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Not too long ago I was invited to join a panel with the ambitious aim of putting into context for the campus community the rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment and the Islamophobia industry behind it. I was specifically requested to open the gathering with a 10-minute Islam 101 in order to dispel common misconceptions of Islam and Muslims. The event was well-intentioned, but the initial framing of the event and my role in specific, I realized, would only serve to reinforce that religion and Muslim religiosity somehow lie at the heart of the problem. The part that was asked of me implied that there exists a mainstream, normative, conventional understanding of Islam that did not warrant prejudice. As this line of thinking goes, anti-Muslim sentiments would surely subside if only more people knew about this safe, good, and moderate Islam. According to this narrative, there is a right kind of Islam out there and the burden of responsibility lies with those right-thinking Muslims to push back and make themselves heard. What this narrative leaves unaddressed is the complicity and accountability of the larger majoritarian society in uncritically perpetuating anti-Muslim sentiments. Instead, religion is foregrounded as what matters most. This line of thinking eerily echoes the deeply problematic expectation that race issues in America are a “black problem” in which the burden of change lies with black communities. In both cases, the larger systemic social, political, legal, and economic issues are overlooked or worse, exonerated. My argument is not that Islam or religion is altogether irrelevant or unimportant in conversations like these. What is problematic is the continual recourse to find answers (and false comfort) in explanations centered on religious motive and identity when conflicts, crises, and tragedies transpire. When a discussion is framed narrowly around Islam or religion, we end up missing the bigger picture. The above event I described, which was eventually productively reframed, brings to the fore a particular pedagogical challenge that many scholars of Islam face. In the few minutes I was granted, how could I speak beyond the lens of religion to highlight other structural problems of greater significance? Part of the dilemma is one of time. When I think of my role as a teacher, I often take for granted the generous amount of time I have with my students each semester. Instead of a mere fifteen minutes, my students and I engage in conversation and critical inquiry on a wide array of topics related to Islam and Muslims over the course of fifteen weeks. With each class meeting we progressively build our knowledge base, nuance our language, and continually circle back to thorny issues with keener questions and alternative perspectives. When we are invited to speak we remain committed teachers, but we must carry out our work without the benefits that a semester of engagement affords. Moreover, we do not have the ability to slowly build a thoughtful base of knowledge. Speaking opportunities are typically topical and the range of topics we are asked to speak on can be dizzying, if not outright perplexing. We are invited to speak on the deeply problematic categories of terrorism and radicalization. We are asked to provide background and context to wars and conflicts in Muslim majority countries. We are asked to weigh in or explain headline issues like the refugee crisis, the position of presidential candidates, anti-Muslim hate crimes, and most recently the burkini ban across Southern France. Because of our place and position, our “expertise” on Islam is sought – never mind what our areas of specialization actually are. Time and again, we are deployed, both intentionally and unintentionally, to reinforce religion – especially Islam – as the primary frame of reference. While respecting the request and good intentions of event organizers, there are several ways we can work to change or better the discourse. Structural Reframing: Whether speaking individually or on a panel, the typical expectation is that we will say our part and then field a handful of questions. I have found it useful to collaborate with organizers well in advance in imagining alternative models of engagement. Might colleagues in other disciplines be invited in addition to or in place of ourselves? Would a roundtable or town hall style conversation be better suited for a larger audience? When faced with a smaller and more intimate group, could participants be engaged through a service experience or could the discussion be facilitated around a more reflective and participatory fishbowl dialogue? Interventions like these at the organizational level can be used to introduce a different horizon of understanding, one that extends beyond religious reductionism, by simply changing the angle of approach or the terms of the conversation. Engaging the Audience: At one-off events it is often difficult to gauge where an audience is coming from. It can be worthwhile to quickly poll or even pose direct questions to those in attendance to better understand their expectations and concerns. At times it can even be helpful to even call into question problematic premises or assumptions about the role and significance of religion. For example, questions of scriptural interpretation arise frequently at many events, especially those concerning violence. The assumption is that somehow the Qur’an directs the actions of its readers. Of course, human behavior is hardly driven by such a crude correlation of text to action. Moreover, texts, even scriptural ones, are incredibly malleable and open to interpretation. By simply spotlighting erroneous assumptions, the audience can be prompted to explore the many other factors and influences at play. Speak Beyond Religion: For a variety of reasons, strategic planning is not always possible. In fact, more often than not, I only have at my disposal the speaking time I am given and the content I choose to convey. In these situations, I believe it is still important to push past an exclusively religious frame of reference. Religion is only one identity marker that inflects the realities we face today, and yet the singular attention to religion in our attempts to understand these realities serves to obfuscate more pressing systemic problems that underlie them. We may be scholars of religion, but as our research and work in the field continually demonstrates there are many other intersecting power structures shaping the persons, societies, and ideas that we study. What structural inequalities are peoples responding to? What role do state actors and colonial histories have in creating, perpetuating, and worsening the situation in question? How is religion or Islam being coopted or instrumentalized? What are the identity politics at stake that continue to draw religion or Islam into suspicion? Speaking about religion and Islam is not just a matter of content, but also one of context. By drawing connections to wider cultural, social, political, and economic questions we can raise the level of discussion and deepen the narratives at work in the public discourse.

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.

Joshua Canzona Georgetown University When I was teaching public high school, a colleague in the history department approached me to express his concern about our world religions curriculum. “I am scared to touch it,” he said. What he meant, first of all, was that he felt unprepared to teach about..

Eren Tasar Assistant Professor University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill As a trend in twentieth-century world history, decolonization is a major topic in any class dealing with modern Muslim societies. This mundane fact comes as a surprise to some of my students, however, for reasons that I can illustrate.

Caleb Elfenbein Assistant Professor Grinnell College The core learning goal of my introduction to Islam is that “Islam” is not a thing. Islam does not say anything. Islam does not do anything. Islam holds no power over anyone. Given the incredible diversity across time and space that marks the practices

Joshua Canzona Georgetown University In his “Homage to Joe Sacco,” Edward Said celebrates the author of Palestine and gives us one of the best love letters to comics ever written. He shares his first comic book experience, “Everything about the enticing book of colored pictures, but specially its untidy, sprawling.

Martin Nguyen Associate Professor, Faculty Chair for Diversity Fairfield University In a time when it is of paramount importance to assert and witness that black lives matter, how do we go about preparing our Islam courses that all too often afford little to no time at all for the societal.

Caleb Elfenbein Assistant Professor Grinnell College Don’t we all have moments when we want to, or perhaps feel like we should, set aside a class session plan in lieu of discussing a pressing event or development? Despite the vast array of subjects that we teach within the broader field of..

Najeeba Syeed-Miller Assistant Professor Claremont School of Theology In my last entry, I made curricular suggestions on teaching Islam and pluralism. The curricular suggestions continue as follows: Juristic Approaches to Diversity Ethics of Disagreement: This method is an internal modality for dissent for scholars of Islam who developed a systematized..

Youshaa PatelAssistant Professor of Religious Studies Lafayette College Today, Islam is paired with violence so often that these two concepts have become virtually synonymous. Conversations are often wedged between criticisms that Muslims are doing too much violence or not doing enough to stop it. Jihad, the Islamic keyword that.