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When asked, “What was Muhammad’s moral character like?” Aisha replied: “His moral character was the Quran.” Students encounter this hadith at two moments in the introductory course to the study of Islam. The first is when students meet the Prophet Muhammad through hadith literature, the written record of sayings and actions of the Prophet. We return to the hadith the following week when students begin to explore the Quran. In our second pass of this famous narration, we begin to contemplate what it means to say that the Prophet’s character was the Quran. The idea that the Prophet was a walking Quran is at once simple and simultaneously beyond the immediate reach of the class. Students explain that to say the Prophet’s character was the Quran means he exhibited ideal virtues. This exegesis grasps at an accessible meaning of the hadith, but does not yet appreciate the concept of embodied knowledge that is so important in classical Islamic education, especially Quran education. In some respects, the notion of embodied knowledge runs counter to the kind of education students embark upon in their college years (and the whole of their education leading up to college). Most students describe the purpose of their liberal arts education as a training in a particular way of thinking—honing the skills of critical reading and analysis. But perhaps the idea of embodied knowledge is not so foreign to them. The university where I teach emphasizes “hands-on” and “experiential” learning, the power of doing to facilitate learning. Students are encouraged to study abroad, take on internships, and generally roll up their sleeves and immerse themselves—physically—in their education. So, there are some comparisons to make with students as we discuss the idea of what it might mean to embody the Quran. In this way, the institution’s learning philosophy translates to our classroom in my effort to create for students an embodied experience of the Quran. One of my goals when I teach the Quran is to develop in students an appreciation for the Quran beyond its written text (the Quran as mushaf). I emphasize the significance of the recited Quran and the place of recitation in Muslim life. As I introduce them to the art of Quran recitation, I try to create an auditory experience for the class. In doing this, I aim to cultivate an aesthetic appreciation of the recited Quran. This is an ambitious goal, one that deserves some probing. What kinds of possibilities and limitations might there be in cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for the recited Quran in the (secular) liberal arts classroom? To introduce the Quran to the uninitiated through its recitation is, first, to invite the audience to listen. Listening is itself an act to be honed. To prepare students for the auditory experience, they learn about the significant place of memorization (ḥifẓ) and the art of enunciation and elocution (tajwīd) with patterns of melody (maqāmat). Even with this preparation, the listening we try to practice in our class is complex. Just as much as opening the Quran and reading a page of text cannot convey its meanings, neither can listening to the most beautiful of recitations. In my effort to cultivate for the uninitiated an appreciation of the aural experience of the Quran, I try to create an opportunity for them to recognize its beauty. But this beauty may not be accessible to everyone. My hearing-impaired students have urged me to consider more deeply what an aural attunement to the Quran means for the deaf. For hearing students, the question of what it means to listen to the Quran can be overwhelming. In their preparation to listen, I share various sources with them (readings by Michael Sells and Kristina Nelson, as well as videos of Quran recitations where audiences physically and vocally respond to the performance). So, when students are not moved by a Quran recitation, they describe a sense of feeling left out. For them it is like standing in front of the Mona Lisa and grasping to understand its power. The Quran itself situates ways of listening in relation to the recognition of its truth. While the Quran describes hearing as a physical perception of sound, hearing is typically associated with spiritual understanding. Indeed, the Quran insists that listening requires the heart. Hearing is sutured to learning and understanding, whereas those who reject its message are described as those who “do not hear,” and those who are “deaf,” among other sensory descriptions. In one passage, those who reject God’s message are described as putting their “fingers in their ears” (2:19). At other moments, God interferes with hearing, such as when God placed “heaviness in their ears” (18:57), and “a seal upon their hearts so that they do not hear” (7:100). To listen, then, is not limited to creating an auditory experience for hearing students, but one that involves the heart. Or to put it in less anatomical terms, hearing in the Quran requires a recognition of it as revelation. In this way, the goal of cultivating in students an aesthetic appreciation of the Quran may be at best naïve and at worst problematic. Listening to the Quran for delight, pleasure, or entertainment may be an invitation to over-aestheticize the Quran—to dissolve its message into mere beauty. Listening to the Quran does not allow for a distanced observation. It immerses the listener, all listeners, in an embodied experience. While Quran recitation offers an opening into the Quran in ways that might awaken students’ interest (since it offers a break from the written word and involves their senses that are so often neglected in liberal arts classes), it is through recitation that those who hear and those who do not are distinguished by their bodies and beliefs. To expose students to the significance of the embodied Quran may be to invite them to the edge of its beauty.

