Resources by Elliott Bazzano

My most recent post for “Teaching Islam” deals with some of the stakes in teaching and studying religion at a Catholic college. My colleagues Shabana Mir and Sherali Tareen have also provocatively and sharply addressed related topics of “confessional” and “secular” curricular methodologies, so I’d like to continue the thread by focusing on student experience in the great debate on distinctions between religious studies and theology. I touch on the fluid boundaries of allegedly dispassionate approaches to the study of religion in my article “Normative Readings of the Qur’an,” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion as part of a roundtable, “Normativity in Islamic Studies.” This roundtable focuses on scholarship; I would like to focus on teaching in this essay. Distinctions Aren’t Always Clear Notably, my own Department of Religious Studies at my Jesuit Catholic institution, Le Moyne College, offers courses in religious studies as well as theology. According to institutional parameters, theology courses differ from religious studies courses insofar as the former must give significant attention to Catholicism, either on its own or in relation to other traditions. Among the professors who teach theology courses at Le Moyne, some are Catholic and some aren’t. So what does it mean to engage (in) Catholic theology when it’s not limited to Catholics? I think this is at once a relevant field-wide query and also departmentally specific. However one answers the question, though, if a Catholic school is paying non-Catholics to teach Catholic theology—and my Catholic institution isn’t the only one doing this—in a religious studies department, then at the very least the distinctions between religious studies and theology aren’t black and white. As for student engagement with such matters, I find that students aren’t so interested in abstract theoretical distinctions between religious studies and theology, but are quite interested in making sense of such contours on the ground. In my first couple of years of full-time teaching, I attempted to formally introduce students to distinctions between religious studies and theology in the first days of class, but as the years go by, I find a better approach is to largely leave the debate in the background and to teach through examples instead, e.g., encouraging reflection on field trips to mosques or on challenges of teaching religion at a public high school full of disgruntled parents who think Islam is a devil religion. Teaching Students New Vocabulary As an undergraduate religious studies major myself, I was excited to learn about epoché (suspension, bracketing), both as a concept and as a disciplinary key term. Thanks to my colleague Darryl Caterine’s suggestion, I have begun making sure that students know the word epoché in the first week of classes, and without doubt, students find this helpful. What’s more, introducing students to the term gives them implicit permission to decide which approaches to studying religion ignite their interests most. To this extent, in a student-centered classroom—which in my case involves a lot of in-class discussion, often led by students themselves—it’s counterproductive to police the boundaries of conversation too much. If students want to talk about what a “true Christian” is, for example—based on their subjective, even myopic view of Christianity—that’s fine. Although the students shouldn’t expect me to chime in with my own partisan position, or corroborate theirs for that matter. Experimenting with Theological Inquiry One of my favorite writing assignments in recent years was in my course “Islamic Mysticism.” I posed in a prompt: Are Islam and mysticism inherently connected or could one reasonably separate the two? This prompt takes place in a context where we read, for example, William James’ categories of mysticism, while also giving attention to Muhammad’s role as a medium for divine Revelation, in addition to a variety of films, texts, and art that point toward the significance of first-hand numinous experiences. The prompt invites synthesis and reflection on course material, but is it an academic question or a theological question? I think it’s both. It’s academic because it requires students to synthesize evidence based on a careful examination of course material. But it’s theological, too, I think, because there is no single correct answer to the question and the stakes are significant in terms of how one’s answer might provide commentary on course material. How might student responses to the question incite them to go beyond epoché and perform their own creative process, or poeisis, with course material? In many ways students answer the question depending on personal sensibilities toward categories they understand as “Islam” and “mysticism.” The essay prompt, moreover, produced some really thoughtful essays, many of which included disclosures on how the students struggled with the question and changed their minds as they wrote; some students even referenced the question weeks later in the course. My sense is that giving students formal opportunities to personalize course material, while engaging in relatively free reflection, helps them perform better on a variety of levels. Conclusions: How Much Should Students Care? When speaking with colleagues across the country—with a particular Facebook thread in mind, I will admit—I sometimes get the impression that some of us don’t always want students to indulge their deepest interests in religion, at least not in our religious studies courses. This is understandable to the extent that many of us, including me, don’t want to put ourselves in positions of evaluating the veracity of a theological claim or spiritual experience. But I think one can largely assuage this concern by relying on low stakes assignments (e.g., short writing assignments, journal entries, in-class activities) that allow students to mine their own theological, spiritual, or metaphysical curiosities. Without this freedom, I think we risk signaling to students that they can’t learn as holistic beings. Ironically, many institutions require religious studies courses precisely so that students learn about the world beyond their classes in engineering, biology, business, or what have you. Perhaps as instructors we would do well to more carefully bracket our own disciplinary dogmas when they might impede the creativity, imagination, and even effort from our students. How do you navigate the boundaries between religious studies and theology in your pedagogical practices?

