series, The Secret Life of Muslims. 

Emma Green is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she covers cultural conflicts in academia. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covered religion and politics and led a series called The Atlantic Interview. Her reporting was regularly featured on “The Experiment,” a podcast collaboration between The Atlantic and WNYC. In 2020, Emma was the laureate of the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts, & Letters, and in 2021, she won awards from the Religion News Association in magazine journalism and feature writing. Her work has been anthologized in several books, including The American Crisis and The God Beat. Emma has spoken at Princeton, the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and other universities across the country. She has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and her work has been featured on This American Life and NPR, among other outlets. She lives in New York City.