A Study of Islam and Muslims in Academia | Dr. Munir Jiwa

bismillah r-rahman earring Salam alaikum greetings of peace my name is Sofia Ahmad and I am the director of publications as eternal college and it is my incredible honor tonight to welcome all of you in this room and those of us watching those of you watching online to what is essentially the last of the fall lecture series of Zaytuna College and and we have an appropriate guest for that last series who is also a longtime friend of Zaytuna College as well as a neighbor but before we get into that I do want to say a couple of quick things the format for tonight's program will be I will welcome our guest and he'll give a talk at the end of the talk we'll have a little Q&A session so feel free to come up it'll be a microphone here to come up and ask questions we'll also take some questions for people online as well and hopefully have an interesting amount of questions based on the talk that it gives us which I think will be very provocative and thought-provoking certainly so the topic for tonight's talk is really the study of Islam and Muslims in academia it has to do with the public discourse that's going on out there about Islam and Muslims and what are the pressures on that where does that come from and how is it affecting people in academia in the study of Islam in Islamic studies in academia and of course academia is not one monolithic thing there are different aspects of academia as well and I think dr. Cheever will walk us through that and I think I want to say a few things about dr. Jia before I bring him up here because he's incredibly qualified to talk about the things that he's going to talk about tonight he is the founding director of the Center for Islamic studies at the Graduate theological Union and also the associate professor of Islamic Studies and anthropology he hold the PhD in anthropology from Columbia and in MTS from Harvard Divinity School his research interests include Islam and Muslims in the West Islamophobia media art and aesthetics secularism and religious formations among many things he's done he's also worked at the as a for a non-governmental organization NGOs as their call at the UN on interfaith and youth programs and he's been in Bosnia Sierra Leone Leone Japan and many parts of the Middle East currently he's also serving on the Islamic studies advisory group for public education at Stanford University and on various committees and boards at the University of California Berkeley dr. Cheever received the GT use excellence in Teaching Award in 2015 and he has a forthcoming work that's titled politics of exhibition artists and Muslims Muslim identity in New York City the last thing I'll say is that he first thing I mentioned was he's the founding director for the center of Islamic studies well we're it's an auspicious day tomorrow at least and this month because tomorrow is the tenth year anniversary celebration of the center of Islamic Studies at the gtu library so for those of you who are in town please you're welcome to attend that it goes from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. as an exhibition tour there's presentations and a reception and this is dr. muneerah jay was work and in his 10 years of work establishing this and continuing with that and so without further ado let me just please join me in giving a warm welcome to dr. Munir J WA [Applause] sonna cumin thank you for all being here and thank you Sofia for that generous introduction and making the plug for the tenth year anniversary of the center I also want to thank all those who have been involved with the this lecture series and there have been amazing lectures all throughout the semester so I just hope that'll continue we've all had an opportunity to learn a lot from a really wide range of topics that you brought together here I also want to thank Mohamed and Harlan for their work on putting this event together and dr. hat them as well for inviting me I I thought what I might do just because it's a little more intimate of an audience here that I would speak to you a little bit about the sort of larger frames in how we are thinking about Islamic studies in academia today but related to how we think about and do Islamic studies is the question of what does this actually mean in terms of Islam and for Muslims as well so they're questions of insider and outsider boundaries within academia and outside the various disciplines and departments we're in and I so many of the examples I'll give are really from the context of a theological institution like the gtu so our Center for Islamic studies for example is an academic center but it's a center that's in a largely inter-religious environment where we have several ecumenical Christian seminaries and some that are nondenominational and then we have in that sort of consortium Center for Dharma study Center for Jewish Studies Center for the Arts and Center for theology and natural scientists so this consortium makes certain kinds of possibilities available in terms of Islamic studies that other institutions don't so one of the things I'll be referring to throughout my talk are my own examples within a theological institution and those are often as I said differentiated from the kinds of Islamic studies that can happen in public institutions public universities and private universities this also is differentiated by the various depart it's that we're in you know so if you're doing a sort of Islamic studies within area studies that's a certain kind of training if you're doing Islamic studies within anthropology that's another kind of training sociology literature political science these all make different kinds of demands on the scholarship itself and on the scholar her or himself as well so and that in in in is that's also often related to funding so I'll get to that in a bit as well but there are larger questions of what can and can't be researched and then what is eventually research because of certain kinds of funding that are made available so all of those are things that I want us to keep in mind as we're thinking about Islamic studies I'm not narrowly defining it just as something that belongs in religious studies or Near East Studies or Middle East Studies but to think more largely about what that means in both public and private university settings and within theological institutions and in all of these institutions there are various challenges and opportunities that we have in in our