What’s a Catholic College? I grew up agnostic and converted to Islam when I was eighteen. A lifetime later, I now teach at a Catholic, Jesuit, liberal arts college. Like many religious studies educators, I continue to mull over questions about the intersections of identity, metaphysics, and socio-politics. So, when I began working at Le Moyne College, I wondered what kinds of encounters with religion my new position would have in store. I was especially curious because before coming to Le Moyne, I had taught only at state institutions (in California and Tennessee). Since joining the faculty at Le Moyne, I have engaged in a number of on- and off-campus mission-related programs, and these programs have raised a number of questions for me about what it means to teach where I teach: What is Catholic education? What is Jesuit education? To what extent can non-adherents of a tradition teach or study within an institutional context that espouses a particular tradition? My experience has shown me that by deepening my engagement with the Jesuit mission of the college I am better able to serve my students, and even better understand my own location in the pluralistic landscape of higher education. As Amir Hussain (Loyola University, Marymount), former editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR) and current faculty member at a Jesuit institution writes in his “Editor’s Note” for the JAAR in 2011: “I wonder what the members of the National Association of Bible Instructors (the forerunner of the AAR) would have thought of their journal one day being edited by a Canadian Muslim scholar of Islam teaching at a Catholic university.” I appreciate Hussain’s playful gesture here because it underscores how intermingled religious studies pedagogy can be. That his self-conscious reflection on the context of religious and national pluralism makes its way into the flagship journal of the field is a positive sign for me, especially in a world of growing Islamophobia. As someone who studies and teaches about a particular religious tradition (Islam), I acknowledge the value of assigning categories, but this has its limitations and one’s religious identity is frequently a poor indicator of what people actually believe. (I write more on this in “Muslim in the Classroom: Pedagogical Reflections on Disclosing Religious Identity,” published in Teaching Theology and Religion [2016].) To illustrate this, I often invite my students to dig deep by asking ten Catholics to describe what their traditions mean to them, or to describe Who or What God is. Will they find ten different answers? I think so. As I’ve tried to figure out what Catholic education means to people, I too have encountered a range of voices. Engaging the Jesuit Mission Because my undergraduate and Ph.D. programs were both at state schools, I didn’t know to what extent I might engage Jesuit-related professional development opportunities at Le Moyne; I had no context to compare. Fortunately, I’ve been encouraged by the impact of mission-related workshops, conferences, and study groups on my intellectual development as a teacher, scholar, and citizen. In the broadest sense, teaching as a Muslim at a Catholic college reminds me of the importance of interreligious encounters and helps me, I hope, model and live the kinds of interreligious encounters that I encourage for my students. Conferences like “Collegium”—an annual weeklong colloquy on Catholic higher education—and “Islam at Jesuit Colleges and Universities,” at the University of San Francisco in 2015, have offered me a window into live questions and challenges that diverse educators at Catholic institutions face. I have the opportunity to reflect further on the topic at an upcoming conference at Seattle University, where I’ll participate in a panel entitled “Islam at Jesuit Institutions: Inter-religious Dialogue, Social Justice, and Campus Life.” Despite my own positive experiences encountering and engaging Jesuit education on and off campus, challenges of language and stereotypes still pervade the minds of students as well as faculty; think, for example, about the debates on the relationship of religious studies to theology. My department offers religious studies as well as theology courses, so my attention to these debates has heightened in many ways. To illustrate the disparities in thinking about religiously affiliated institutions, let me conclude this blog post with two brief anecdotes—one about faculty and one about students. Confusing Categories Faculty story: A job candidate for a position at Le Moyne once expressed to me that the school attracted her because it was “faith-based.” As I learned more about what she meant, it became clear that the candidate did not fully understand the context of Jesuit education or the particular institution at which she sought employment. It would be untrue to say that Jesuit education didn’t have a “faith-based” component, but looking around the United States, for example, what this component means to Jesuit schools and their faculty, broadly speaking, is quite different than what it means for, say, Liberty University or any number of “faith-based” institutions. Regarding my argument about religious identity as a poor indicator of, well, a lot of things, I think this becomes straightforward when one examines the range of “faith-based” institutions across the country. (She didn’t get the job.) Student story: A linguistic trope that I often press my students to explain is when they refer to someone as “super-Catholic.” Many of my students, apparently, have a “super-Catholic” member of their family. “Is what you mean,” I try to gently provoke them, “that your uncle is kind of obnoxious and not too interested in learning about diverse opinions?” Although students may not have this blunt characterization in mind when explaining their family member, they often agree with my interpretation. I’ll follow up: “Well, what