Sufia Uddin Associate Professor Connecticut College No better time to teach how Islam is “raced” than now. Comments by the likes of Donald Trump provide excellent fodder for discussions about race, religion, and racism. It is also true that the kinds of questions asked by journalists and the stories they

East and West have long struggled to coexist without detriment to cultural and religious beliefs. With growing globalization and immigration the issue of tolerance and acceptance of different viewpoints is of urgent importance and value. Books on this highly challenging and relevant issue attract the attention of a wide audience. Islamic Schooling in the West is clearly such a book. The authors of the book live and work in Australia. Specifically, Mohamad Abdalla founded three Islamic studies centers at Australian universities, Dylan Chown is a well-known researcher of Islamic pedagogy in the Australian educational environment, and Muhammad Abdullah has 25 years of teaching experience in Australian state schools. This does not mean the book is designed specifically for the Australian community; the book’s ideas and suggestions can be applied to Islamic schools in the West, provided the schools are open to renewal and improvement. Islamic Schooling in the West is a collection of work by contemporary educators and scholars who wish to both keep Islamic schools consistent with traditional Islamic philosophy and make them relevant and highly sought after. The desire to preserve traditional knowledge (2) within the Islamic paradigm and the need to be welcomed and accepted in Western society resulted in this practical manual on how to use modern teaching practice for the benefit of Islamic schools in the West. While some of the book’s chapters focus on specific educational experiences in Australia (for example, “Muslim Schools in Australia: Development and Transition” by Jan A. Ali and “The Importance of Islamic Studies from an Islamic Worldview in Australia” by Ibrahima Diallo), the majority of chapters can be applied to any Islamic school in a Western community. For example, the chapter “Islamic Pedagogy: Potential and Perspective” by Nadeem A. Memon and Mariam Alhashmi aims to challenge a common stereotype that Islamic education is about teaching religion only (169). Thus this book can be used in any Islamic school in the West – not  just in Australia. In general, Islamic Schooling in the West is a book designed to promote the renewal of Islamic education in the Western community. In the twenty-first century, it is necessary to not only keep the traditions and pass down centuries-old knowledge but also to take advantage of updated educational practice and use contemporary teaching and learning techniques to overcome the difficulties Islamic schools face in the West. This book will be interesting for both scholars and teachers.

In my classrooms, I have noticed that more and more students are coming to the study of religion with preconceived conceptions about different religious communities, most frequently, and consequentially, Islam. My sense is that many students in my World Religions courses have a sympathetic imagination about the religions of the “East,” and a positive familiarity with Christianity, even if they aren’t part of a Christian community. However, when it comes to learning about Islam, some students have slight anxiety about Muslims or, more rarely, an established intolerance of the tradition. As an expert in the study of Islam, I feel a responsibility to address why students have placed Islam in an exceptional position, seeing it as a tradition very different from others. Therefore, in addition to outlining key themes and activities about Islam in my World Religions courses, I set two goals: to dismantle the idea that Muslims pose a new and unique threat that legitimizes an unprecedented reaction in American religious history, and unpack why many of my students have come to this conclusion in the first place. As others have noted (Youshaa Patel, Debra Majeed, Sufia Uddin, Elliott Bazzano), we live in a time of rising levels of hateful public rhetoric towards Muslims, support for discriminatory policies, and general demonization of Islam. It’s easy to conclude that students’ deep-seated assumptions about Muslims are shaped by dominant media representations of Islam, which are usually sensational, one-sided, or incomplete at best. What’s key for my students is to understand how their media-informed prior knowledge has shaped their views about Islam. If students do not engage Muslims in their own experience–as their neighbors, doctors, peers, etc.–how can they unlearn their biases? How can we disrupt students’ implicit biases and reframe their understandings of Muslims? Media literacy is an important component of my World Religions class. I begin by thinking about news media because for many of my students the news is seemingly unbiased and simply an unmediated account of the world out there. Jolyon Mitchell’s essay, “Religion and the News: Stories, Contexts, Journalists and Audiences (from Religion and the News, eds. Jolyon Mitchell and Owen Gower (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), has been successful in revealing the various constraints of print and visual news media given the limits they create for its ability to convey stories with rigor and detail. Using this essay alongside several sources about a single current event effectively demonstrates how the structures of this medium require the use of labels, formula, and clichés (i.e. stereotypes). This primer on news media leads us to critically deconstruct representational forms that are clearly more produced (i.e. television and film, political campaigns, literature, etc.).         