work one of the big things about how we think about Islam and Muslims in the world today and how that impacts Islamic Studies is a kind of longer history that I want to point us to I won't get into the details of the history of Orientalism that many of us are familiar with who edward Syed's work but suffice it to say that the way in which we have come to think about Islam and Muslims in academia often relates to the larger kinds of histories and political context in which were in which we do our studies so if we look at the kind of long duration of thinking about Islam and Muslims in the world today it's often in the context of thinking about European knowledge in European knowledge as kind of a superior knowledge already right so we have Europe as the kind of place of or the idea of where knowledge is produced and from which place knowledge is circulated to the world so European knowledge is always seen as singular it's the product of Europe and Europeans and that it's and the second feature is that it's universal right so your peon knowledge is often presented as both a singular history but one that is universal that it's a history of the world rather than understanding it as a you as a history that comes out of particular context particulars pace this kind of knowledge as we've seen has divided the world into what we loosely call east and west right so Europe as the West and with the West comes its opposite the East so as Edward Syed's critique would be that the idea of Orientalism and the idea of imagining in the world in these binaries of east and west are not just physical divides but they're also imaginary one's epistemological ones in which European knowledge has come to be seen as superior knowledge and the knowledge in which all then have to find themselves in within part of that knowledge is also the division of east and west in kind of more evaluative terms right so European knowledge becomes knowledge that is against superior all other knowledge --is are seen as inferior right if the West is seen as scientific rational advanced modern Eastern knowledge is including oriental what used to be called oriental sort of lands and these what we more loosely called the Muslim majority world is seen as its opposite or it's at least constructed as its opposite so if the West comes to be rational scientific less religious secular intellectual the West the East then becomes its opposite so irrational unscientific magical spiritual and not capable of the same producing the same kind of knowledge so this stark division between what we have come to see as east and west has a massive impact in the way in which we think about islam and muslims in both within and outside the academy so one is this kind of spatial frame of how we think about the world in east and west binaries and added to that spatial frame as a temporal frame right there's a way in which if the West is all those things that I said it was it's also seen as progressive right moving forward in time and with that comes the east as regressive right so Europe becomes not just the place by which we sort of measure the world spatially but we also use Europe as the way in which we think about the world temporally right so when we when we deem people to be backwards or we deem their traditions to be backwards what is it in backwards - what are we comparing that to and to whom right so I think this the temporal dimension is a really critical one we often see it as we said sometimes unchallenged in terms like progressive this propensity to move forward as if that somehow makes us more modern and the rest of the world kind of lagging behind we see that in more specific ways as well you know the the advent of the calendar the Gregorian calendar shaped the world in certain ways we all sort of work within kind of nine-to-five timeframe on Western timeframe so if you live in other parts of the world you often adjust your clocks to the west work within these nine-to-five sort of hours which which kind of we see as the kind of rise of Labor and where 9:00 to 5:00 is a working hour but this kind of timing of the world and the calendar that we use and the way in which we even live out the days of our week right in this part of the world it's a Monday to Friday in other parts of the world it isn't so or that we've come to think of Saturday for many as the Sabbath Sunday as a day of rest these are not uniformly and universally understood to be the same right so these all make different kinds of demands including the way in which we think about as I spent as I mentioned the calendars that we use right so the fact that we have a Gregorian calendar which maps out the world we'll there are many sorts of competing or at least calendars at work at the same time including the Jewish and Islamic ones and in terms of the lunar calendar right but the calendar also marks other other things as well right it marks our days differently so if those who kind of live according to a kind of spiritual worldview in which the days are marked by prayer that's a very different kind of day where your days are not punctuated by prayer or even or even assembled or aligned according to the prayer times but according to work times right these are deep divisions and how we think about the world so cyclical or spiritual or other kinds of times compete with the kind of more homogeneous times that we see in the West all of this and the kind of Enlightenment thinking around how the world ought to be lived has a very particular provincial European history right and as I said it's this provincial and parochial history of Europe is then seen as the history of the world and we tend to think of this as always having been the case so in the West when we think of sort of the Enlightenment and the fact that the sort of less religion we have the more likely we are able to navigate a secular public sphere in a way that's fair and equal to all so the important question I think that the laaser than others have asked several professors of more than others about the is secularism is is thought of it in different ways right the secular as an idea as an epistemological category and then secularism as a as a particular kind of political doctrine right what are the connections as a professor Assad has asked and I just want to begin with asking to read out work from his really important work both his works his books genealogies of religion and formations of the secular are must-reads but he this is how he asked the