On Human Belonging with Shireen Qudosi Shireen Qudosi

Founders of Toke for Tolerance, a cannabis-based interfaith festival founded by Elliot Friend (Jewish) and Shireen Qudosi (Muslim), dive into a raw un-cut conversation on the Hamas-Israel war launched on October 7, 2023.

See full post: https://open.substack.com/pub/qudosi/p/dangerous-fantasies-talking-israel

About Shireen Qudosi

Storytelling on seismic cultural issues through the lens of the sacred, Shireen Qudosi looks at the space between things or within the Dark to map a new understanding of the human experience. Through that journey, she found a lost Islam. Shireen Qudosi is the author of The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam, which speaks to the theologically-sound parallel reality of the world’s second-largest religion.

“The world we live in is growing more complex with newer challenges. These times are an invitation for us to step into our gifts. To do that, we need to remember the song of our hearts and the stories that are our own. My gift is in alchemizing chaos and confusion into song. I inspire others to believe it is possible to go within and below the surface layer of their identity to find the mystery, a wonderful complex constellation that is beautiful and uniquely their own.” — Shireen Qudosi

Shireen is devoted to mapping figurative landscapes and inviting others to go into unknown places not as a tourist, but as a child exploring the world for the first time filled with wonder and curiosity. As a daughter of refugees across three continents, as a mother to a son with Autism, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart, she believes that the mystery of being is often nested within the composite of our entire life experience, that we can find the sacred in the mundane nestled like a jewel in the rock.

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The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam is a collection of field notes, reflections, and revelations on what becomes possible in us when we awaken our potential. Reading the introduction, author Shireen Qudosi explores how one unanswered question about Islam after 9/11 became a loose thread. When curiosity tugged at that thread, it unraveled the illusion of faith and our place in the realm of creation.

Author Shireen Qudosi plays on the idea of Islam as a "dark" faith. After 22 years of studying faith and religious extremism, she arrived upon the finding that Islam is a seed faith and our task is to bury it in the Dark.

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Song-Human-Heart-Feminine-Islam/dp/B0BW2GWJ13

Available as a PDF: https://www.shireenqudosi.com/shop/p/the-song-of-the-human-heart-dawn-of-the-dark-feminine-in-islam

About Shireen Qudosi

Storytelling on seismic cultural issues through the lens of the sacred, Shireen Qudosi looks at the space between things or within the Dark to map a new understanding of the human experience. Through that journey, she found a lost Islam. Shireen Qudosi is the author of The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam, which speaks to the theologically-sound parallel reality of the world’s second-largest religion.

“The world we live in is growing more complex with newer challenges. These times are an invitation for us to step into our gifts. To do that, we need to remember the song of our hearts and the stories that are our own.

My gift is in alchemizing chaos and confusion into song. I inspire others to believe it is possible to go within and below the surface layer of their identity to find the mystery, a wonderful complex constellation that is beautiful and uniquely their own.”
— Shireen Qudosi

Shireen is devoted to mapping figurative landscapes and inviting others to go into unknown places not as a tourist, but as a child exploring the world for the first time filled with wonder and curiosity. As a daughter of refugees across three continents, as a mother to a son with Autism, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart, she believes that the mystery of being is often nested within the composite of our entire life experience, that we can find the sacred in the mundane nestled like a jewel in the rock.

Learn more: https://www.shireenqudosi.com

Mapping a feminine Islam that is fluid and interplays with all elements of life, especially the vibrational reality of sound.

The following podcast is an excerpt reading from The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam paired with audio recording from the Aniwa Gathering 2022, recorded and shared with permission from the Yawanawa tribe. Aniwa is an annual gathering of 40 indigenous leaders from around the world.

[Book] The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam
Buy : https://www.amazon.com/Song-Human-Heart-Feminine-Islam/dp/B0BW2GWJ13

About This Podcast:
Mapping a feminine Islam that is fluid and interplays with all elements of life, especially the vibrational reality of sound.

