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.

Class session: Tuesday, September 22
Guest summarizers: Sadra Bowie and William Moody

Class today focused on Muhammad, the wives, the Quran, and to a lesser extent the hadith. We discussed a lot about how the Quran is a miracle, that it’s different from other religious texts because it is the direct verbatim word of God, and that masters of language at the level of the Arab tribes of Mecca were not able to write at the level of the Quran. Then we moved to a discussion of Muhammad and how important it is that Muhammad is fundamentally human, that he makes mistakes, the people around him call him out, and that he changes. There’s a tendency to fight to perceive Muhammad as either a hero or a villain, but really, maybe he’s neither, because people rarely fall fully into those boxes. It helps us to forgive ourselves when we see that he also made mistakes and fell into those human categories, and also it’s important that we see the ways that he is influenced by others around him, like the wives and the other people in his community, providing us with other people to look to as examples.

Class session: Tuesday, September 22
Guest summarizer: Sadra Bowie

Class today focused on Muhammad, the wives, the Quran, and to a lesser extent the hadith. We discussed a lot about how the Quran is a miracle, that it’s different from other religious texts because it is the direct verbatim word of God, and that masters of language at the level of the Arab tribes of Mecca were not able to write at the level of the Quran. Then we moved to a discussion of Muhammad and how important it is that Muhammad is fundamentally human, that he makes mistakes, the people around him call him out, and that he changes. There’s a tendency to fight to perceive Muhammad as either a hero or a villain, but really, maybe he’s neither, because people rarely fall fully into those boxes. It helps us to forgive ourselves when we see that he also made mistakes and fell into those human categories, and also it’s important that we see the ways that he is influenced by others around him, like the wives and the other people in his community, providing us with other people to look to as examples.

Class date: Tuesday, September 8
Guest summarizer: Sadra Bowie

We spent today’s class discussing the scholar strike and the ways that it applies to our study of Islam. Oppression of black Muslims has been a part of the United States since before it was the United States. Why has it stayed so long and what can we do to change it? We talked a lot about how tired we all are and how hard it is to keep that activist passion and fire burning when we are constantly seeing tragedies that feel like they should be avoidable, when we see videos of inhumane murders and we watch those people go unpunished time and again. How can we push for dramatic and radical change when it becomes so exhausting so quickly? Here are some of our ideas: we need to get feeling back and become more involved so that we can have these conversations, we need to focus more on specificity, and more than anything, we need to apply the concept of loving your neighbor. Everyone in the world is going through something, and even though those struggles are often going to be different from our own we can care about them and have compassion for their struggles. Sometimes all we can do is be radically kind. Maybe we can’t fix everything we want to or be heroes but we can be kind to each other. And maybe that’s a way to resist burnout too? Because maybe we can’t be heroes but we certainly can be good.

Class date: September 15, 2020
Class summarizer: Leslie Avecillas

This discussion was focused on the effect of colonialism and how it led to orientalism and the stereotypes that people hold about Muslims and Islam. We began by unpacking the idea of colonialism. We all agreed that it has very real, long-lasting, and harmful effects on communities worldwide. It was also noted that colonialism is very romanticized in the US, where the focus is not on how the country came to be but rather the perceived benefits of colonization. Another effect of colonialism is that people in the same colonized region are not treated the same. For example, in Israel, Tel Aviv is very ‘western’ and its residents are allowed to travel but in Palestinian territories that Israel governs, those residents do not have equal rights. 

    This talk leads into the origins and effect of orientalism. It is effectively the lumping together of everyone in the Middle east, north Africa, and the rest of the eastern hemisphere of the world and equates all of these cultures as inferior and exotic. It includes Central and South America as well as the Balkan regions (which have very different ethnic and religious groups and were historically ruled by many different empires). It was mentioned that while orientalism mostly is about people of color, it still includes white people and white privilege does not protect you the same way if you are Muslim. 