question about secularism what is the connection between the secular as an epistle an epistemic category and secularism as a political doctrine secularism as a political doctrine arose in modern euro America it is easy to think of it simply as requiring the separation of religious from secular institutions in government but that is not all it is abstractly stated examples of this separation can be found in medieval Christendom and in the Islamic empires and no doubt elsewhere - but what is distinctive about secularism is that it proposes new concepts of religion ethics and politics and new imperatives associated with them many people have sensed this novelty and reacted to it in a variety of ways thus the opponents of secularism in the Middle East and elsewhere have have have rejected it as specific to the West while its advocacy advocates have insisted that its particular origin does not detract from its contemporary global relevance and then he does a kind of critique of of Charles Taylor and his work and professor Muhammad's work she takes it to another level where she says this about secularism and this is from her really important work on it was a 2006 publication called a secularism hermeneutics and Empire the politics of Islamic Reformation and this is what she says and I just use these as sort of frames that we might think about throughout the discussion the antipathy that progressive secular intellectuals exhibit towards those forms of religiosity lost as Orthodox or traditional is often paradoxically conjoined with a certain commitment to the poetic resources of the judeo-christian tradition evident in a literary and aesthetic sensibility albeit denuded from the requirements of prophecy doctrine and traditional authority this antipathy towards traditional religious authority has many earlier precedents including Marx who argued that the dissolution of the religious claim was a necessary precursor of for human emancipation to precede the certainty of this critical stance has to be attenuated by a recognition of the paucity in parochialism of this Universalist vision both because of the historical disasters that is facilitated and because of the manner in which it is currently cavorting with one of the most ambitious imperial projects in history which seeks to make the world in a singular image such a total project I fear can only elicit an equally singular vision in response one in which all shades of interpretive moral and ethical ambiguity must be leveled so as to salvage the dregs of what might have once constituted a tradition or a life world and by that she's sort of showing that the rise of secularism or its normative claims on the world often go in question we often think of secular norms as just Givens and it's often the religious and religious traditions that have to do the answering for their norms we often think of secular norms for example as ones that are ones that promote peace and possibilities in a public sphere and we often by that same token think of religious norms as restrictive as oppressive right whenever people think of doctrine we never apply that we often apply that to just religion we never generally think of secular doctrine right we never think of so again secularism is just this given and what these scholars and many others are arguing is that we need to think and pause and reflect on how secularism itself is a particular kind of history a particular kind of political unfolding that happens in a specific time and place in Europe in which the entire world then has to succumb as as there as evidence of their modernity or having arrived into modernity so this has this kind of large sort of bifurcation of East and West both temporally and spatially makes huge demands also in the academic world I want to shift a little bit now to my own sort of experience within kind of Theological Institute like the like the GTU and sort of cite what many of you have already heard in terms of my five media pillars of Islam and then kind of close with some some analysis but what I want to hope this what this can do is to show that there are different demands that are made in the public about Islam there's kind of historical unfolding of Islam and there's a political current present issed approach to how we think about Islam and Muslims and then that again has an effect on how we think about Islam in various disciplines and feels as I mentioned in the Academy the world in which we find ourselves today demands constant engagement and ready thoughtful responses to increased academic queries and public requests for explanation serious and pressing questions from media and the public must be addressed in a timely manner and this puts us in a crisis management mode and I'm talking about my own experience often at the gtu in the Center for Islamic studies this takes an extraordinary amount of time energy skill and patience as well as it takes an emotional toll there are also risks and scholarships such as research topics for example security and terrorism studies and travel for research which can make a scholar a target for particular kinds of scrutiny in the West and elsewhere especially if one is a scholar who happens to be Muslim this has had a huge impact on academic freedom for such scholars in the US and abroad much needed critical scholarship on the Islamic classical tradition is too often eclipsed while focus is centred on Islam and Muslims in contemporary political and media contexts the ongoing global situation distinguishes the challenges faced by those in Islamic studies from those in other disciplines in areas of study for whom there is less political scrutiny of professional and personal engagements and is considerably Dominican siddur ibly diminishes the time available for scholarship and publications I very often have to navigate being seen only through my identity as a Muslim in other words I must be saying what I am because I'm Muslim so Muslim becomes this kind of overarching category when Muslim scholars do their work through which their it's always a lens through which anything they're saying is received forgetting academic credentials or some other subject positions and identities this often puts me and minorities in general on the defensive because we are often trying to attend to both excluded histories while at the same time often being evaluated on objectivity and judged as not having sufficiently critical distance from our identities for example in many of my discussions