about your Jesuit professors at Le Moyne—who spent over a decade training to enter the order? Do you consider them super-Catholic?” (If anyone connected to the Le Moyne community is super-Catholic, I should think it would be the Jesuits.) At this point, I suspect I succeed in slightly confusing students and problematizing the imprecision of “super-Catholic” code language. Indeed the institutional context aids me here in guiding students through a teachable moment about word choice and the assumptions we hold about various traditions. Making Context work for Students To help students understand the mission of their institution, I incorporate Le Moyne’s mission statement into some course assignments to invite student reflection on the raison d’etre of their liberal arts experience. Unsurprisingly, I encounter a range of responses. Some students, for example, don’t know that Jesuit means Catholic. At the other end of awareness, a Catholic religious studies major once shared something very perceptive with me: It’s easy to be a student at Le Moyne and pretty much ignore its Catholic-ness, but at the same time it’s also easy to engage with that part of the school if you choose to go that route. To further help my students reflect on institutional context and best appreciate the purpose behind their required courses (all Le Moyne students must take any religious studies class as part of the core curriculum), I briefly share at the beginning of the semester that I’m a convert, but that our course will ask us—professor included—to approach material from a position of epoche (suspension or bracketing of personal convictions). I find that flagging my positionality (while leaving its particulars undefined) as well as our methodological approach signals to my students that no one is out to convert them. (Although if I were out to convert them, wouldn’t it be odd that a Catholic hired someone to convert its students to Islam? What would that even mean—theologically, logistically?) Although I rarely make reference to my own Muslim identity after the first week of class, my courses on Islam focus on issues of race and privilege, so I know my students cannot escape the fact that their teacher is a white convert. As one student recently wrote in an anonymous feedback activity, “When I tell my sisters I have a White professor for this class, they are mind blown.” In conclusion, I consistently find that my typical 18-22-year-olds students appreciate the vibe of the institution, but they’re not necessarily convinced it’s because of its Jesuit Catholic heritage—even if I’m convinced that the institution’s affiliation affects students more than they might suspect. I also find that students tend to appreciate that a Catholic institution would offer classes about all sorts of different religions (as Le Moyne does). For many reasons, including a curriculum that values courses on Islam, I—and I think most of my students as well—consider Le Moyne a super Catholic college. Perhaps even a super-Catholic college.

In two classes that I teach—“Islam” and “The Qur’an”—I often assign the film Wadjda (dir. Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2012) as the first homework assignment. Wadjda tells the tale of a young girl (same name as the film’s title) in Saudi Arabia who longs to own a bicycle, despite cultural norms that allow them only for boys. Her story takes place before a backdrop of a Muslim society, institutional corruption at her all-girls school, her parent’s crumbling marriage, and a male-dominated world. Most importantly, even for the uninitiated, I find that the film is plenty relatable to American college students. Wadjda, the protagonist, is an adorable, clever, and perseverant young girl and it’s easy to become engrossed in her story. I give students a pair of questions to consider as they watch the film, which we spend time exploring in the following class meeting: 1) In what ways does Wadjda challenge stereotypes (yours or American society’s more broadly) about Islam; 2) In what ways does Wadjda confirm stereotypes about Islam? These questions are straightforward, but I find that they work well because they set a tone that invites students to share their experiences, without risking right or wrong answers at the very beginning of the semester. The questions additionally push students to reflect on the complex choices and characters in the film as well as on their own complexity as agents in the world. Naturally, American students enter a course on Islam with any number of sensational ideas about Muslims. Western cinema, moreover, often presents Muslim characters as nothing more than bloodthirsty villains or quaint Orientalized simpletons (or both), which Jack Shaheen adroitly explores in Reel Bad Arabs (both the title of a monograph and documentary film). Indeed Wadjda could well be the first film college students ever see that portrays Muslims as something other than caricatures. By and large students like the film, but I do struggle with how to make the plot sound more intriguing when I tell students about it on the first day of class (i.e., it’s about a girl who wants a bike?); trailers are helpful. Because Wadjda features primarily female characters, it pushes Western viewers all the more, given the naïve ideas many of us have not only about Muslims in general but about Muslim women in particular. The context of the film also offers much for reflection. It’s the first feature film directed by a Saudi woman. It has received acclaim across many venues, including “Rotten Tomatoes” and the New York Times, which refers to the film as “sweetly subversive.” It was also nominated as best foreign language film for the Academy Awards and adapted in 2015 as an English-language novel. Despite all the benefits from assigning the film, I find that subtitles tend to invite a minority of students to complain, as the labor of viewing while reading taints