Sahar Alsahlani has been on the interfaith scene in NYC for six years, in myriad roles that promote interfaith social justice. She is a member of the Community of Living Traditions, an intentional multi-faith community, and co-chair of The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the country’s oldest interfaith organization geared toward peace and non-violence. Alsahlani is also on the board of Religions for Peace, USA, a United Nations-affiliated NGO; a fellow at Greenfaith, an interfaith environmental network; and a board member of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Alsahlani perceives her work as a way to encourage civic engagement with people from different backgrounds in the five boroughs. She has been involved in justice activism as a representative of CAIR and the broader Muslim community, including environmental justice causes, such as Standing Rock, and racial justice causes, such as Ferguson and Charlottesville. “My passion is learning about other faiths to help discover things about Islam that I might have missed,” Alsahlani says. “As a child I never really learned that Islam was justice and that the Quran was a roadmap to justice. It was through other faiths that reminded me what the purpose of the Quran was. After 20 years of being a TV producer in LA, I decided I was lonely. A single mom with four kids who all left for college. The rabbi said, ‘We are forming this interfaith community and it is geared towards social justice. Why don’t you pack up your camerawork and come out?’ So it was like Alice in Wonderland or Mary Tyler Moore—all of a sudden I’m on a farm picking carrots out of the ground. You never know what Allah will bring you to. Ever since then it was hanging out with the Presbyterians, Zoroastrians and Sikhs, Sushis, Sunnis, Shias, Salafis—we have everyone. We travel around the country. [We] went to Standing Rock, Charlottesville. I do miss being creative but I keep my camera with me ready to go.”