    Along with the treatment of Muslims, the Bosnian Genocide was brought up in discussion and we allc ame to the consensus that it was a genocide based on religion. This genocide was compared to the one in Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide might have received more media attention because it happened in and African coutnry where people ‘look different’ and it would not upset the public vastly, which is also probably why it has a movie about. Additionally, people are under the perspective that these things must happen in Africa a lot, which is why when the explosion in Beirut happened, people were unsurprised and unmoved. The Bosnian Genocide on the other hand killed people who look the people in power, and it might have been a conscious choice of the media and our governments to keep it far away from our minds. 

    We also talked about the racism component of colonialism and how people were more comfortable with the killing of Black people in Africa, similarly to how Black on Black crime is supposedly a thing in America. Colonialism also caused much of the racism that later lead to genocide, such as the British colonization that divides people into castes to this day and how Belgium divided people into a class based on how light their skin was. Colonialism has the effect of making people angry and in India, Muslims and Hindus banded together to riot against a common enemy but allegiances fall apart and the country is still divided as well. 

    We then moved on to orientalism in the US and how a popular form it takes is pop culture. In the movie Aladdin, it was mentioned that it had very sensual music, how the characters come from far away lands, how the attractive characters all had western features and accents, how the castle looks like the Taj Mahal (which is in India). It all perpetuates a stereotype and the movie was produced in 1992, not 1942. 

    We were asked about our thoughts of the Fordson movie. Someone mentioned that the first half was more informational while the second half felt like a feel-good movie. We connected how during the World Cup, Algeria, a muslim team, had to choose between following their religion during Ramadan and being in top shape to be able to perform safely. Similarly, the students in the movie had to fast during games and practices and we talked about how this was blatant disregard for a religion and its needs. 

    Finally, we talked about the cartoons that were published. Professor Albert mentioned that beforehand, everyone was trying to hold their islamophobia in but when reactions to the cartoons became violent, suddenly people let out a big breath and were able to safely say all the islamaphobic things they had believed all along. 

Class date: Tuesday, September 8
Guest Summarizer: Hassan Jaber

On tuesday, we started class by watching a short video by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer titled, ‘Black Muslims and State Violence.’ Khabeer points out the fact that black Muslims have a double burden in our communities. Another important point she brings out is that police brutality is not the fault of one or even a few officers, rather the state and federal programs in charge of the country’s police force as a whole.

We then had a discussion about the video and the topics it entailed. The first question that Professor Albert asked us is, “what powers do we have to make a difference?” Some more striking questions that came up pertaining to the video were “what causes tension in our communities” and “what is the first change that needs to be made to rejuvenate the idea of equality?” Furthermore, politics makes its way into our discussion very heavily. We asked, “should politics be involved in this conversation”, “why are we bringing up far right and far left arguments”, and “why do we tend to bring politics into discussion topics like violence against black Muslims and police brutality?” Finally, an important question that came up towards the end was “where do these issues’ roots stem back to?” As in, what historical context caused this systemic bias against certain races and religions?

Great conversation today to get us started thinking about what is religion anyway.

Belief in God came up right from the start. Ernst, with his anecdote about the atheist who gets asked, “Yes, but are you a Christian atheist, a Jewish atheist, or a Muslim atheist?” (p.58) pushes us to broaden how we understand religion to move beyond belief in God.

We quickly moved to culture, and started grappling with the extent to which we can separate religion and culture. They are definitely distinctive concepts; but the question for us becomes consideration of their Venn diagram–that is, where and how they overlap.

The question of free will also came up, related in an interesting way to whether or not religion is something we choose. We landed here in an area where we might see some interesting distinctions between religions. Many, in fact arguably most people in the world today identify with the religion into which they were born. But intentionality matters! (We’ll be talking about niyya, an Islamic term that roughly translates as intentionality, later in the semester.)

As a class, we then made the word cloud below, based on what other words came to mind when folks in the class heard the word religion. Perhaps in part because of the direction the conversation had taken to that point, “God” was the word that figured most prominently, but it was followed closely by “community.” We talked a bit about what that word means in terms of religion, distinguishing between personal spirituality and identification with a particular institution– even for folks who, either by choice or circumstance, are in some way separated from that community.

Hoping that this summary encompasses some of the ideas we discussed. Please use comments to add, nuance, question….