their experience with the film. While I appreciate this as a consumer—plainly, subtitles can create more work for the film viewer, who often prefers a more passive than active experience—I think it also symbolizes a valuable struggle when encountering new cultures and new ideas. Additionally, unless the viewer knows to interpret a small clue (a shirt with KSA on it), or previously learned the context for the film, it’s actually not even completely clear where the film takes place. Throughout the film, Wadjda’s aloof father explores the possibility of a second marriage, while her mother struggles to provide for her family and create a good life for her only child. Like many good films, the characters in Wadjda are complex and believable. Wadjda argues with authority figures and listens to Western music but also lives innocently in her own challenging world of early adolescence. Toward the goal of acquiring her prized bicycle, Wadjda learns to negotiate a few under the table deals with members from her community (e.g., delivering secret messages between sweethearts), but her primary strategy to earn money involves entering herself in a Qur’an recitation competition. She practices with dedication and her hard work shows. Students won’t usually catch a certain subtlety at this part of the film, but the verses recited in the competition (including their translations in subtitles) speak to many of the themes in the film—thus this scene on its own could work well pedagogically in a number of contexts. While the film resolves the question of acquiring the bike (with an endearing twist), the overall ending leaves Wadjda’s future open to interpretation. I think it leaves a key question for my students: How can Wadjda and other females in the film demonstrate such agency and complexity if Muslim women are supposed to be oppressed? Even though this question presupposes a monolith of “Muslim women,” I think that the first part of the question, which acknowledges complexity and nuance, works well to emphasize one of the main themes of my courses: you can’t study religion without also studying people. Indeed, a required visit to a local mosque is among the most memorable aspects of my course for many students, so starting the semester with a drama helps set the stage for thinking about humanly complicated interactions with our course topic. What makes the film so effective, though, is that it’s not just a central question that the film raises. It touches effectively on so many themes, subtly and explicitly, central to what I want my students to engage throughout the course: gender, Islamophobic stereotypes, “religion” vs. “spirituality,” public vs. private religion, multivalent characters, polygamy, and non-English languages. Islam functions subtly in the film, moreover, which works well pedagogically for communicating how religion often works in people’s lives—as an integrated but still striking aspect of culture and society, in relationship to the lives of individuals, with unique stories and experiences. I’ve introduced other courses I’ve taught, as well, with feature films, and in this way, I think my approach with Wadjda is largely transferable as a model to begin a course. I would like to argue, as well, that it’s a strategy that could do well to receive more attention. After all, how important is the “hook” in any rhetorical expression? I’m of course not arguing that films are necessarily the best hook to capture students’ attention—I think this is largely a matter of taste—but I wonder to what extent that opening a course with a feature film is often overlooked because it doesn’t fit into the typical paradigm of how a college course is supposed to begin. Indeed, how is a college course supposed to begin? Do you use films to frame your courses? What kinds of questions best help your students to make sense of their themes? Have you screened Wadjda for your students? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below!    

Since Trump became a candidate in the 2016 US presidential race, educators have continued to reflect on how his political presence might influence pedagogy. Personally, I find myself in a familiar quagmire: to what extent do I focus on current events in my Islamic studies courses? If I wanted to, each class session could devote itself exclusively to political developments, domestic and international; this has been the case for years. Trump’s incendiary comments, policy moves, and cabinet picks who malign Muslims, exacerbate this quagmire. Trump, for example, said that “Islam hates us” in a March 2016 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. His cabinet picks and advisors have endorsed similarly disturbing, perhaps willfully ignorant, positions and rhetoric. In this blog post, I will discuss some strategies, as well challenges, for how Islamic studies teachers might react to a Trump administration in a classroom context, with special attention to building positive narratives in addition to challenging existing ones. A recent Executive Order bans travel to the US from nationals of several Muslim-majority countries. In the language of The Intercept’s Zaid Jilani, “If we bombed you, we ban you.” As students, professors, and researchers—even those with green cards—find themselves in limbo, the EO has already sent reverberations across the lives of Muslims in the US and abroad. Fortunately, many scholars of Islam remain positively engaged in public discourse and efforts toward bridge-building and political problem-solving on an ongoing basis. Ilyse Morgenstein-Fuerst wrote a blog post for the University of Vermont, “Trump 2016: The View from Islamic Studies,” in which she details the connections between Trump’s rhetoric, cabinet choices, and their consequences. Caleb Elfenbein, an author for this “Teaching Islam” blog, has contributed to an important project that maps anti-Muslim crimes in the US. Also chilling is Mohammad