in and in and out of the class when I'm looking at the history of your American Empire and its continued violence in the world my critiques are often viewed as coming only from Islam and my being a Muslim rather than for example my training in anthropology or as I often joke being a Canadian do you just go up north to get a good dose of critique of the US so within my own fields working within contemporary Islamic Studies teaching on topics such as secularism modernity liberalism critical theory war and violence identity media art and aesthetics Islamophobia politics of pluralism religious formation inter-religious engagement and diversity of Muslim expression I find myself needing to work within these frames these normative frames through which Islam and Muslims most often get represented in in the public sphere and so this is the part that many of you may have heard this is what I've been calling the five media pillars of Islam right so the first pillar through which we often think about Islam and Muslims both in the in the larger public sphere but again reflected in the Academy is 9/11 so 9/11 becomes the temporal marker the temporal frame through which we think about Islam and Muslims of course the problem with this frame is that it does many problems with this frame but a few of them are that it Muslim Islam and Muslims sort of enter the public in this very negative way right and through this kind of negative events of 9/11 right so it's a kind of negative entry in the public sphere and it marking 9/11 as the beginning place to think about Islam forgets the long history of Islam and Muslims who have been in the u.s. been you know founding of the country so namely African Muslims were brought over as slaves during the Atlantic slave trade and the long and rich history of african-american Muslims who have upheld the faith in in very difficult circumstances so 9/11 is also a very political history so when we think about 9/11 we often don't attend to other kinds of histories that are made possible whether its aesthetic histories whether its histories within other fields we think we it's a political temporal category in which then Muslims are only seen in political terms related to 9/11 as the second frame the frame of violence and fundamentalism terrorism what we call I mean as I as I often say al-qaeda Taliban madrasah these are all English words you know they need no translation they don't you no need to fix them in spellcheck they just come up as English words now right and people across generations know these terms you can go to elementary school kids and they know these terms right so again the way in which violence and terrorism is an overarching frame again linked to 9/11 as a predominant frame through which we think about Islam and Muslims is often negative but the politics around thinking about Islam and Muslims only through this frame is is also problematic for a variety of reasons one is that we we think of somehow religion as being the place or Islam being the place of that violence right so we tend to couch a lot of the language on fundamentalism terrorism and violence in general through religious terms right we think of it as Islamic violence or religious violence so I would argue that this that this this is an inaccurate way to think about violence right if we're thinking about violence we need to think about the way in which Islam is mobilized by many whether they're Muslim or not to to to kind of carry out their violence in the name of Islam so it's it's it's obvious that people will connect Islam and violence or Muslims in terrorism right so today if you say terrorism most people immediately think Islam and Muslims and vice-versa if you think Islam and Muslims people think terrorism right so the problem with this is that we perpetuate this idea that the violence is intrinsic to or an essential part of religion itself rather than the socio-political historical context in which violent presents itself right the and the in a military industrial complex that we're in the other problem with this kind of framing of of kind of Islam Islamic violence or religious violence in particular is that it forgets the long history of secular violence after all you know all the violence we've seen in the West is a product of or as a part of at the same time the add the advocating of secularism right people can say well this is this can be also kind of Christian violence in the world but if we just limit it to a kind of thinking around secular violence it doesn't occur to us as something to think about right because we often just attach violence to religion or violence in specifically to Islam and we often don't think of Buddhist violence or Jewish violence repression violence it's it's usually at least in this kind of present current climate related to Islam only forgetting that the world wars have happened in the West right the fight for secularism happen in the West the Holocaust has happened in the West the genocide in Bosnia is in the West right or the silence on other kinds of genocides the regime does for example these are all things that have happened in the West so to not include that as part of our effort in understanding violence I think is is is something we need to attend to why this differentiation of religious violence on the one hand and the lack of an understanding of the violence of the sort of bloody history of secularism itself right the second part of this is one can argue is that the violence that Muslims carry out doesn't follow rules right it's it's a kind of the spectacular nature or the unanticipated nature of that violence which makes it different from other kinds of violence right so this is an argument that we often hear that that there is something specific about Islamic violence or the violence that carries that's carried out by Muslims because of its both spectacular nature whether it's events of like 9/11 9/11 self suicide bombings that these are that they don't follow sort of certain kinds of rules but we don't question for example the same on the other side we think that the violence that we commit in the u.s. in the world is always legitimized right that it follows rules even historically if we think about ideas around holy war and I don't think we can talk holy war anymore in any tradition given the sort of media age that we're in where there's drones and whatnot right there's there's no such thing right there's no boundaries anymore but this idea that we don't