Moustafa Bayoumi’s book This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (2015) is a useful source for this type of genealogical approach (cf. SherAli Tareen). Bayoumi outlines key aspects to the construction of the homogeneous portrait of Islam and Muslims that dominates mainstream media. He shows that the production of Islam in the American imagination includes several components: the effects of anti-Muslim political discourses, the production of knowledge about Muslims by so-called “experts,” policies of governance and policing, and an archive of images in popular culture. He effectively demonstrates the intersections of various forms of representation and their social consequences in lived realities. Through this focus on how Islam is envisioned in America, I find that frequently stereotypes remain invisible to students and they aren’t convinced that social policies or practices facing Muslims are unwarranted. Therefore, an important question is what histories do I need to provide in order to make students sensitive to biased representations? I place Muslims in the American historical landscape in order to highlight that anti-religious discrimination is recurring and typical. I want students to see that there is an extended history of prejudice and intolerance of religious minorities in the United States. Bayoumi aids this process by covering the long history of Islam in America, going back to the colonial period. I pair this with Peter Gottschalk’s book American Heretics: Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the History of Religious Intolerance. By linking contemporary anti-Muslim racism with the legacy of American exclusion and religious persecution, I show students that oppression of minority groups is nothing new. Gottschalk clearly describes the parallel systems of oppression and operations of exclusion that dominant American religious groups have wielded over minority communities across our history. My hope is that by seeing the effects of discrimination historically, students will be inclined to denounce and act against similar forms of oppression that exist today. The final pedagogical piece is assignments that draw students into media production, thus highlighting the restricted nature of specific mediums, the structural boundaries within which media producers work, and how difficult it is to create content that is nuanced and complex. I find that responding to real life scenarios rather than abstract essay questions generates student knowledge about Muslims in robust and valuable ways. Writing prompts meet students within their own social context (i.e. the university, the regional community, other institutions, etc.) and require them to reflect on the current reproduction of issues we covered in class. For each assignment, they need to respond to local or national circumstances and justify their argument. Some of the tasks are very immediate and personal, such as outlining a conversation with friends about classes and discussing the assumptions their peers might have about Islam. Other assignments include activities such as responding to a vitriolic opinion-piece in the local newspaper, giving a presentation about Muslims to non-Muslim interfaith community members, reacting to a campaign to stop the construction of a new mosque, or attending a meeting with the University Board of Trustees to argue for internationalizing the curriculum. Overall, requiring students to address real life scenarios forces them to respond with clarity and nuance. It also empowers them to confront stereotypes and their social consequences in their local settings. Placing these new tasks within their acquired knowledge of the extensive history of American religious discrimination and the ways in which Islam is produced in an American context (as a reified entity) dismantles many of their previous suppositions about Muslims. Ultimately, it also reveals some of the rhythms of United States religious history that still play today.

In all of the world’s religions, one finds the notion of a “holy fool”: an individual who transcends societal conventions with his/her ridiculous behavior and unpredictable manner of revealing moral truths. For my “Religious Heritage of Islam” and “Religions and Cultures of the Middle East” courses, one of my favorite class exercises involves having students read and discuss a variety of stories and sayings about one of Islam’s most famous “holy fools,” Mullah Nasruddin. Nasruddin is a legendary 13th-century satirical figure who is claimed by many – including Afghans, Turks, Kurds, Uzbeks, and Iranians – to be their own. In Arabic contexts, this figure is often known as Joha. Thriving well along the boundaries of traditionally Muslim societies, he remains the inspiration for folklore in places as varied as Georgia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, and Sicily. Nasruddin is characterized as devout yet irreverent, unpredictable yet consistently foolish, comically inept yet clever. In this exercise, I help my students to understand how stories about Nasruddin use humor to represent and critique Islamic religious and cultural norms, customs, beliefs, and institutions, and to destabilize widespread assumptions. By presenting lessons in a humorous way, Nasruddin holds up a lens to how people flatter political and religious leaders and tell them what they wish to hear. He takes on the role of the fool, which allows him to be subversive without posing a real threat to venerated systems of authority or to pious conventions that have been dampened by empty formalism. While tales about Nasruddin defy easy classification, I work with students to explore a variety of themes that can be found in them. One theme concerns what I call the “bazaar haggling mentality,” which can be described as “outrageous reasoning” that is nonsensical yet amusing and which challenges the status quo. It also can reflect an ego-centric attitude in that the individual seems driven by his wants and idiotic yet transparent about his foolishness. Here are some examples:  The Reason The Mullah went to see a rich man. ‘Give me some money.