Fadel’s article for The Islamic Monthly that details worst-case scenarios for Muslims under a Trump administration, including comparisons with Japanese internment camps. This is all to say that there are simply too many, individual as well as cumulative, momentous and worrisome news headlines to introduce to an undergraduate Islamic studies course while still covering other material in the course. Are the Challenges (that) Different than Before? Effective pedagogy includes understanding one’s context, including institutional goals, student demographics, and the current political landscape. An effective way, I find, to invite students to draw personally meaningful connections to course material is to always keep in mind popular symbols and ideas that bear, even indirectly, on what we study. The absurdity of mainstream media coverage of Islam can also offer some cathartic moments of laughter, which also helps ease students into challenging discourses. In terms of noteworthy contributions that Muslims make to American public life, we saw Linda Sarsour—a Palestinian American activist—lead organizing efforts for the Women’s March on Washington. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of Congress (now in his sixth term), received the endorsement of Bernie Sanders for chair of the DNC, and the funeral of Muhammad Ali in June 2016 attracted international media attention, including its full broadcast on Fox News. In a beautifully narrated but also depressing account, NPR’s Asma Khaled details what it was like, as a Muslim woman, to cover Trump’s campaign during the election. As Amir Hussain adroitly argues in his recent book, Muslims and the Making of America (Baylor, 2016), we have much to learn about American cultural fabric by studying the role of Islam and Muslims in our history, even as it continues to unfold. In my capacity as host for New Books in Islamic Studies podcasts, I have interviewed a number of scholars—including Amir Hussain, Sophia Arjana, and Todd Green—about how current political affairs impact the lives of Muslims in the US. I keep my students in mind as one audience for these interviews, and I have repeatedly assigned my students the interview I conducted with Todd Green, on Islamophobia (which prospered in the American mainstream long before Trump reached the national spotlight). The Good, the Bad, and the Mystical Despite the many humanizing accounts about Muslims that my students study, these same students also tell me that they aren’t surprised to learn about the pervasive Islamophobia in the news cycle. But don’t some details shock them, even a little bit? In a 2015 Public Policy Poll, for example, about 30% of Republicans and 19% of Americans supported bombing Agrabah—the fictional city from Disney’s Aladdin. Among Trump supporters: 41%. As I wrote in a previous “Teaching Islam” blog post, students can use current political tensions, and how they respond to them, as a way to make sense of Sufi conceptions of spiritual growth. “Do I,” students might ask themselves, “harbor anything related to these views that I find so toxic and ignorant?” I’m currently teaching Islamic Mysticism for the third time, and I’ve implicitly chosen in past iterations to focus less on current events than I do in my introductory courses on Islam, or even in my courses on the Qur’an in which we explicitly explore contentious political topics. This time, however, I find myself taking closer stock during class time of political context, and not only because of the most recent presidential election. I think students likewise crave a balance between attention to (depressing) current events and engaging with aesthetics and intellectual discourse that don’t immediately relate to the latest fake news (or “alternative facts”?) on their social media feeds. In conclusion, I would like to include a brief reflection on student activism and its connection to teaching. As a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, I witnessed some student groups host anti-Muslim ideologues including Dennis Praeger, David Horowitz, and Daniel Pipes. Frequently, I would watch many other student groups respond with formal protests, which I found both heartening and problematic. Indeed, protest is perhaps part of the human spirit; it encapsulates much of what it means to thrive in a democratic society. It’s also an effective catalyst for change as numerous examples from history attest. At the same time, however, I regularly remind myself that part of the difficult intellectual work of teaching and learning involves building narratives, not only challenging visible narratives. Both are necessary, and my course on Sufism helps me, and I hope my students as well, appreciate the significance of this balance, the complementarity between jamal (beauty) and jalal (majesty)—two sides of the same human condition. Where do you strike your balance in terms of navigating planned course material with course-related current events as they arise throughout the term? Please share in the comments section.

Laughter is an important ingredient in my classroom. I bank on my ability to make students laugh with my often-droll sense of humor, but I also frequently rely on professional comedians through the magic of the Internet. The status of Islam and Muslims in political satire, specifically in the genre of comedy news, provides ample fodder for this need, through projects like The Onion, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Full Frontal (and as much as I cherish Last Week Tonight, John Oliver rarely explores the topic of religion). Indeed, humor also has a long tradition in Islamicate history as well—ranging from the likes of Joha/Nasreddin Hodja to Azhar Usman—but in this blog post, I want to focus on the portrayal of Islam and Muslims in Western satire, sometimes called “fake news.” For better or for worse (often for worse), moreover, the appetite for fake news stories (which at times genuinely fool people!) may also be on the rise. Although this trend can have dire consequences, it renders the genre all the more fertile for generating understanding in the classroom. Lots of learning takes place through the slow, careful, and sometimes tedious (even boring) study of details, but cathartic moments can have a uniquely lasting impact on students. I often seize the moment to employ humor in the classroom not only as a way to keep students interested, but also as a means of transformation. Indeed, things are often funny because they are subversive, because they surprise us—kind of like being tickled. It doesn’t work so well to tickle yourself; because you expect it, there’s no surprise. This element of surprise works particularly well, I find, when combined and contrasted with more traditional modes of pedagogy, such as textual analysis, historical inquiry, and site visits. Accordingly, I select short video clips that I use in class bearing in mind what questions they may generate about a given issue. Some of my favorite examples follow: One of the few Last Week Tonight segments that deals with Islam focuses on a Supreme Court case about the permissibility of inmates growing beards in federal prisons. The clip portrays the Supreme Court Justices as talking animals, as a way to self-consciously heighten interest in the Supreme Court—which not only induces at least a few chuckles, but also offers a meaningful opportunity to discuss First Amendment issues in the context of American religion. Why oh why don’t the “moderate” and “peaceful” Muslims speak up? This clip from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee explores this question as well as myths that Muslims don’t cooperate with law enforcement, or that they hate the United States. The Daily Show’s “Senior Muslim Correspondent,” Hasan Minhaj, has a smart bit about Southwest Airlines’ removal of a Muslim passenger for allegedly speaking Arabic. That Minhaj himself is a brown Muslim speaks to the rhetorical role of his character as well, and he offers a semi-comical but mostly sober reaction to Trump’s election victory. This segment raises an important chicken or the egg question about the nature of political satire: do political motivations inform comedy news or is comedy a way to express political messages? Regarding hysteria over Muslims conspiratorially taking over the United States with their “shari‘a law,” this clip from The Daily Show about mosques and this clip from The Colbert Report about “radical Muslim snacks” (i.e., halal food) have proven successful and provocative in the classroom, by effectively positioning the level of public paranoia in relation to what kinds of practices Muslims actually promote. Clips like these allow me to ask a real but also rhetorical question to my students (who are formally studying Islam): would any of you feel pretty comfortable and informed about defining “shari‘a” on a national news program in front of millions of viewers (who haven’t formally studied Islam)? (Routinely, no one volunteers.) Where do you think the “real news” anchors get their information about this stuff? They probably Google it, I suggest, as food for thought. And people always interpret Google results with wisdom and measure, right? Is Obama a Muslim? No, he’s not. And never was. He even jokes about this, for example, during his remarks at the White House Correspondence Dinner. One of my all-star comedy news clips to use in class comes from the archives of The Colbert Report. It focuses on the aftermath of the 2011 massacre committed by Norwegian Anders Breivik, whom many media outlets quickly identified as a Middle Eastern Muslim, despite coherent evidence. To quote Colbert, “Just because the confessed murderer is a blonde, blue-eyed, Norwegian-born, anti-Muslim Crusader…does not mean he’s not a swarthy ululating Middle Eastern madman.” I find this clip particularly effective as a teaching tool because it not only highlights the absurdity of how sensation-driven journalists reacted to the event, with flamboyantly transparent anti-Muslim bias, but it also pushes the envelope past what the viewer might expect, by presenting a sequence of awkwardly cathartic punch lines. On the unmeasured way in which mainstream media covers religion and violence, this segment on “decoy Muslims” from “The Onion News Network” pushes the envelope by suggesting baby Muslims should be murdered for fear of their possible ties to terrorist attacks. In my experience as a teacher, this kind of humor, which rides the line between grotesque offense and revealing reflection of popular perceptions, can open doors for frank dialogue about complex issues that even engaged students may otherwise find unapproachable because of political sensitivity. Finally, as a spoof on TSA terrorism prevention, this Key & Peele skit offers an ridiculous but lucid critique of airport theater in which a bunch of would-be “Muslim terrorists” in a cave plot to deceive security officials but find themselves stymied by restricting themselves to a 3.4-ounce bottle of toothpaste, as opposed to the 3.5-ounce bottle on which they modeled their attack. Importantly, this flagrantly flippant skit doesn’t downplay the important of national security, but rather invites inquiry: How might the nation achieve this security? Where does one draw the line between personal liberty and public safety? What about non-Muslim terrorists? In conclusion, I have always found humor an effective pedagogical tool in the classroom. And as the onslaught of violently misleading media attention to Islam and Muslims, consumed by our neighbors and students alike, appears to be speeding up, I think the right combination of satire, subversion, and laughing out loud can provide a uniquely powerful classroom presence and learning experience. What are your favorite comedy news clips? Please share them in the comments section below.