question the propensity of violence secular violence and the world I think needs to be challenged and then the last part of that is what Talal Asad has written so eloquently about in his in his work and especially in the work on suicide bombing is the way is the way in which the violence that we perpetuate in the world from the West in to other parts of the world is often seen as we legitimize it in ways to say it's for their democracy for their freedom it's for their eventual sort of liberation right violence that's committed against us is seen as its opposite it's seen as it's evil that it's seen as like that we're not you know that we can't understand it and yet in some ways if when you look at the arguments made they're often the same on various sides right that they also want liberation and freedom from from drones they want to be able to live their lives in peaceful ways in other parts of the world so this idea that somehow the the violence that we perpetuate in the world is is somehow more moral or ethical I think meets needs to be questioned and this this this is the kind of different modes and how we have come in a kind of secular Western world to think about to think about violence you know it's regulated it's only used when it absolutely needs to be forgetting that there's a long history of violence we are you know the largest military industrial I mean I mean weapons holders in the world the gun violence that happens at home this often goes unquestioned and the violence that others perpetuate in the world is seen as somehow more important or more deadly or more evil the third frame I'm just going to go through these quickly so we will have enough time for Q&A the third frame is the frame of a women and gender and especially on debates and issues around Muslim women and veiling and I would add to this that there are new questions that have now emerged on sexual minorities right so we know through the admins work and Lila will go to work in Sabah Mohammed's work all incredible professors who have written extensively about this and for many years that there's a long colonial history of the way in which women's rights in Islam have been taken up by colonial powers in the West to save Muslim women and other parts of the world what the preeminent post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak has said white men saving brown women from brown men it's a kind of sexual divide and rule to which professor Lyla loo-loo got added it's also white women saving brown women from brown men so this long history this what Leila Ahmed calls colonial feminism is when colonial officers European colonial officers would go into Muslim majority lands and colonize and they would feel so sorry for the Muslim women and yet they would oppress or suppress the suffrage you know the the kind of women's rights movements at home right so they weren't known to be you know advocates for women's rights at home in Europe but they are all of a sudden become advocates for those same rights abroad we have through many works especially malacca Lula's the colonial harem works that show how colonial officers exploited their positions of power to unveil muslim women right and this idea of veiling to unveiling as a sign of going from tradition to modernity I think needs to be really thought about right our ideas about tradition and again tradition seen means seen as negative and the opposite of that being modern you know being progressive this has been mapped out on to those very bodies right so Muslim women who are veiled or who wear different modes or different styles of head coverings are seen as traditional and those who are not in those head coverings are seen as modern and part of colonial history has the the effort both in terms of a kind of orientalist imagination and colonial practices have seen how this unveiling has happened so as I mentioned the colonial malala's work shows how colonial officers for example French officers would go into Algeria and other parts of North Africa and the rest of the world where they would force women to unveil and take pictures and use them as as trophies as wartime trophies right and send these postcards back home when they knew it was obviously a violation of their rights this kind of colonial feminism and colonial history is not unrelated to the kind of imperial efforts in modern times in this kind of saving narrative of muslim women right the war in afghanistan was launched on these same premises all of a sudden as the colonial officers did in the past george bush at that time became the champion of women's rights in Afghanistan and Laura Bush and the feminist majority they all kind of waged this war in Afghanistan with the premise that the Taliban were oppressing his women the burkas came to public life we started understanding more about this again erasing the long history of the ways in which we have been embedded in those histories right as I mentioned at the outset European history and Western history is often presented as a singular history and what I would argue as many others have is that we need to see this history European history as mutually constitutive of its call of the colonized you can't see the history of the colonizer without thinking simultaneously about the colonized and the co-produced histories right you can't think about Afghanistan today and its relationship to the US without thinking about Afghanistan 10 20 or 30 years ago and its relationship to the West right at one moment in history the Taliban are brought over by Reagan and paraded as these are the founding four these are like the founding fathers of America in another point in history they're seen as the oppressors right so we have to recognize that the way in which we relate to the world is often related to the geopolitics of our time right and that we have to understand that these multiple sort of the ways in which people live out their lives is intimately tied to the ways in which we of our own right and I think it's an it's a very important point because we often forget that the fact that people find themselves in certain parts of the world in certain cadine and conditions that they live in we often make essentialist arguments about Oh that's there just like that because that's culture or that's their religion they just behave like that and then we can say the same thing about Muslims that we did that we do today that we did 1,400 years ago right and I think it's really critical to do at least