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Review: ‘Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity,’ Young New Yorkers Tell Their Stories

Ferdous Dehqan, Tiffany Yasmin Abdelghani, and Amir Khafagy in Ping Chong + Company’s “Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity.”Credit...Adam Nadel
Ping Chong + Company – Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity
NYT Critic’s Pick

Ferdous Dehqan’s earliest memory is drenched with fear. He is 4 years old in Kabul, Afghanistan, clutching his mother’s hand as they cross the street, approaching a Taliban station.

“What if they stop us?” he asks, speaking aloud his little-boy thoughts. “What if they hit my mother?”

This may be the first moment that tears at the heart in “Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity,” Ping Chong + Company’s probing and persuasive new work of interview-based theater, but it is not the last.

Mr. Dehqan, who turned 19 last week, is one of five young New Yorkers who tell their stories at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City. Seated at music stands, they are a chorus of voices gently demolishing the notion of Muslim culture as monolithic.

Amir Khafagy, 24, grew up in Queens, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and an Egyptian father. With a sweetly goofy charm, he calls himself an “Arab-Rican.”

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Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity From left, Maha Syed, Ferdous Dehqan, Tiffany Yasmin Abdelghani and Amir Khafagy share their stories in Ping Chong & Company’s new work of interview-based theater, at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.Credit...Adam Nadel

Maha Syed, 29, is a high-octane high achiever, a Kuwaiti-born human rights advocate who names her culture, her religion and her feminism as the strongest influences in her life.

Tiffany Yasmin Abdelghani, 26, is a Long Island native and recent convert whose family is a Muslim-Christian mix. She once dressed like a goth punk. Having learned from YouTube how to tie one, she now wears a hijab.

Kadin Herring, 23, was raised Muslim in the South and doesn’t practice anymore, but says Islam has shaped him: “I still don’t eat pork. I still wake up before the sun rises. I still believe in kindness.”

Directed by Mr. Chong, “Beyond Sacred” addresses a topic that feels very much of the moment. But that has been true for most of these performers’ lives, which is a large part of the point. All of them were children when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took place. All but Mr. Dehqan, who arrived in this country in 2013, remember a sudden shift in the way they were perceived.

With a script written by Mr. Chong and Sara Zatz with Ryan Conarro in collaboration with the performers, the piece is part of the company’s Undesirable Elements series, dedicated to exploring outsiders’ experiences. A sense of being marginalized for being Muslim unites the stories here.

But “Beyond Sacred” is an exercise in empathy, not polemics: a lesson in human understanding, drawn from real lives.

“Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity” continues through Saturday at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, 31-10 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; 718-482-5151, lpac.nyc.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Tales of the Outsider, Colored by Nuances of Religion. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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