Aakef Khan

Telling the story of Muslim–Jewish encounter through film and art

Aakef Khan is Communications Director of The East–West Foundation, where he leads storytelling, media, and public engagement across the foundation’s work in interfaith dialogue, early childhood education, heritage preservation, and the environment. A filmmaker and curator, he holds a BFA in filmmaking from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts and joined the foundation in August 2026.

Much of his work has been devoted to Jewish–Muslim engagement. Over two and a half years at Rutgers he built relationships between Muslim and Jewish students through the difficult period after October 7, becoming a consistent presence and ally in Jewish communal life on campus while remaining firmly rooted in his own. He describes the commitment plainly: “I need to stand somewhere where I can see both perspectives.” That work has since carried him into national conversations on Muslim–Jewish relations, including the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum.

With the artist Hannah Finkelshteyn, whom he met at an open dialogue table convened at Rutgers, Aakef co-curated Open Archways: By the Light of the Same Moon — an exhibition of fifteen Jewish and Muslim artists that opened at the Bowery Art Collective in Metuchen, New Jersey, in December 2025. The show takes as its starting point the lunar calendar both communities have kept for more than a thousand years, and its method is as deliberate as its subject: the artists met and talked with one another before making anything, so that the work on the walls grew out of real relationships rather than an assigned theme. Together they explored diaspora, womanhood, family, and spirituality. A second exhibition opens at the East Brunswick Community Center on August 25, 2026, with a third planned for New York in 2027.

In July 2026, Aakef and Finkelshteyn were named Pay-It-Forward awardees of The Courage Project and recognized at Washington National Cathedral. In place of a personal grant, they asked that the funding be directed to The East–West Foundation.

His filmmaking credits include work for the PBS Digital Studios series American Muslims: A History Revealed and the short film Ruqya, which draws on Islamic healing practice. He writes about film, art, and encounter at aakef.me.

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