teaching Muslim diversity

Many Islamicists, specialists in Islam, talk about the challenge of teaching Islam in a post-9/11 world, a world where the War on Terror (WOT), political chaos in the Middle East (exacerbated by the WOT), and global jihadi violence (which feeds off the WOT) dominates the news. Not surprisingly, this backdrop ...

“Women and Islam.” It is a subject that is surrounded by strongly held and divergent opinions, values, and beliefs, as well as by misconceptions, over generalizations, and yes, political agendas. In the 21st Century, there are many competing projects attempting to define who Muslim women are and what their identities ...

I ended my last blog entry by noting the value of inter-religious relationships formed among students learning about Islam in the higher education environment. Continuing with this theme, one of the consequences of this mixed-faith, or Muslim/non-Muslim learning environment is the opportunity for students to situate their learning about ...

I remember how dumbfounded I was the first time a student told me he had grown up believing Catholics were not Christian. He had never, moreover, heard of the Orthodox Church, the only form of Christianity recognized by most Muslims in the region I study, (Central Asia). This encounter proved ...

I write in a time when the study of Islam is of paramount importance. This blog entry focuses on the teaching of Islam in interreligious settings, with an eye toward the notion of pluralism. So often, engaging this tradition starts with the assumption that the production of its knowledge was ...