Sana Saeed, MDiv ′18

“My dad had bought a little black goat and had given it to me, and I was like, ‘Great, I have a pet goat!’ I had him for a while over Ramadan, but the next thing you know, I walk into my grandfather’s backyard in Karachi and my goat is hanging upside down and split open. I start screaming and crying. My dad runs over to grab me and shoved me to my mom, and my mom says to him, ‘I told you not to do that!’ She was really mad at him. As a seven year old, that was crazy. I was like, ‘What the hell, you killed my goat.’ That was my opening experience in terms of what was on our table and how we celebrate our holidays.”

Sana Saeed holds master degrees in conflict resolution and peace studies and is currently working on her master of divinity degree at HDS. She grew up in England and has lived in the United States, Pakistan, and Japan, where she centered her research on peacebuilding and religious freedom. Sana is passionate about community organizing and working with youth.

Hobbies

I like salsa dancing. Reading and writing. I’m really into trashy romance novels. I’ve become a fast reader when it comes to trashy romance novels! I use those as motivation to finish papers. And I just finished the show New Girl. I’m proud of myself because I’ve never finished a full season of any TV show, ever.

Peacebuilding

I was born and raised in Manchester, England, until I was 16. I moved to the U.S. in 1998 with my parents. We lived in Virginia Beach and then I went to college in D.C. at George Mason University. I ended up staying there for about 10 years, doing an undergrad degree in politics, a master’s degree in conflict resolution, and then working with nonprofits focused on interfaith dialogue and religious freedom. I worked with an organization called the Interfaith Alliance, where we worked on issues of religious discrimination. I also worked for a Unitarian Universalist church for a few years as a director of youth ministry. I wasn’t a member of that church, so it’s powerful that they trusted a person from another faith to come in and guide their youth ministry programs.

Later I went to Japan on a Rotary Peace Fellowship. I focused on the role religion plays in peacebuilding. My research centered on religious discrimination in Myanmar and the violence and tensions between various ethnic groups, especially between Buddhists and Muslims.

Last summer, I worked with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). As the youth and peacebuilding researcher, I helped train youth where ceasefire negotiations were happening. We provided training on negotiations, peacebuilding, and conflict resolution. It was good to be in the field. I learned how some youth felt uncomfortable using the word “peace” because the military dictatorship called themselves the “State Peace and Development Council” for almost 30 years. As the dictatorship committed atrocities, it created negative connotations around the word “peace.” So our organization spent a good amount of time trying to redefine what peace means or figuring out alternative words for the youth to use and take back to their communities. They felt comfortable with concepts like community development—focusing on specific things such as healthcare, drug awareness, human trafficking—and applying concepts of peace through those efforts.

My mom’s in Myanmar now. She partnered with a Burmese woman to open a Montessori school for children. She’s been there for about a year and a half.

Deferring HDS

I was accepted to HDS at the same time I received my Rotary Peace Fellowship to go to Japan, so I had to decide between the two. I decided to defer coming to HDS so I could go to Japan, and it turned out to be a good decision. I wanted to have an international experience, because for the longest time I had learned about peacebuilding, experienced working in D.C. with policymaking, and worked with faith-based communities and churches. I wanted to know what was happening outside of the U.S. and how the things I learned apply there.

Now at HDS I’m doing the master of divinity, and I’m interested in Unitarian Universalism and Islam. I want to focus on community organizing with youth. Working with young people, helping to educate them in terms of religious literacy, is powerful. I’ve learned a lot from them and I think that’s where my passion lies.


Faith

I grew up Muslim, but I also explored a lot of faiths and went to different communities. My first interfaith experience was at a Hindu temple at age 13. It was a chaotic time in my life, because my grandfather had died and my mom left me with her best friend while she went to Pakistan to attend my grandfather’s funeral. My mom’s best friend was gearing up to celebrate a Hindu festival. I stayed with her for two weeks, grieving for my grand-dad and celebrating a Hindu festival at the same time. It was a good experience, being thrown into of a deep hole of new things and dealing with my emotions at the same time.

 Growing up, various community members in my faith—more conservative ones or the superstitious ones—said that if you go into another faith’s house of worship, you’ll get struck down by lightning or something bad will happen to you. As a kid, you’ll believe anything. But my experience at the Hindu festival was proof that I’m not going to get struck down by lightning. I can go to other faiths and traditions, experience different religions and traditions, and be okay. It opened space for me to explore another world.

The festival celebrated a virgin goddess. The family I was with put me and their two daughters in front of the temple. We sat there with other girls, and people came up to us, bowed down, waved money around and then put it in our palms. It reminded me of similarities in my own tradition, such as Eid in Islam, which happens after Ramadan and 30 days of fasting. Family members give money to young children at that time. Seeing some similarities between my faith and another faith was interesting for me.


I also am drawn to UU as a faith today, as I’ve worked as a director of youth ministry for four years at the UU Church of Arlington, Virginia, and I attend the Sunday services of First Parish Cambridge every now and then. There are a lot of UU Muslims emerging—people with hybrid faith identities who derive spiritual fulfillment from both faiths.


Religious Identity

I went to Pakistan for two years when I was younger and I had many different experiences with religious identity. I didn’t realize that my family considered themselves to be Sunni until I was 16. For the longest time I thought we were just “Muslims.” But I just found out, a few months ago at Thanksgiving with my dad, that my great-grandfathers and half of the family actually consider themselves more Sufi. I’m still having this learning process of how different types of Islamic thought play a role in my family. There are Sunni, Shia, and Sufis among my extended and immediate family members. And many of my family members have married people of other faiths.

In Pakistan as a kid we got to celebrate Eid. Something happened, though, that was really funny. After 30 days of fasting, we sacrifice rams or goats for a feast—it’s associated with the story of Abraham’s son. My dad had bought a little black goat and had given it to me, and I was like, “Great, I have a pet goat!” I had him for a while over Ramadan, but the next thing you know, I walk into my grandfather’s backyard in Karachi and my goat is hanging upside down and split open. I start screaming and crying. My dad runs over to grab me and shoved me at my mom, and my mom says to him, “I told you not to do that!” She was really mad at him. As a seven year old, that was crazy. I was like, “What the hell, you killed my goat.” That was my opening experience to what was on our table and how we celebrate our holidays.

But another thing happened later on with the same goat. My father and my uncles rented a big truck and went down to a really poor part of Karachi. I went with them, and it was shocking because the level of poverty I saw there was something I had never seen in the UK. It was frightening, seeing people with missing arms, missing legs, sliding on skateboards just to come up to the truck to grab food. Some of them used rags to get extra rice. I remember feeling scared and asking, “Why are these people so poor and why do they look like that?” That experience in Pakistan was pivotal in terms of shaping my interests in human rights, poverty, and food.

Exploring interfaith dialogue and working with people of other faiths has taught me about what brings people together. It makes me value my own spiritual upbringing. My upbringing with different ways of Islamic thought, and that presence in Pakistani culture, helps me talk to others. It helps me be with them.