The Deen Imagined: Studying American Islam through Literature Boston Islamic Seminary Continuing Education Fall 2018 Dates: Sundays, Sept 16 th, 23 rd, 30 th, and Oct 7 th Time: 1-4p Place: Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center 100 Malcolm X Blvd, Roxbury, MA Instructor: Dr. Noor Hashem Boston University CAS Center for Writing Muhammad Ali, one of the most well-known American Muslims, famously said: I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me. His is just one of the many articulations of what Islam in America looks like, and it introduces a whole set of questions: How do Muslims fit within the American narrative? Who articulates that narrative? How has that narrative changed over time, and who has helped to reimagine it? Which articulations are privileged and celebrated, which institutions secular, religious authorize it, and how do these narratives relate to cultural and political ideas of freedom, agency, dissent, race, class, immigration, gender, pluralism and equality? These are some of the questions we will begin to unpack in this class. The course is structured to explore the diversity of the Muslim American population in the United States and to discover the depth of its history. The course will also thematically introduce some of the debates and concerns that are brought up about Muslims such as terrorism and those brought up by Muslims such as gender equality. We will visit these topics through scholarship and, in many cases, will examine our questions further through literature, music and film, such as Wajahat Ali s play The Domestic Crusaders, rap by Lupe Fiasco and Mos Def, and Spike Lee s 1992 film Malcolm X. Required Texts All texts and links to assigned readings will be available on Moodle
2 COURSE POLICIES I expect you to be responsible and respectful to your peers and instructor. The following are some basic, but not comprehensive, guidelines; you should follow the spirit of intellectual rigor and interpersonal etiquette even where I have not specified. Attendance and Participation To be considered present for a class, you must be on time and ready to actively participate, bringing with you all the assigned readings, materials, and written work for the day. As this will be a discussionbased course, you will be expected to engage deeply with the material before the class, so that you can produce questions and critiques which we will discuss as a class. For this reason, if you are more than 15 minutes late for a class, you will be considered absent. The readings specified on the course calendar reflect the texts scheduled for discussion on that day, and must be read ahead of that class. Since we will be covering a significant amount of disparate reading each day, I strongly encourage you to read the assignments in chunks over the course of the week, rather than attempting to read them all in one day. Assignments and Grading During the class, you will receive handouts that further explain the requirements of the assignments listed below. Participation: 20% Short Reflections (2): 10% Creative Project: 30% Essay: 40% Due Dates: Sun, Sept 16 Sun, Sep 30 by 9p Mon, Oct 8 by 9p Sun, Oct 21 by 9p In-Class Self-Reflection: What Islam means to me, course expectations (1-2p) Reading Reflection: What most surprised and engaged me (2-3p) Creative Project (song, poems, comic, or standup routine) Essay (5-7p) Academic Integrity Each student is expected to adhere to academic honesty. Allah does not love the plagiarizers. In this course, the normal penalty for plagiarism is an F.