“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.” — Albert Einstein

About Shireen Qudosi:
I write on faith, identity and belonging. I look at issues from radicalization to childhood to the feminine through the lens of the sacred, through the heart field. My story is a winding 42-year journey across literal and figurative landscapes, as a daughter of refugees across three continents, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart. As an immigrant over and over again across three continents, I lived the themes coloring our cultural landscape today: migration, radicalization, and adaptation across seismic cultural shifts. But my most important journey — our most important journey — is the journey within. In 2022, I took off the last of the mask of all my identities and embraced my gift as an intuitive in this space. Today, I practice moving beyond polarity and offer a new model of conscious leadership rooted in the sacred feminine, in dignity and the interdependence of all life on earth. For more, visit https://www.shireenqudosi.com


Song Credits:
1. Yawanawa Song Workshop, Aniwa Gathering 2022
2. Common Loon (Copyright 2017 John Neville / Bird Songs of Canada's West Coast)
3. Forest Birds (Copyright 2021 AA Gentil / Morning Birds Singing)
4. Dawn Has Broken by Mitsch Kohn
6. Islamic Call to Prayer - Amazing Azan by Idris Aslami

Listen to the harrowing story of an Afghan interpreter who fled hours before the Taliban came to kill him. Hamidullah Khyber was one of the few U.S. allies who made it out during the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. With the help of Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert, Khyber and his family made it out and is now settling in London. Part of the new generation of Afghans, 32-year-old Khyber eyes the East and hopes to one day return to fight for the only home he has ever known.

The Foundation for Human Belonging is a 501(c)(3) that looks at the arc of human belonging. Welcome to the chorus of voices as we move beyond faith in an ideology, and toward faith in the promise of humanity. That's the future. A future beyond splintered identities dwarfing the vastness of human belonging.

The Foundation for Human Belonging uses storytelling to educate on extremism and advocate for our shared humanity. Stories are the human thing about us and if we can understand our crisis at this point using a framework of stories, then we can perhaps endeavor to understand our world today and our place in it — as well as learn the skills to build the world we want .....so that we don’t have to go the route of other groups of people who have felt that in times of extreme stress and duress the only way to survive was to become more extreme.

Show your support: www.paypal.com/paypalme/shireenqudosi
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Hosted by Shireen Qudosi:
Shireen Qudosi is a writer and speaker on faith, identity, and belonging. She’s one of the leading North American Muslim Reformers. Her work has been published in The Federalist, Women in the World, Clarion Project, The Middle East Forum, and more. Her keynote writings also include an in-depth assessment on the War on Terror through the lens of WWII and a two-hour exclusive interview with radical Imam Abu Taubah, who was linked to Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen. In 2016, Shireen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on radical Islam, offering a powerful testimony that tied the current crisis to Islam’s origin story. “Original Islam” is a theme that runs through the veins of her work, and is central to the book project she is pursuing. In 2017, Shireen launched a petition against Davis hate imam Ammar Shahin, which broadened into a small movement in 2018. She carried her message on hate imams in Never Again is Now, a documentary by filmmaker Evelyn Markus, on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. In 2019, she bridged her experience in reform to ally with former extremists and develop a training series on preventing violent extremism. In 2020, she launched two simultaneous podcasts, Belonging and Endeavor Against Extremism, available on SoundCloud. Shireen’s experience has given her insight in forecasting where the conversation among the world’s leading secular and religious Islamic leaders is heading. She is also deeply interested in personal narratives as instruments for change. As a former refugee raised across three continents, she has a unique perspective of the issues facing the U.S. and global Muslim community. In 2011, Shireen was named one of the top ten North American Muslim Reformers by journalist Christine Williams.

Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert is part of the digital Dunkirk. He reflects on his time in Afghanistan and the crisis of another failed war.

Seibert is a retired Army Colonel, and one of the hundreds of veterans launching a “digital Dunkirk” — a remote humanitarian evacuation of thousands of Afghans ranging who share our values and are at risk under a Taliban regime.

Over the next hour, we discuss what a digital Dunkirk looks like and what it takes to get people out. We cover why there is no federal exit plan in place for Afghans and how its churned the thoughts and beliefs of the veteran community. Along the way, he shares what it takes to cultivate belonging in a foreign culture, what the next generation of military and civilian leadership needs to look like, and how we can find our commonality as a human tribe.

“It’s like a gut punch. It’s not just like we lost a war. We ran away. And we don’t run away from a fight. We don’t surrender….who in the world is ever going to trust us again?” — Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert

This is the inaugural podcast transitioning from a solo platform to The Foundation for Human Belonging, a 501(c)(3) that looks at the arc of human belonging. Welcome to the chorus of voices as we move beyond faith in an ideology, and toward faith in the promise of humanity. That's the future. A future beyond splintered identities dwarfing the vastness of human belonging.

The Foundation for Human Belonging uses storytelling to educate on extremism and advocate for our shared humanity. Stories are the human thing about us and if we can understand our crisis at this point using a framework of stories, then we can perhaps endeavor to understand our world today and our place in it — as well as learn the skills to build the world we want .....so that we don’t have to go the route of other groups of people who have felt that in times of extreme stress and duress the only way to survive was to become more extreme. 

Show your support: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/shireenqudosi
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Music produced by Magnetic Minds.