Muslim Cultures: The Middle East & Beyond

Offered Spring 2010

Overview

We live in a world where knowledge about Islam and Muslims has taken on vital importance.  Islam is a global religion, with over 1 billion practitioners worldwide — nearly one quarter of the world’s population.  While Americans generally think of Islam in relation to the Middle East, only 20% of the Muslims live in the Middle East.   Nearly half the world’s Muslims live east of Pakistan, and Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population.  Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States.  Islam is a cultural as well as a religious element in major societies that span the Mediterranean world, Africa, and Asia, from Dakar to Djakarta.  Islam has also become an important cultural force and presence in Northern Europe and the Americas during the modern period.

Despite the growing presence of Islam and Muslim nations on the global stage, too many Americans are uninformed about basic Muslim beliefs, practices, and history and too many Muslims have only a superficial understanding of Western cultures, institutions, and values.  Few Americans recognize the diversity of Islamic cultures or know how much Muslims have contributed to philosophy, science, commerce, and art.  The diversity and breadth of Islamic culture is obscured by mainstream media images that reduce the Muslim world to the conflicts in the Middle East, represent Muslims as terrorists or fundamentalist extremists, and portray Islam as universally oppressive to women and antagonistic to human rights and democracy.

In this Focus cluster, and in Islamic Studies at Duke more broadly, we affirm the value of interdisciplinary scholarship and cross-cultural conversation to foster new interpretations of Islam and promote positive relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.   We will grapple with the complexity of Islam with its global presence and culturally embedded expressions.  We will approach the Islamic world and Muslims through comparative, cross-cultural lenses as we explore the cultural and pop-cultural representations, expressions, and variations of Islam across the globe.

Visit the Muslim Cultures cluster web site.

Courses

Seminar: AMES 166 Egypt: Mother of the World

Professor Ellen McLarney, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

This course explores the modern history of Egypt as a cosmopolitan intersection of cultures—“mother of the world” (umm al-duniya) is an Arabic moniker for Egypt. After a brief glance at controversy over “Black Athena” and Egyptian influence on Greek civilization, we turn to the “outsider” knowledge of Egypt that accompanied Napoleon’s conquest in 1798. We visit Duke’s Rare Book Collection to view extensive original manuscripts, diaries, watercolors, and encyclopedic descriptions of Egypt, including the multiple volumes of the Description of Egypt compiled by the “specialists” accompanying Napoleon. Students are encouraged to work from these original materials in developing a research project.

“Mother of the World” concentrates on the contemporary cultural history of Egypt. The course looks at several intellectual/political trends such as Islamic reform, Arab Renaissance, and Women’s Awakening. How did these contribute to the later emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, Arab Nationalism, and Islamic Revival? We explore this history through Egyptian letters (novel, drama, poetry, autobiography), film, popular culture, mass media, and critical histories. We hope to arrange an optional trip to Cairo over spring break to get a concrete taste of the abstract material we are studying. This optional voyage en Egypte includes visits to Islamic as well as ancient Egyptian sites, such as mosques, madrasas, and Pharonic ruins.
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Seminar: 89FCS Making Muslim Africa: Islamic Mysticism in Africa

Instructor, Bruce Hall, Department of History

In this course, we will ask how and why Islam was adopted by so many people in Africa (slightly less than 50% of Africans are Muslims today). Although we will pay some attention to the larger history of the spread of Islam in Africa, we will be primarily interested in issues of religious practice among different strata of African populations over time. One of the principle vehicles for the extension of Muslim practice in Africa was the teachings and institutional structures embodied in Islamic mysticism (which is known by the term “Sufism”). Islamic mysticism was absolutely central to the spread of Islam in Africa, and to its particular dynamism in different parts of the continent. For many African Muslims today—as in the past—Sufism is an essential part of their practice and belief as Muslims. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to both Islamic mysticism and African history.

The course assumes no prior knowledge of Islam, Islamic mysticism, or African history. The approach that we will take will be in some ways based on the curriculum that an African student of Sufism would be familiar with. We will read English translations of important Islamic mystical texts written and read in Africa. We will approach the subject through the various means used to spread the message of Islamic mysticism—and Islam—to different Africans over time. We will read fables, riddles, poems, and spiritual biographies; we will listen to Sufi music and songs, and watch Sufi performances; and we will learn about the intellectual framework that Islamic mysticism is based on. In learning about Sufism, we will also be learning about Islam. Equal time will be spent on North Africa, Sudanic West Africa and Niolitic and Coastal East Africa. The objective of the course is to provide students with a working knowledge of Islamic history in Africa and an initiate’s understanding and appreciation of the body of thought and practice embodied by Islamic mysticism.
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Seminar: REL 195 FCS: The Qur’an Over Time

Professor Bruce Lawrence, Department of Religion

The Qur'an is the central text of Islamic ritual and belief, yet it remains a closed book to most non-Muslims or to anyone not familiar with the grammatical rigors of the Arabic language. But if it is really the case that the Qur'an cannot be effectively translated out of Arabic, and if all translations are but approximations and reductions of originary meaning, then how can we approach English translations in an undergraduate seminar on the Qur'an? In this course we will look at the question of translatability and an even larger question: how does one teach the Qur'an as religious literature from a neutral viewpoint? Can the Qur'an ever be understood from a secular, or non-¬theological, perspective? What lessons might one apply from literary criticism? We will also explore how we can use the Internet as a resource, both for locating translations of the Qur'an and for exploring the multiple, often conflicting, ways that it is interpreted both by Muslims and by non¬-Muslims. We will constantly refer to readily available websites that pose major questions and take us in new directions that reflect 21st-century realities for all believers, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or secular.
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Focus 99FCS Special Topics in Focus: Lived Islam: Politics, Culture and the Everyday

Kelly Jarrett, Program Coordinator, Duke Islamic Studies Center

The use of the plural — “Muslim Cultures” — in the title of this Focus cluster was consciously chosen in order to challenge and complicate dominant representations of Islam as monolithic.  9/11 was a watershed event that placed Islam, for good and bad, prominently in the national and international spotlight.  On the one hand, some people responded to the events and effects of 9/11 by wanting to learn about or to educate others about Islam and Muslim cultures, histories, and beliefs.   Enrollments in language and Islamic Studies courses have grown, bookstores report that sales of the Qur’an have increased, and there has been an explosion of scholarly works, journalism, and documentaries about Islam and the Muslim world.  On the other hand, the diversity of Muslim cultures, beliefs, and practices is often obscured by dominant representations of Islam that reduce the Muslim world to the Middle East, Islam to Salafi/Wahibi fundamentalism, and Muslims to terrorists.

In this context of globalization, instant communication, and mass media misrepresentation, if we want to be responsible global citizens we simply cannot afford to be uninformed and ignorant of each others cultures, beliefs, traditions, and histories.   This Focus cluster is one attempt to provide you with an opportunity to learn about the diversity and complexity of Islam.  In this course, we will examine how Islam is expressed and interpreted in different historical and cultural contexts and how these contexts shape Muslim identities.  We will draw on the seminars on terrorism and Palestinian-Israeli conflict to explore how relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are represented and misrepresented in media and popular culture.  And most important, we will engage with you to connect what we’re studying in the classroom to our lived experiences at Duke and beyond.
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