Engaging with Islam
Understanding Islam
Historian Herbert Mason and sociologist Nazli Kibria among materials in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center's Islamic Book Collection. The collection comprises the libraries of several noted scholars, including Richard N. Frye and Muhsin Mahdi, and contains more than 42,000 books and approximately one hundred mostly complete runs of important journals in the field of Middle Eastern studies.
Islamic 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 29 faculty members and 25 graduate students affiliated with the SMSC study Muslim societies from a variety of angles: political science, anthropology, international relations, sociology, archaeology, women's studies, literature, law, and art, among many others. They research and write about cultures and peoples who speak Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, and Bengali—as well as Chinese, French, and American English. “We truly are global in our interests and our expertise,” says SMSC director Herbert Mason, a University Professor and the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of History and Religious Thought. “We have professors who are experts on Indonesia—which has the largest Muslim population in the world—as well as India, South Asia, and Central Asia. We have experts on Islam in America. And we didn't have to recruit to make this possible; the professors were already here. We simply brought them together.”
And together they are working to build a world-class center for scholarship and teaching. In its first year, the SMSC has become the point of origin for a variety of initiatives at Boston University, from developing new graduate programs that foster the study of Islam and Muslim cultures across the University curriculum to creating new graduate and postgraduate fellowships. Under the direction of Shakir Mustafa, the Arabic division of the recently restructured Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature is thriving. More than 120 students are currently studying Arabic at BU, and enrollments in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu language courses have also been increasing.
The notion of understanding, with its dual meanings of learning and of appreciation and acceptance, is at the heart of the institute's goals.
Underscoring the broader University commitment to support research in Islamic studies and related topics, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center has recently acquired four major libraries of Middle Eastern and Central Asian primary and secondary texts. As the foundation of a major Islamic studies collection at BU, these libraries will enhance the institute's scholarly resources as well as its ability to attract top-level faculty, graduate students, and other researchers.
In support of its growing scholarly community, the institute has become a vital home for collaboration, both between faculty and graduate students and across disciplinary lines. As Mason explains, “There's no more crucial subject on the world stage today than Islam. And there is no greater need than understanding Islam.”
That notion of understanding, with its dual meanings of learning and of appreciation and acceptance, is at the heart of the institute's goals. “Our mission here is very simple,” Mason says. “We seek to study, to teach, and—most importantly—to learn from these cultures.”
For more information, see www.bu.edu/smscinst.