two things one is to think about the conditions that we've created in the world today in which other people find themselves right and the second part of that is to think about our co-produced histories that we are as Judith Butler's work showed it's too late we don't live separate lives we are too embedded in each other's histories and I think that that responsibility means that we have a responsibility to understand that that those lives are intimately tied to ours and theirs of course issues of power in that so this this this frame of women and gender and sexual minorities has often also been used in the West too as kind of a test case of whether Muslims are liberal enough or not right where you stand on certain kind of Rights discourses women's rights historically and now increasingly sexual minority rights are often the rights discourses that we use to recognize whether Muslims both here and abroad are seen as again progressive or not American enough in a or European enough or not right there's a lot of programs for example that we're seeing in Europe where Muslim men in particular are singled out to take lessons on how to behave properly as men right as if Islamic sort of patriarchy is or patriarchy is particular to the Islamic tradition forgetting as especially as we're seeing in this in all the stuff that's going on in this country right now and the me2 campaigns that this is a global and historical phenomenon that is that's not restricted to Islam and Muslims part of this this frame also is the increased way in which sexual minority rights where Muslims stand on women's rights where Muslims stand on LGBT IQ rights these are used as a libris liberal test markers again of whether you are seen as progressive or regressive and those have serious impacts on how people relate to you right so you could be making certain arguments academically and someone in the class or in a public lecture doesn't hesitate to answer well where do you personally stand on these and what does Islam say about this and if Islam says something about this they think that that also as is your position as a Muslim so I think this needs to be questioned a little more right the the ideas that we present that come from a certain place are not necessarily the ideas we might hold ourselves and yet I see this kind of sort of choosing or picking out Muslims to respond to certain questions in a way that you don't see happening to other communities right so there's a kind of singling out that happens that you don't see amongst Christians and Jews even in my own experience at the GTU right where do Muslims stand I said we'll ask Muslims you know ask the sort of diversity of people we don't actually hold official sort of takes on things that for example at the Center for Islamic studies it's an academic platform but there are other traditions that do hold official stances on these things and they're often never asked you know where do you stand on these on these same issues so I think we need to question these kind of liberal tests there are as we know they're these liberal tests have also been administered historically and the continuance in some settings we know that in the Netherlands they were giving one of the test cases for citizenship was showing those who are applying for citizenship couples in homosexual couples who were engaged in sexual sort of acts of kissing and other things and asking the applicants if they were comfortable with this or not because this is what they should be comfortable with in the Netherlands forgetting that many who already have citizenship might not be comfortable with it or their religions other than Islam that may have different views on this but these have actually been used in citizenship tests right we've seen this also being administered to refugees different status applied people's refugee applications are enhanced sped up depending often on where they stand on certain kinds of Rights discourse right so this should raise I think questions on how rights and especially women's gender and sexual minority rights have been used against Islam and Muslims the fourth frame is the frame of Islam and the West right so I alluded to that a little bit about this kind of divisions of East and West and Edwards Syed's work if those of you who don't know it should it's the 40th year anniversary of his work and it's still very central to academia and beyond but this idea of Islam in the West is also it also brings up other questions right it's there's there's a lot in this kind of a binary around whether Muslim values or Islamic values are compatible with with the West right forgetting again the long history of Muslims being in the West and being Western right whether it's Muslims in Bosnia the african-american Muslims I mentioned here this so this question about whether Muslims can belong in the West or not is it's too late you know the nature of that belonging you know might be questioned but it then it should be questions for everyone right to ask if Muslims in particular can be sort of can live in the West I think is again singling out a specific community and and homogenizing that community right as if all people who adhere all Muslims who are dear to the religion of Islam all think in the same way all apply their understanding of Sharia in the same way and this is another part of this Islam and West binary right that there's a kind of Sharia creep that Sharia is taking over and this is fueled not just by misunderstanding so if one of the ideas is that if we just have more understanding that somehow this will all go away is hopeful and I I'm a big advocate of that as I'll end my presentation with I hope on a more hopeful note but the I is that it's not just a misunderstanding that if people had a better understanding it could be corrected there's an actual industry out there in the tsunami phobia industry that perpetuates this kind of division we have a president number 45 who does this kind of perpetuation in public so it gives license to all those to say we don't have to understand that that there is a clash of civilizations right and that all the things that we're seeing around us point to that right so I think this binary of Islam and and and the West has to be questioned this idea of a judeo-christian or Jewish or Judaic and Christian civilization needs to be put into a longer kind of history including one as Professor Richard bullet has argued to also make a case for Islam to be part of that part of