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I want to buy … an elephant.’ ‘If you have no money, you can’t afford to keep an elephant.’ ‘I came here’, said Nasruddin, ‘to get money, not advice.’(13)  Tit for tat Nasruddin went into a shop to buy a pair of trousers. Then he changed his mind and chose a cloak instead, at the same price. Picking up the cloak he left the shop. ‘You have not paid,’ shouted the merchant. ‘I left you the trousers, which were of the same value as the cloak.’ ‘But you did not pay for the trousers either.’ ‘Of course not,’ said the Mulla – ‘why should I pay for something that I did not want to buy?’ (24) Another theme explored is Nasruddin’s critique of the Insha’Allah mentality found in traditional Muslim societies, which have tended to prioritize theological preoccupation with divine will over philosophical reflection on observable causes. This tendency coincides with a cultural inclination to assign a large role to chance or fate, and can involve minimizing the significance of human responsibility in relation to divine causality.  Here are some examples: Assumptions ‘What is the meaning of fate, Mulla?’ ‘Assumptions.’ ‘In what way?’ ‘You assume things are going to go well, and they don’t – that you call bad luck. You assume things are going to go badly and they don’t – that you call good luck. You assume that certain things are going to happen or not happen – and you so lack intuition that you don’t know what is going to happen. You assume that the future is unknown. ‘When you are caught out – you call that Fate’. (20) If Allah wills it Nasruddin had saved up to buy a new shirt. He went to a tailor’s shop, full of excitement. The tailor measured him and said: ‘Come back in a week, and – if Allah wills – your shirt will be ready.’ The Mullah contained himself for a week and then went back to the shop. ‘There has been a delay. But – if Allah wills – your shirt will be ready tomorrow.’ The following day Nasruddin returned. ‘I am sorry,’ said the tailor, ‘but it is not quite finished. Try tomorrow, and – if Allah wills – it will be ready.’ ‘How long will it take,’ asked the exasperated Nasruddin, ‘if you leave Allah out of it?’ (29) In contrast to the previous theme, another theme is Nasruddin’s challenges to rationalism. Here we find Nasruddin keeping philosophers and worldly, rational thinkers on their toes by using inconsistent logic: Inscrutable Fate Nasrudin was walking along an alleyway when a man fell from a roof and landed on his neck. The man was unhurt; the Mullah was taken to hospital.  Some disciples went to visit him. ‘What wisdom do you see in this happening, Mullah?’ ‘Avoid any belief in the inevitability of cause and effect! He falls off the roof – but my neck is broken! Shun reliance upon theoretical questions such as: “If a man falls off a roof, will his neck be broken?”’(26) Prayer Is Better Than Sleep As soon as he had intoned the Call to Prayer from his minaret, the Mulla was seen rushing away from the mosque. Someone shouted, "Where are you going, Nasruddin?" The Mulla yelled back, "That was the most penetrating call I have ever given. I’m going as far away as I can to see at what distance it can be heard." (98) The Value of Truth ‘If you want truth,’ Nasruddin told a group of Seekers who had come to hear his teachings, ‘you will have to pay for it.’ ‘But why should you have to pay for something like truth?’ asked one of the company. ‘Have you not noticed,’ said Nasruddin, ‘that it is the scarcity of a thing which determines its value?’ (90) By providing my students with handouts listing these quotes, I then ask them to work in groups to identify themes that relate in some way to larger questions of Islamic theology and philosophy (for example, traditionalist and rationalist understandings within Islam) that we have discussed in previous class sessions. We then hold a larger group discussion to discuss these themes as well as ways in which a character such as the “holy fool” can hold up a mirror to society or remind people never to be too sure about their assumptions. Lastly, I also like to project different visual representations of the Mullah, and ask the students what do they see in images such as the following miniature.  As the students immediately notice, the Mulla is riding backward on a donkey I ask them why, and then I explain how this miniature depicts a well-known story of Nasruddin riding his donkey backward while leaving a village that he had visited. When asked the reason, he simply responded: “I did not want to disrespect the people by having my back to them.”     In my experience, the “holy fool” offers students a fresh way of experiencing Islamic religion and culture, breaking through stereotypes to reveal humanity and humor as well as subtle wisdom and capacity for satire. Many students have testified that exercises involving stories of Mullah Nasruddin are rewarding and valuable, and allow them to think critically about larger issues even while experiencing a deeper respect for the richness of the culture from which the stories emerged. Mullah Nasruddin’s tendency to raise questions but not necessarily answer them helps to open up space for deep questioning and laughter alike. I would like to conclude with one last story, giving the Mullah the last word. The Mulla lost his key and was looking for it under a street lamp.  A man noticed that the Mulla was looking for something and stopped to help him find it.  After an hour of looking, the man asked the Mulla if he could remember the last time he saw the key and the Mulla replied, ‘In my bedroom.’ The man angrily responded by stating ‘Then why are you looking for it here?’ ‘Because,’ Nasruddin told the man, ‘There is much more light here.’  **All quotes in this blog post come from I. Shah (1971). The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin. New York: E. P. Dutton.