For those of us who teach on the semester system, we face the daunting task of presenting our course in about 15 weeks (and for those of us on quarter systems, about 10!). Among the greatest challenges given this context is to, therefore, decide what can and cannot be left out of a course. If one teaches “Introduction to Islam,” perhaps one aims for a semi-comprehensive historical survey where students learn a bit about hadith, law, Qur’an, theology, dynasties, mysticism—and maybe science, Islamism, and art depending on some variables. Indeed, many textbooks on Islam (books devoted to introducing college students to Islam) treat their topic like this. A fundamental question, therefore: What is the goal for a short undergraduate course on Islam? It’s perhaps a blessing and curse that any given instructor will answer this differently—based on training, institutional context, and personal taste—but I think mostly a blessing because the menagerie of reasonable answers reflects a freedom to make up our minds about approach and content. In this post, I’ll discuss a few outside-the-box approaches that reflect my ongoing struggle with making the best of a short semester. Education as freedom In his article “Liberal Education: Its Conditions and Ends,” David Corey argues that the goal of liberal education is to set us free, to achieve “intellectual freedom or, in a certain quaint sense of the word, ‘spiritual’ freedom” (2014: 195). I can jive with this, and taking a cue from JZ Smith, “there is nothing that must be taught, there is nothing that cannot be left out” of a religious studies course (2012: 13)—which seems to point to freedom as a pedagogical strategy as well. What I interpret from Smith’s prescription is that courses are short, so comprehensive surveys are false gods, in a sense. In an intro to Islam course, why, for example, would attention to a scholarly monograph on the Qur’an, prove more valuable than focusing on episodes from “Little Mosque on the Prairie”? In terms of textbooks, at least, I’m not aware, unfortunately, of any that give attention to “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” so an overreliance on textbooks could also limit the freedom of the instructor to substantively explore outside-the-box sorts of topics. Carl Ernst even notes in Following Muhammad that he hates textbooks for similar reasons; I wouldn’t go that far, in part given my distaste for the H-word, but I strongly sympathize with the sentiment. So if instructors wish freedom for their students, and hope to enjoy a comparable freedom through course design, are we talking about nothing more than a whimsical selection of material? No. It’s not whimsical because I presume, for the sake of argument, that most Islamic studies professors have reasonable training in their respective subfields. On top of that, Islamic studies is not a compartmental, marketable skill, generally speaking—which is why I’ve become increasingly persuaded by Smith’s emphasis on the nothing that cannot be left out. I actually don’t think that’s entirely true: if my course, entitled “Islam,” focused on, say, the question of whether Obama is Muslim (a totally reasonable thing to focus on in said course) to the exclusion of studying Qur’an or hadith, then I should expect to run into some legitimate problems of credibility—from students, colleagues, and my institution. But one should also note that drawing attention to Obama’s religion in light of political realities could uniquely intrigue and teach students. Freedom to surprise students Although I do spend more time in my courses focusing on the Qur’an than on Obama’s public commitment to Christianity, I can’t be sure what will impress students more, years after the class is over—that the story of Khidr is super interesting and weird, that Thomas Jefferson may have read it in Arabic, or that 30% of Americans actually think Obama is a Muslim. Questions of Obama’s religion (or attention to “Little Mosque on the Prairie”), moreover, address critical contemporary questions of Islamophobia, racism, and immigration—topics that could take a bit more creativity to excavate from Moses and Khidr. But can we have it both ways, focusing on Muslim sitcoms as well as the Qur’an? Absolutely, but we still have to prioritize, and if we include one thing we’ll probably have to exclude something else. It’s a balancing act at the end of the day and each of us will rightly navigate things differently. As much as students may find reason to take interest in Obama’s religion—and the story of Khidr—the topic of drugs usually catches their attention as well. And the histories of coffee, alcohol, and qat all squarely tie into broad global discourses such as the consequences of intoxication, state law and sharia, and capitalism. Because I spent a summer in Yemen, and because college students already have a stake in coffee and alcohol, these three substances make regular appearances in a weeklong unit on drugs in Islam. After reading an entire book about the subject—Tripping with Allah, by Michael Muhammad Knight—I ran into a compelling erotic scene involving a vision of Ali and Fatima during Knight’s experience with ayahuasca-DMT (one of the most powerful psychedelics known to science). So I included the excerpt in my “Islamic Mysticism” course last semester. One student memorably lamented her foreseen absence on the day we would discuss Knight’s chapter, writing, “I am disappointed I will be missing today’s discussion of our very weird reading.” Beyond the edutainment factor, the chapter with the erotic scene, like much of Knight’s writing, points clearly to other big questions about Islam, such as Sunni-Shi‘i divides and the boundaries of orthodoxy. So as much fun as it would be to assign the excerpt to students for shock value alone, my pedagogical justification lurks steadily under the surface. Conclusions In my own context, I teach religious studies courses at a college with very few RS majors (currently two, to be precise). As part of the core curriculum, however, students must take at least two courses in my department. Although I always welcomed the challenge of teaching students who are there “because they have to be,” and similarly always valued a liberal arts education, it was not always clear to me how to implement my vision of the liberal arts into my courses. I’ve felt stuck in the ostensibly impossible expectation to teach a survey. What I have increasingly come to ask, though, is what kind of impression my course will leave on students years down the road. And as I continue to ask this question, I become increasingly convinced there’s precious little that cannot be left out of curricula in my courses on Islam. If the goal of learning in my courses is to cultivate intellectual freedom, then is it not only appropriate but even desirable to reflect my own engagement with intellectual freedom, synthesis, and experimentation (cue the DMT jokes) in the syllabus and curriculum itself?