that understanding that's the fourth frame of Islam in the West and then the last frame is the Middle East so if 9/11 is the kind of temporal frame that we use the Middle East becomes the kind of geographical frame or zone through which we often think about Islam and Muslims right and when we think of the Middle East as we see in today's news it's often around Israel Palestine it's around politics and granted that's of course you know as Islam's birthplace the Middle East is important the Arabic language is important but often when we're looking at the Middle East it's a political situation and not the kind of aesthetic or scientific contribution of Arabs and Arabs and Muslims to the west right we sort of skip that history and it's often a just a political history that we often tell so and and then that of course forgets that you know most Muslims don't live in the Middle East and and and and ideas around that so what what these sort of frames often do is it it it divides us into this kind of good and bad Muslim Muslims in the interest of time I'm just gonna read some of the sort of analysis that I think is important here and also the ways in which some of these frames get unpacked in in in my own classroom in class we unpack these totalizing frames and this is again my classrooms at the GTO and a kind of theological institution where again our academic study of Islam is is carried out in the midst of students who are m.div students MTS students there who are just there to study Islam academically but chaplains people who want to use their knowledge of Islam in different contexts so we unpack these totalizing frames and discuss how difficult it is to work outside of them given the risks of being unrecognizable or apologetic we often begin with the language we use such as progressive moderate fundamentalists including unpacking other English terms as I mentioned like jihad madrasah Taliban al-qaeda we also focus on how to unlearn that and challenge the predominantly Christian lenses through which we attempt to understand the Islamic tradition for example not imposing the methodologies of biblical hermeneutics on Quranic studies or how religious norms are often liberating in many communities around the world challenging liberal and or secular norms and values or how not to dismiss feminism's that might base their liberation in the Quran and the prophetic tradition or for example when I'm trying to get my students to think about how Islam is mobilized and instrumentalized to make claims about religious violence in the world I challenge them to think on how not to think about Islam religion and theology alone but instead focus on the historical socio-political and economic context and as I mentioned the military industrial complex in this globalized world this takes a lot of imagination on my already diverse students who even in their care and sensitivity often find it difficult to extend themselves to thinking beyond the confines of euro-american Christianity secularism and liberalism which present themselves and you as universal and I would just you know add to this that we also work in English a colonial language that is now universal right so that's that's an entire other dimension of the homogenizing of the world right and just we think of the world through through English having international students present or students from different traditions add significantly to the breadth and depth of depth of class discussions there's also a difference in the way class discussions are experienced by Muslims and non Muslim students and those who are in Islamic studies and those who are studying Islam or other traditions from different academic disciplines or perspectives and often it is not to students alone that need the opportunities to learn about Islam and Muslims but also faculty administrative leaders and leaders and religious leaders we must be willing to ask the difficult questions of our own traditions that we so confidently ask others and become aware of the biases we hold that we often reproduce in the larger political media frames that I that I mentioned for example at the GTU many tend to think that because we are a progressive consortium that makes this makes us automatically more inclusive in my experience this has not always been the case first and foremost there is a profound ignorance about the history of exclusion of Islamic studies in theological schools and the secular Academy in the United States which if better known would help theological schools and seminaries understand the need for traditions to also be studied normatively and confessional II like Christianity and Judaism so one of the examples is I mean one of the things that we say is that you know can't Muslims have enough critical distance from their own traditions and this has been a question that has sort of been part of the history of how to think about Islam Islam Islamic Studies Islam and Muslims within the American Academy of religion for example or the history of religions right can Muslims can scold us la m-- who are Muslim and who are practicing be objective enough in their scholarship it's it's a question that that continues to be part of the Academy today and I always first highlight the fact that there has been no historical equivalent of the way in which Islamic Studies has been studied normatively and confessional E in theological schools in the West like Christianity has and Judaism has there have been no theological schools and divinity schools where Muslims are doing their work right we're just starting to see that we're just starting to see Islamic studies now in divinity schools and theological schools but otherwise practicing Muslims who have academic questions but also normative questions of a tradition have only done their work in secular institutions this is profoundly different experience for those in other traditions namely in Christianity and and Judaism interestingly at the gtu in my own experience it's often the more liberal ministries claiming to be the most inclusive that have set up the most obstacles in our diverse academic study of Islam often subjecting us to liberal identity politics and practice of faith issues that are part of their ministries in particular denominational and ideological approaches rather than our focus at the center for example for the underrepresented scholarly tradition of Islam and Muslim diversity in the Academy indeed while we are becoming more publicly aware of the