One of my previous blog posts mentioned the significance of storytelling and how I love sharing stories of my own travel to help students imagine the world of the classroom subject and, hopefully, to inspire students to travel and experience this world for themselves. As most teachers can testify, some of the greatest moments of being a teacher involve learning how knowledge that was conveyed within the classroom leads students to new learning experiences beyond the classroom. For example, it is quite wonderful when one receives word from a former student who decided to travel to places that were shared in the classroom setting – places like Fez, Cairo, or Lahore. Just this summer a former student, originally from Serbia, sent a message that he had visited Shiraz, Iran, and mentioned how he remembered my lecture on this beloved city.    As teachers, we all have favorite lectures and one of mine is on Shiraz. In it, I help the student to explore how a city can become not only an intellectual center and intercultural capital for convening scholars from many disciplines and identities, but also a home to “immortal” poets and saints who became known as “friends of God.” In this blog post and my next, I want to describe why it is so important to teach about such cities, which were renowned for their “Houses of Knowledge,” eternal gardens, and magnificent shrines.     I begin my lectures on these cities by mentioning how when a student leaves home he or she starts to reflect more about his or her parents and home. It is often only when we leave our home that we become more curious about who we are, where we came from, and how our own family fits into the larger world. I then share my own story of how at their age (entering into university) I started to learn more about my father’s heritage and eventually I took a trip to Iran with my father that would change my life.  Why? Shortly after the trip, my uncle, himself a professor of entomology, mailed me a package containing a most intriguing book, written entirely in Persian by a great-great-great grandfather during the 1800s. Folded into the center of the book was a remarkable Islamic cosmological map drafted by yet another grandfather from six generations back. As I share this map with my students, I then tell my students that for the last 20 years I have been trying to decipher the metaphysical and symbolic content of this spiritual map, and to gain a firmer grasp of how this content synthesized centuries of Sufi Muslim thought about two arcs of the soul’s journey through a multi-layered cosmos – an arc of emanation, and an arc of return.  In sharing the physical map I am able to explain a variety of aspects of living in a traditional Islamic city like Shiraz. For instance, the map represents a pre-modern understanding of the world and the cosmos where everything is a symbol and there are multi-layered meanings to reality itself. This helps me explain how many Muslim theologians and philosophers understood metaphysics in terms of different levels of reality which might be deciphered through such diverse means as letter mysticism, numerology, astrology, and contemplation of passages from sacred texts as well as inspired poetry. I mention how the map itself was intended to provide a symbolic representation of the soul’s journey through unseen as well as visible dimensions of the cosmos. Having been produced by a respected religious leader in Shiraz generations ago, the map speaks not just to the ideas of the author but also to the larger spiritual and cultural milieu in which he lived. It conveys how Shiraz was a center for learning not only metaphysics but also physics and astronomical observation. I share with my students how the map’s shape is in the form of an astrolabe, a scientific as well as navigational instrument for measuring the altitudes of celestial bodies. I then show them an astrolabe that I found in Shiraz which is very similar in design to the map. With the astrolabe, I am able to explain a variety of amazing scientific contributions, inventions, and innovations that were made by Muslim astronomers, such as Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (d. 986) and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1311). I also point out that the map has poetic verses inscribed on it in writing that reflects the artistic forms of calligraphy. Once again, I have the opportunity to offer my students a window into a traditional world of Islamic culture, within which the great poets of a city or region would play a major role in defining unique aspects of that place’s heritage and identity. I note that for Shiraz the preeminent poets were Hafez and Sadi, whereas other cities had their own patron saints and poets. I mention how the shrines of these two poets remain among the most celebrated spaces in the city to this very day, establishing a link between past and present.  

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?