3 COURSE CALENDAR Week 1 Sunday, Sep 16th 1-2p Who are we? What are we? Sherman Jackson, Politically Speaking, Who Am I, And What Do I Want As An American Muslim? on Alim Bruce Lawrence, Genius Denied and Reclaimed: A 40-Year Retrospect on Marshall G.S. Hodgson s The Venture of Islam on Marginalia Excerpts from Sandow Birk s American Qur an 2-3p Unit Two: Origins and Erasures From Edward E. Curtis, Muslims in America: A Short History Ch 1-2, Across the Black Atlantic and The First American Converts to Islam in Curtis, Muslim in America Autobiography of Omar ibn Sayyid Mohammad Alexander Russell Webb, Islam in America WPA Interviews (1939) 3-4p Unit Three: Under Surveillance: Islam in Contemporary Politics Excerpt of M.A. Muqtedar Khan, Living on Borderlines: Islam Beyond the Clash and Dialogue of Civilizations, in Muslims Place in the American Public Square, ed. Zahid Bukhari and Sulayman Nyang Clips from Allah Made Me Funny, The Muslims are Coming! and other standup comedy Due by the end of class: Reflection #1 (In-class self-reflection) Week 2 Sunday, Sep 23th 1-2p Diverse Communities: Arabs Pew Center Reports (glance at these to familiarize yourself with the trends): 2012 report The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World s Major Religious Groups as of 2010 (read Executive Summary & Muslims sections, pgs 9-13 and 21-23) 2017 report on survey of U.S. Muslims (pages 13, 22-25, and 30-64) Twentieth-Century Muslim Immigrants: From the Melting Pot to the Cold War in Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslim in America: A Short History Naomi Shihab Nye, Different Ways to Pray and The Words under the Words from 19 Varieties of Gazelle [BB] Mohja Kahf, My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears and Hijab Scene #7 from E-mails from Scheherazade 2-3p Diverse Communities: South Asians
4 Chp 3, Imaginary Homelands, American Dreams in Zareena Grewal s Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority Kamela Khan in Ms. Marvel #1 ( Metamorphosis ), #2 ( All Mankind ) and Last Days V4 3-4p Diverse Communities: Latinx Muslims & Converts Week 3 Damarys Ocana, Our Stories: A Leap of Faith Jeffrey Lang, Struggling to Surrender At the nation's only Latino mosque, Trump's immigration policies have 'changed everything' Los Angeles Times Sunday, Sep 30th 1-2:15p Diverse Communities: Black Muslims (Part I) Noble Drew Ali, The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple Elijah Muhammad, What the Muslims Want and What the Muslims Believe Malcolm X, Interview with Al Muslimoon W. Dean Mohammed, Historic Atlanta Address Mapping Malcolm s Boston: Exploring the City that Made Malcolm X on the Mizan Project Donna Auston, Mapping the Intersections of Islamophobia & #BlackLivesMatter from Sapelo Square (In class: Watching clip from Hajj scene of Spike Lee s Malcolm X) 2:15-3:30p 3:30-4p Diverse Communities: Black Muslims (Part II) H. Samy Alim, "A New Research Agenda: Exploring the Transglobal Hip Hop Umma" in Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop Su ad Abdul Khabeer, To be Muslim and Cool on Sapelo Square Listen to and watch the following music videos (try to listen once, watch once) Lupe Fiasco, Muhammad Walks Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), Wahid, Fear Not of Man Brother Ali, Never Learn, Uncle Sam Goddamn, Good Lord A Tribe Called Quest, The Remedy Common, G.O.D (Gaining One s Definition) Swet Shop Boys T5 Deen Squad Cover Girl Mona Hayder Wrap My Hijab Outlandish Any Given Time, Beyond Words Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies Carl W. Ernst, Ideological & Technological Transformations of Contemporary Sufism in Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop
5 Abdulaziz Sachedina, A Minority Within a Minority: The Case of the Shi a in North America, in Muslim Communities in North America, ed. Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith Due by 9p: Reflection #2 (Reading Reflection) Week 4 Sunday, Oct 7 1-2p Gender Politics and Islamic Feminisms (Social Practices) Saba Mahmood, excerpt from Politics of Piety Fadwa El Guindi, excerpt from Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? American Anthropologist, vol. 104, no. 3, 2002, pp. 783 790. Miriam Cooke, Multiple Critique: Islamic Feminist Rhetorical Strategies 2-3p Gender Politics and Islamic Feminisms (Textual Authority) Ebrahim Moosa, The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam in Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism Excerpts from Aysha A. Hidayatullah s Feminist Edges of the Qur'an 3-4p Progressive or Reform Islamists Ihsan Bagby, The Mosque and the American Public Square in Muslims Place in the American Public Square Faiqa Mahmood, Understanding Inclusivity Practices at Third Spaces MakeSpace: A Case Study (September 17, 2016) Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Excerpts from 30 Mosques in 30 Days and Side Entrance Tumblr Due by Mon, Oct 8 at 9p : Creative Project Due by Sun, Oct 21 at 9p: Essay