Karim Nagi fights Islamophobia through art

By: Kevin Conley II

Staff Writer

Karim Nagi, an egyptian performing and teaching artist, hosted an event on Friday, Feb. 14 where he taught students, staff and visitors about the use of Arab instruments and the dangers of Arabian stereotypes.

During the event, Nagi gave a multimedia PowerPoint Presentation that showed history involving Arab culture and his achievements in becoming a musician. He also taught kids to dance and showed audiences how the instruments worked and how useful they were to Arabian culture. 

Nagi first explained how much Arab culture meant to the people in the world. He showed old footage of what Arabian culture was like a long time ago. 

He said his purpose is to use his career, research data, music and videos to demonstrate how the familiarity between cultural groups reduces racism and dispels stereotypes.

“The question for me always is; ‘how much does everybody know about Arab culture and Muslim culture, or the people from the 20+ countries, or the one billion people around the world who practice Islam?’,” said Nagi. 

According to Nagi, these are modern problems and our similarities often lead to stereotypes. This means that when someone doesn’t know about something ahead of time, they’re going to take the opinion from another person or another organization, ultimately leading to generalizations.

Nagi also said he believed that familiarity could keep balance between stereotyping and understanding culture. 

“So, what I believe is that we want to create familiarity,” said Nagi. “Familiarity leads to  tolerance, and the tolerance comes from the fact that we won’t think of people from the Arab world, or Muslim world, or any minority, or a group of people as being a monolith.”

According to Nagi, this familiarity shows the diversity which creates tolerance. Nagi also shared the Arabic alphabet and language with the attendees.

Nagi has played music since he was 14 and has lived in many different places.

“I actually immigrated with my family from Egypt to Boston and I may have lived in Chicago two years ago,” said Nagi.

According to Nagi, he appreciates the work he does and the goals he accomplishes.