In a previous blog post, I sounded an optimistic note about the believing educational community that engages profoundly with various streams of the religious tradition – in my case, the Muslim tradition. As I contemplate a valuable piece by SherAli Tareen on the potential issues with which we regard as critical secular pedagogy, I anticipate some of the pedagogical decisions I will make this semester. I teach at the American Islamic College, one of only two Islamic liberal arts colleges in the United States. This generates a unique and continuing set of pedagogical and disciplinary questions for me - questions that I do not usually find reflected in my colleagues’ pedagogical concerns regarding the teaching of Islam in the academy.   My feelings of - shall we say, comfort – in teaching Islam to mostly Muslim students are tempered by practical pedagogical concerns as I am a Muslim, female professor who teaches gender at a Muslim college in the United States. Apart from the study of religion, classroom spaces in general can be battlegrounds for identities. A dash of critical distance can be a useful addition to the red-hot dynamics in classroom discussions. I nervously anticipate certain pedagogical situations in Muslim-majority learning settings as my own, as well as in mainstream academia, where critical distance is my go-to approach. Most of my Muslim students are eager to understand diverse perspectives on religious issues, and have been astoundingly eager to broaden their horizons, even to the point of intellectual discomfort. Still, I have learned to expect the Guerilla Student. He (usually) does not form a majority in my classes. But when he makes an appearance, he steps into the academic fray, brandishing a Qur'anic verse, intent upon shutting down any "wayward" discourse. As the class community contemplates various religious perspectives on Muslim politics, this student brings in And be not disunited (Qur’an 3:103). The discussion quickly falls flat, everyone hangs their heads piously, as if to contemplate the frivolity of human words before the Word, and that is that. Or the Guerilla Student lobs a Prophet tradition into the controversy, and the hadith instantly establishes a literalistic, atomistic framework over the intellectual community - a framework that allows for a singular one-dimensional view of religion, and therefore, shuts down discussion as unnecessary or even reprehensible. A young fervent woman might react negatively to the complexification of a religious problem, demanding a simple response to her “Well, should I do it or not?” The impact of such guerrilla warfare is to silence, at least temporarily, the majority of students who are interested in investigating the sociological implications of religious norms, who wish to explore the contextual deployment of religious sources, and who are interested in a religious world where people disagree. In other words, says the Guerilla Student, let's just shut our books and our mouths, and retire to our corners and recite Qur'an. Not that I haven't frequently been tempted to do the same, because ambiguity isn't exactly soothing. In anticipation of the Guerrilla Student, I set up a classroom community where, most importantly, students must engage with the required readings in all discussions. No one can simply show up without doing any of the work and, swaggering, simply toss the grenades of Scriptural texts amidst the group. Anyone who hasn’t done the reading will be reminded that entrance to discussion is guarded by the test of academic work. I explicitly state in my syllabus: "You must develop the analytic habit of considering various perspectives, including opposing ones." This is troubling to the student who regards feminist interrogations of the Qur’an as disrespectful and impious. To some, these readings are not worshipful. For students who study Islam to seek piety rather than profound understanding, this is a distraction. For some Muslim students, a Gender course would be better served by Maudoodi’s Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam rather than Kecia Ali’s Sexual Ethics in Islam. I add, in my syllabus, "In this academic setting, all claims and opinions must be supported by scholarly evidence and reasoning." In these words, I establish that the setting was an academic one, and not a religious one. To some students, this is disappointing. To me, as a religious Muslim academic, it’s not entirely truthful. I do regard academic Islam as worship. Moreover, the evidence expected is human scholarship. This establishes the importance of interpretation. To the believer who sees his or her interpretations as self-evidently true, this is blasphemous.   When I classify my classroom as an academic one, I clarify that no one may come in with their credentials as local imam and become the lecturer here. In terms of my role as facilitator and my authority as course instructor, a religious educational setting is dangerously democratic. A religious classroom demands clerical or seminary/madrasa credentials; with my Ph.D., I am not appropriately appareled. Any public preachers, study-circle leaders or madrasa-trained males could always turn up their noses at my Western academic credentials.  And then there is patriarchy. As a woman - of color (and of short stature) - my pedagogic authority is always at risk in all classrooms. Most of my Muslim students bring a deeply Islamic affectionate respect to my teaching. In fact, my Muslim students at AIC humanize and respect me in a way that, in my previous teaching experience, many of my White students never did. I cannot express how deeply refreshing this teacher-student relationship is, in contrast to the experiences I had before. But there has been the occasional male student - especially when I taught Islam & Gender - who finds the dynamic in my class intolerable. At times, such a student drops the class, but not before lobbing the Scriptural grenades and disrupting the analytic discussion. If he simply evades the readings, he succeeds in getting by in a disturbingly water-off-a-duck’s-back manner. A student committed to patriarchy could not stomach the idea of a female professor who taught Amina Wadud and Leila Ahmed - or a female professor who gave out C's.  When Islam is used as a patriarchal stick to establish the authority of literalism, or Islamism, or Traditionalism, or sexism, critical distance in pedagogy can be a handy shield. When the literalistic, patriarchal, hegemonic interpretations are brandished in my classroom, I do sometimes brandish certain critical secular tools. "We cannot throw out ayaat or ahadith as responses to a question. You can bring your readings of those sources to the discussion, but they are readings. You cannot use the Qur'an to shut everyone up.” "But," sputters a certain kind of student, “It should shut everyone up.” This critical distance and interpretive freedom is widely regarded as critical secular pedagogy. But it is not just that. To me, as a Muslim professor, it is also an internal Muslim tool to safeguard the right to ikhtilaf (difference of opinion). But when I embrace this tool of critical distance as an Islamic one, there is always the danger that we commence the battle of my-source-trumps-yours. Appeals to religious authority in religious settings can close debate. I respect and value the sources, but there is a danger in how they are deployed by my interlocutors. The problem isn’t the Qur’anic verse being lobbed by the student. In such pedagogical encounters, I’m at the mercy of the Guerilla Students. I’m hostage to the personality of the discussant at risk, to his conception of adab (etiquette) in Islamic education. Any pedagogical approach must necessarily be multi-faceted and respectful of its context. As a Muslim professor of Islamic Studies, I combine a believer's loving commitment with an explorer's dedication to the journey. I ask my students to bring the same intrepid commitment to this path. No woman or man will be allowed to blow up the trail. I'll deploy any tools necessary to protect the trail. Critical distance is one of those tools. Critical distance is frequently used in secular settings to shut down Muslim critiques of dogmatic secularity. But my critical distance is different. It is a protective distance of love.

