First, let me underline that this is an experiment. I will start out with a few simple issues and as you respond to them we will see how best to make use of this resource. Any suggestions for improvement would be most welcome. Please do not hesitate to offer advice of any kind, from presentation to the readings to the issues we will be covering. Email will remain the best way to contact me on relatively small matters, so please don't use the blog for housekeeping matters.
If, as I hope, enough students begin to use this blog to make it worthwhile, I hope even more to fade into the background and let you use it to discuss the main issues yourselves. While my first posts will be devoted to Big Questions, I expect that these will be supplanted by tips, hints, responses to questions following lectures, and directions to resources elsewhere.
A second gap I hope this blog will bridge is between what you hear in lecture and section and the resources available on learn@uw. Questions you may not be willing to ask in class -- whether it is shyness, complexity, or immediate relevance that is holding you back-- you are free to ask here.
I hope to avoid turning this into an "Ask the prof" question and answer blog. I encourage you to respond to other posts and to weigh in on any issue we bring up.
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This is unrelated to Islamic history, but I just found this article on CNN.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/10/gitmo.terror.prisoners/index.html
It's about the testimony of five men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks. I was reading it, and I realized that until I took this class, the only thing I knew about Islam was the fundamentalism that the media portrays. Obviously these violent perversions of Islam and the Quran are uncommon, yet the media only focuses on these views of Islam. Americans in general have such a skewed view of Islam because of media coverage, which can only lead to prejudice.
Good point, and I think many others are in your position. It is one thing to say that the hard-core jihadis have perverted Islam, but another to ask how and in what ways. Although this is a pre-modern history course by the end of it you should have a good sense of the varieties of the Muslim experience. And this, I hope, will get your antennae up when someone writes something simplistic or reductionist about Islam and Muslims. MC
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ReplyDeleteThe quotation "our religion is a religion of fear and terror to the enemies of God: the Jews, Christians and pagans" was especially problematic for me. It seems to be in such contradiction with the actual words of the Quran (which I can't remember off the top of my head). It makes me wonder how they justify this belief from the Quranic verses. Maybe there isn't a good answer to that question, since the words of any holy book can probably be interpreted in a certain way to justify almost any viewpoint.
ReplyDelete(also, I hope no one is offended by my reference to fundamentalist groups as practicing a 'violent perversion of Islam.' That's just my personal opinion.)
One of the problems of hard-core jihadi interpretations of Islam -- often pointed out by Muslim scholars themselves -- is that they take it upon themselves to read the Qur'an and hadith without reference to the centuries of Muslim religious scholarship that followed. Whole bodies of literature have been produced to discern which verses abrogated other verses, not to mention the historical context and meaning of particular verses.
ReplyDeleteThis is in part due to the social make-up of the leadership of groups such as al-Qa`ida. These consist largely made up of people trained in the modern professions who feel they can ignore or cherry-pick the interpretations of hundreds of years of scholarship. Yes, to people unfamiliar with Islam, some of the verses of the Qur'an can appear threatening; but to understand how Muslim scholars have historically understood them you have to get deep into the scholarly interpretation and criticism. One important branch of Qur'an scholarship for example is devoted to the study of which verses abrogated other verses (al-nasikh w'al-mansukh, the "abrogating and the abrogated"). The hard-core types have no patience with this kind of thing when it doesn't confirm their prejudices.
Such indifference is one of the reasons that people who are truly learned in the "religious sciences" are so bewildered by them. At first intimidated by the hard core jihadis, many have come round to pointing out their errors and the fallacies that produced them. Many Muslims find this to be a most encouraging trend. It is often missed by those who claim the moderate mainstream has remained silent in the face of the irreligious outrages perpetrated by people who don't understand the Qur'an and hadith as well as they claim to. Highly-regarded websites, television, and newspapers in the Middle East have reported on these critiques in detail. But unfortunately the western media have largely missed this growing phenomenon.
Let me add one additional comment: in a scholarly environment we shouldn't worry about who might be offended by one statement or question or another. Good manners and a sense of decency should govern your contributions here and elsewhere, but any idea or belief that defends itself by making discussion taboo is on its way out. So please feel free to take issue with anything, just don't attack anyone who disagrees with you. The statement, "I think this idea is idiotic", while unproductive, should always be possible; the statement, "I think you are an idiot for believing this idea" should make you ashamed of yourself. Please feel free to criticize any idea or to raise any question. If not in a public university, where?
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