Engaging with Islam
Engaging with Islam
By Tricia Brick
When Aaron Spevack began his doctoral work in Islamic studies at Boston University in the early fall of 2001, he considered his field to be somewhat esoteric—culturally and historically rich, but off the radar of the majority of Americans. Then came September 11, and suddenly the questions Spevack was examining—what is Islam, and what do Muslims believe?—became profoundly relevant. As the field was transformed by events on the world stage, scholars of Islamic studies began to expand the purview of their research. “Are we looking at Islam through a broad enough lens to be able to teach undergraduate classes, to write the popular texts on the shelves of Barnes & Noble?” Spevack asks. “Are we getting beyond the question 'Why do they hate us?' to understand Islam, and Muslim culture, more fully?”
In considering these questions, Spevack joins a community of more than 50 Boston University scholars from departments across the University and from nations around the globe who are engaging with topics of Muslim history, society, and culture. With the founding last year of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations (SMSC), the University has established a gathering place for these researchers, who share a common goal: not to define Islam but to explore, and then to teach about, the diversity of voices that together make up the Muslim world.
- Understanding IslamIslamic studies at Boston University has a long and distinguished history, but for many years researchers scattered across departments worked more or less independently. Since the formation of the new Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, these faculty and graduate students have been brought together as members of an extraordinary community of scholars at BU.
- The State of the Muslim WorldIn speaking about the origins of his current research, Husain Haqqani recalls a Newsweek cover from October 2001. Across a photo of a Pakistani child brandishing an automatic weapon were inscribed four troubling words: “Why They Hate Us.”
- Engaging with the Qur'anWhether we speak of understanding or use a vocabulary of terrorism and war, the words we choose can be as important as the message we seek to convey. Our leaders may be talking about building relationships “between the Muslim world and the West,” but their very phrasing betrays a tacit difference between two disparate entities.
- Muslims in DiasporaNazli Kibria has described her work as “part of a larger scholarly project of unraveling the 'Islam versus the West' framework, of digging beneath the polarizing rhetoric to uncover the complex realities of people's lives.” Like Shakir Mustafa, Kibria, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, is interested in understanding how individuals construct a sense of self in the context of the ideas and conditions that shape the lives of today's Muslims.