This is the fourth and last installment of a series of posts on the theme of “teaching theory without theory talk” in an introductory course on Islam. To review, I have explored ways in which one might present to students in an introductory course important theoretical arguments (e.g., complicating binaries like tradition/modernity or religion/secular; appreciating the intimacy of discourse, power, and material conditions; interrogating the legacy of colonial modernity in the formation of contemporary categories of life) that are by now commonplace in the study of religion. How might one advance such conceptual tasks without burying students in the often intimidating and prohibitive protocols and operations of theoretical discourse? In the last three posts, I shared my experience wrestling with this challenge at different moments in an introductory Islam course. In this post, I want to take a step back. Rather than reflecting on teaching theory through teaching Islam, I wish to think through some of the theoretical assumptions that often sustain the teaching of Islam within the study of religion. More specifically, I wish to ponder aloud a certain discomfort I have often experienced on the first day of a course, especially the introductory Islam course. On day one, as is common practice among religion scholars, I try explaining to students what the study of religion is and how it differs from theological studies. This usually involves making a list of contrastive attributes. The study of religion (and Islam) is historical, non-confessional, non-normative, and analytical as opposed to the normative confessional study of religion as an object of faith. This sentiment is usefully captured in the formula of drawing the contrast between studying religion and studying about religion. There is obviously much merit in these explanatory gestures. One would not want the academic classroom to become a space for resolving competing truth claims or of passing certificates of normativity and heresy. However, there is nonetheless an underlying secularity at work in this exercise that I find not only conceptually troubling but also a potential roadblock to teaching Islam. To begin with, the act of contrasting the historical, academic, and non-confessional study of religion with the allegedly confessional character of theological studies risks reducing the latter to a caricatured representation. Surely, despite their normative preoccupations, seminaries and madrasas also often engage in analytically sharp and historically informed scholarship, even if their logics of history and critical thinking might differ. Making a conscious and concerted effort to distinguish religion studies from theological studies might have the unintended effect of smugly suggesting the superiority of the former over the latter. “We are cooler than those people who are unable to separate personal faith from scholarly inquiry.” Even if not intended as such, it is hard to imagine this not being among the implicit messages communicated by the assertion of the religion/theological studies dichotomy. Making such a contrast also embraces and replicates the secular/religious binary, which as many scholars have argued, is a very problematic binary. “We the critical historians of religion will undertake for the next fourteen weeks the secular study and inquiry of this religion and these religious subjects.” That is the upshot of the eager disclaimer that the study of religion is not theological/seminary studies. There is an underlying nod to the virtues of secularity at the heart of the promise of historicizing religion. This secular gesture does bring the benefits of absolving a course on Islam from the sins of establishing orthodoxy, encouraging piety, or of promoting confessional bias. But, it also carries certain limitations that are important to acknowledge and engage if not resolve. Let me highlight just one such limitation. The positioning of an introductory course as a non-confessional (read secular) inquiry into Islam can hamper the effectiveness of discussions on the affective and phenomenological aspects of a religion. An important moment in the introductory Islam course that speaks to this point is that of the revelation of Islam to Muhammad. This is a powerful moment. It combines awe, terror, anticipation, physical pain, and marks a permanent cleavage in time and history. But the history of religion approach deflates the power of this moment. Having taken their position as detached (even if sympathetic) observers of a tradition, students are unburdened from the weight of entangling their beings with the experiential registers of the religion. They are absolved of feeling, perhaps even suffering, the mixture of perplexity and wonder that suffuses and accompanies moments like Muhammad's revelation. They might sympathize with such moments or be fascinated by them, but the thick crust of secular historicism makes even the attempt at inhabiting the experience of such moments almost impossible. My point, or perhaps more accurately, my attempt at articulating a less than fully formulated doubt and discomfort, is not a rehearsal of predictable musings on the insider/outsider problem. Rather, I am after the implications and effects of a pedagogical orientation towards Islam that renders it a foreign object of secular historicist inquiry and consumption. Such an orientation, animated by the assumptions and logics of secularity, captured most prominently by the secular imperative of historicizing and desacralizing life, can produce rather deleterious effects. Most notably, it relies on and perpetuates a binary between the enlightened critical investigator and the tradition bound uncritical religious subject who is the former’s object of investigation. In other words, the history of religion approach to teaching Islam is a decisively secular approach that replicates and advances the religion-secular binary. Obviously, recourse to a confessional approach is hardly the solution; that is both untenable and undesirable. Perhaps what is needed is a pedagogical orientation that is thoroughly unaccepting of the religion-secular binary in all its manifestations. Being more critical of the critical historical study of religion, especially when set in contrast to traditionalist theological studies, might be a useful step towards the cultivation of such an orientation.