I recently finished my fourth year of full-time teaching and I have noticed two consistent reactions that students have to course material in my Islam-focused courses (i.e., Islam, Islamic Mysticism, and The Qur’an): 1) Ability and willingness to readily acknowledge Islamophobia in American popular culture and 2) Appreciation for Sufi themes and literature. Although I may not have surmised how these two themes relate to one another pedagogically a few years back, I have come to see several connections and will use this blog post to explore some ways to take advantage of these student experiences in the classroom. Conscious and Unconscious Islamophobia Usually, on the first day of class, I write “Islam” on the board and solicit from students the first words that come to mind. Some hesitate to shout out “terrorism,” “anti-democratic” and the like, but I find that there are usually enough brave voices in the class to surface these collective social portrayals of the Muslim Bogeyman, and even evoke some cathartic laughter in the process. I find that this exercise, although rather straightforward, helps set a tone; it signifies to students that suppressing the obvious will hinder class discussion and probably their learning process as well. Much later in the semester, often in written assignments but sometimes in class discussions as well, I find a regular cadre of students admit—at times with a combination of shame and gratitude—how troubled they are to realize the Islamophobic views they have known, or found, in their own minds for who knows how long. This proves unsurprising, however, as many college students today were in diapers on 9/11 and therefore know nothing of a world without the “War on Terror.” It’s significant that these timid disclosures tend to occur toward the end of the semester, because no matter how easy it is for students to identify and caricaturize broad social concerns early on, it takes time to reflect on how stereotypes affect them on an individual level. Sufism and “Spiritual Jihad” When we explore various Sufi themes it’s easy enough, usually unprompted by their instructor, for students to draw some sort of personal meaning from the course material. When we read Ghazali’s (d. 1111) Deliverer from Error, for example, many students find it compelling as it reflects a perennial quest for spiritual truth. I’ll often screen episodes, as well, from the BBC production “The Retreat”—a three-part documentary that observes participants at a Sufi retreat in southern Spain; the cast includes multiple archetypal characters such as spiritual-but-not-religious, rigid dogmatist, addict of technology, and an atheist. Thus students can thus usually find themselves in one or more of the characters. In particular, a text I regularly teach is the 15th-century Sufi allegory, Yusuf and Zulaykha by ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 1492). Many of its central themes relate to challenges of confronting one’s inner demons, and it, therefore, offers some helpful models for students to consider as they confront their own latent or blatant preconceptions about Islam and Muslims. Yusuf and Zulaykha adapts the story of Yusuf (Joseph) from the 12th chapter of the Qur’an, except Jami’s version is much longer, has more details, and focuses on a love-struck female protagonist. Students often think she’s kind of crazy (or just crazy) because of her singular obsession with Yusuf. This obsession ultimately leads her to age physically and persist in a state of inconsolable grief. Eventually, however, once she realizes that it is not Yusuf per se whom she loves, but the divine reflection within Yusuf, her youthful beauty returns, she marries Yusuf, and they live happily ever after. The catalyst for her transformation takes place when she smashes the physical idols she had worshiped, which could symbolize the idols in her heart that had blocked her from True Love. Thus the story conveys useful pedagogical lessons on many levels: truth lies within us, it is we who block truth from becoming apparent, concealing the truth makes us sick and bitter, but also, our obsession with apparent manifestations of truth is highly seductive and difficult to ignore. Struggling Against the Machine One student in my Islamic Mysticism course wrote the following in a response paper late in the semester: “For those who approach this subject with any form of bias, I think must prepare for a clash of what we once viewed as fact with what we can now see as fact. This clash, for me at least, set forth a type of grief and shame.” I suspect that this student—like the protagonist in Yusuf and Zulaykha—arrived at his new perspective only after struggling deeply with his own shadows. Many Islamicists, including myself, find that teaching about Islam and Muslims requires students to go through a process of unlearning or de-programming—however you want to put it—the layers of fear and stereotypes that 21st-century media and society has drilled into their minds, often unconsciously. I think experiences like these are common—although in my own observations few students are willing to admit their feelings in this regard so candidly, even if they undergo similar transformations. What, then, is the best way to guide students through the sometimes-painful process of navigating those parts of themselves that aren’t so pretty? The more I teach, the more I find myself letting students gradually and gently acknowledge their own struggles, rather than relying on the megaphone of my teaching platform. My shift, in this regard—as I intimated the beginning of this post—has resulted from consistently observing students, out of their own volition, desiring to put forth the difficult effort it takes to look inward with honesty and circumspection. Thus the concept ofjihad al-nafs (spiritual struggle) in Sufi traditions—as illustrated in Yusuf and Zulaykha or any number of other scenarios—can allow students not only to draw personal connections to centuries-old texts but also appreciate the difficulties and rewards of challenging oneself to learn and grow amidst a cultural machine that discourages such an endeavor.