Month: October 2020

Class session: Tuesday, October 27
Guest Summarizer: Jeremy Silverstein

We began today’s meeting with a discussion of Rumi’s poetry, the Islamic
character of which we noted to have been excluded from popular translations. Having
experienced Rumi only through these interpretations, contemporary audiences have
come to neglect the distinct Islamic context by which one might better comprehend both
Rumi’s work and the poet himself. We considered the role of secularization in
encouraging this treatment of religious themes, and we launched from there into a
sprawling conversation wherein we touched upon numerous intersections of religion
and public life. Perhaps most critically, we talked about the separation of church and
state, weighing the extent to which a society may viably heed the ideal and examining
the roots of the concept in a Christian understanding of religion. This class discussion
may have lacked focus, but I believe we gained some insight into the breadth of
questions that academic religious study–in our case, the study of Islam–may address.

Class session: Tuesday, October 27
Guest Summarizer: Declan Kelsey

The discussion began with a comment on Rumi, and the de-Islamification of his poetry. This led to conversation regarding appropriation of tradition with the intent of relating to a larger demographic, specifically that of European-Christians. This then sparked a conversation about the nature of secularism and Christianity, and the intertwinedness of the two. The secularization of Christianity has been influenced, and in its turn influenced the theory of separation of church and state, which we discussed both in theory and in practice to be vague. We concluded that keeping the establishment of religion and the government separate is a generally good idea, but that policing religious values from government is not only impractical and impossible, but bound to result in unethical and potentially genocidal policy, citing examples of the Soviet Union and Communist China. Ideas about the state of religion also circulated, whether or not religion as a whole is “dying” in practice, or whether it is the same as it has always been. This in turn led to further discussion about whether religion should be retired from public and political life, whether that was for the benefit or detriment of society, and whether or not religion was retreating at all. The conclusions reached were not concrete, as it depends largely on the religion in question and a specific region of the world, but the general consensus was that Christianity, particularly in Europe is on a decline, existing now only in the established state churches and culture, but not a major part of public life, and in the case of the Czech Republic and Northern Europe, a relatively taboo thing to even discuss in public. The discussion ended on the debate between religion and science, whether the two were mutually exclusive, and whether or not science is truly a suitable replacement for religion. Once again, the conclusions reached were not ironclad. There are many religious people who support and ascribe to science and the scientific method, and many scientists who not only believe in a god but are deeply religious. 

Class session: Tuesday, October 6
Guest summarizer: Alaa Jaber

For the duration of class today we had a discussion based on the five pillars of Islam with a heightened focus on Hajj. We began by reviewing the five pillars, shahadah, salat, sawm, Hajj, zakat and briefly touched on the way in which Ernst chooses not to include the Shahadah in his text but rather includes Jihad. An interesting point was brought up regarding obligation in Islam and how oftentimes in Islam when people are exused from performing their duties as Muslims due to any constraints, this does not bring the believer a feeling of relief, rather they wish to be able to complete the ritual. The discussion was concluded with the question of whether it is more advantageous or disadvantageous to include a context of the rituals and practices in Islam when writing an academic text.