For those of us who teach on Islam and Muslims, the teaching of the narrative of Joseph, or Yusūf in Arabic, is old hat. It has proven to be a useful pedagogical device for placing the Qur’an in conversation with the Hebrew Bible. The narrative is easy to set for side-by-side comparative readings (Qur’an 12:1-111 and Genesis 37:1-50:26), and this particular Qur’anic narrative of a prophet is self-contained making it especially accessible to students. In contrast, the Qur’anic treatment of other figures like Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and Mary is spread across many different places. Having students read the biblical and Qur’anic narratives of Joseph alongside one another, when framed carefully, can be an incredibly productive and engaging learning experience for students. It raises questions concerning intertextuality and compels students to ask questions concerning language, authorial intent, and reception. Nevertheless, as many of you may well know, the assignment does not always go well. It is not a “set it and forget it” kind of assignment. Over the years, how I have taught the Yūsuf/Joseph narrative has changed as I continually adapt the unit to the reactions and responses of my students. Unsurprisingly, they are not all approaching the texts with the same set of presuppositions and sensitivities. I see in some of the papers that my students submit a dismissal of the Qur’anic narrative as purely derivative of the biblical one. Others walk away perplexed by what they believe to be the overly elliptical or densely opaque language of the Qur’an. With both narratives emerging from historical contexts greatly removed from those of today, I also find students conflating the Sitz im Leben or social contexts of the biblical and Qur’anic accounts. All ancient societies in arid climates start blurring together for them. What I would like to share are some of the changes that I have made to improve how I frame the assignment and guide my students. 1) I encourage my students to consider reading the passage from the Qur’an first. Students want to begin with the biblical account either out of familiarity or a desire to read the material in historical order, but this can prime them to privilege the biblical account as the “authentic” or “original” one. By flipping the reading order, how they go about processing the two texts is substantially shifted. This is evident in our class discussions. Typically the students end up split in which they read first, but this difference itself has generated fascinating discussions about how each student perceives certain narrative elements as either missing, added, extraneous, abbreviated, or prolonged depending on which scripture is granted “priority.” 2) If time permits in a semester, I try to provide a broader introduction to the work being done by the authors of these scriptural texts. While this naturally takes place with the Qur’an, since it is the subject of my course, it takes more effort to carve time out to properly situate the Hebrew Bible. What seems to be the Hebrew Bible’s larger objective? Who is its audience(s)? What overarching story is it trying to tell with its many books? How does it tell that story? Who is emphasized and why? Of course, we entertain the same questions when it comes to the Qur’an. In sum, I am trying to get students to think, what sort of work is each of these narratives doing in their respective historical and cultural settings? Attention is also paid to language. I have my students reflect and discuss on why the Qur’an and Bible seem to speak in different ways. How does naming, or the lack thereof, figure into the telling of the story and what effect does it have for the reader? This is also an opportunity for students to do some translation comparisons, a tactic I discussed in an early post. The point of the narrative assignment, of course, is not only the content of the accounts themselves, but drawing attention to the ways that the stories are told. 3) I have also found it helpful to extend the Yūsuf/Joseph unit on occasion by moving beyond scripture and looking at how the narrative is received and reinterpreted by later historical communities. What life has the Yūsuf/Joseph narrative had? Obvious choices are the musical and film Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and the array of religious art, both Christian and Islamic, that has been produced around the story. What I have found more compelling and useful, however, is the novel Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah which uses the Yūsuf/Joseph narrative to tell the history of East Africa during the period of European colonization. Both the setting and the characters of this book serve to further decenter our discussions from biblical normativities and the western cultural prism. We are dealing, after all, with Africans and Muslims under colonialism. Although the novel adheres relatively loosely to the scriptural accounts of Yūsuf/Joseph, it nonetheless allows us to revisit the narrative with a more contemporary lens as we explore questions of power, identity, and belonging. It is also a powerful reminder for my students of the ways that art and literature can intersect with religion and scripture. These narratives are not just old stories, but important ways of making meaning and shaping the present.