systematic systematic production and dissemination of Islamophobia by the right we tend to overlook the left because because it often presents itself as working in the interest of Islam and Muslims drawing on rich scholarship especially in post-colonial and decolonial studies and methodologies including in anthropology and critical theory some of my own work and critique of Christian ministries in theological schools focuses on the particular ways that discussions on women gender feminism and sexuality have been mobilized by the American by the Euro American left to discipline an exert power over Islam Muslims and Islamic studies in its own selective liberal image this reproduces a colonial process of divide and rule and creates an index of good and bad Islam and Muslims Islam ophelia befriending and promoting Muslims that uphold liberal values in Islamophobia in an intimidation for those who resist or provide nuance through their critique I just want I have to read this I think some of you know this already but the book the edited volume by Andrew Shryock Islamophobia Islamophobia this is a paragraph that he has on a good Muslim bad Muslim the good Muslim as a stereotype has common features he tends to be a Sufi ideally one who reads Rumi he is peaceful and assures us that jihad is an inner spiritual contest not a struggle to enjoin the good and forbid the wrong through force of arms he treats women as equals and is committed to choices to choice in matters of hijab wearing and never advocates the covering of a woman's face if he is a she then she is highly educated works outside the home is her husband's only wife chose her husband freely and wears hijab if at all only because she wants to the good Muslim is also a pluralist recalls fondly the ecumenical virtues of medieval Andalusia in as a champion of interfaith activism he is politically moderate an advocate of democracy human rights and religious freedom an opponent of armed conflict against the US and Israel and finally he is likely to be an African a South Asian or more or more likely still an Indonesian or Malaysian he is less likely to be an Arab but as friends of the good Muslim will point out only a small portion of Muslims are Arab anyway so fundamentalist and self-selecting are these unquestioned liberal norms and markers and so totalizing are their myopic frames that efforts in reframing liberal politics puts Islam and Muslims on trial this raises important theological and academic questions in terms like sorry such as how do we understand colonial conceptions and practices of time and space embedded as I mentioned before in terms like progressive and universal so intrinsic to ministry mission and Empire colluding on the left and right how our Western liberalism secularism and the judeo-christian civilization reconfigured visa vie Islam and Muslims especially using the frames of law and citizenship what can anthropological discussions on Native informants Savage and salvation still teach us and by what stretch of the American imaginary and under what conditions and limits can we make possible expanded norms of recognition of islam and muslim life and perhaps most importantly how do we rethink the power inherent in the production and dissemination of knowledge I think such questions are important to continue asking as we build programs in Islamic studies and even more so in inter studies so that we begin seeing how discriminating our sets of questions are when it comes to different traditions while difficult difficult questions are welcome and necessary to advance scholarship and understanding the larger concern here is what often presents itself in the language of diversity or calls for diversity or are really what I experience as liberal forms of Christian proselytizing or what I have called elsewhere liberal fundamentalists liberal fundamentalism and conversion I know it's a provocative statement but I welcome that further discussion in the Q&A singling out students who happen to be Muslim and singling out their Muslim identity over other identities and asking where they stand on certain issues just recently being discussed in the US and European context is why such parochial questioning is European euro American centric and on euro-american time liberal tests as I mentioned are the new ways liberals create classes of good and bad Muslims by reserving these particular kinds of scrutinising to Islam and Muslims as Professor Sabah Mahmoud has suggested we need to question liberalism to I would I would add we should also question liberal liberal isms exclusions its deceits and limits its claim to universality and its claim to liberate all people in conclusion we live in perilous and precarious times marked by violence war terrorism refugees and displacement poverty and growing economic disparities environmental catastrophes the building of walls racism gender discrimination xenophobia and growing Islamophobia this includes state-sponsored countering violent extremism programs and surveillance of Muslim communities the monitoring and curtailing of religious and academic freedoms and the consistent under-representation and misrepresentation of Muslims in mainstream media politics and beyond in this post truth era of alternative facts fear raged the new nativism and the rise of white nationalism in the United States and parts of Europe Islam and Muslims occupy strange national platform through which Islamophobia and Islam philia can be expressed and mobilized by those by both those for and against Trump's bands walls profanities and exclusions within the last year so in the United States Muslim women in hijab went from most often being seen as oppressed to temporarily becoming the face of freedom in the 2017 women's March in response to Trump's Muslim ban and we've seen that being now upheld amongst other bands people of all backgrounds came together in solidarity and protests at airports throughout the country where public prayers were welcomed public sites became venues for public expressions in support of pluralism and patriotism in solidarity with Muslims but while we have seen such apparent Islam philia in the past it is usually short-lived and Muslims and other minorities know all too well how such solidarity can be temporary contingent and political as we often hear Islam and Muslims become a way by which liberals what by which white liberals can vent their frustration at Trump as many asked would any of this have happened if Hillary Clinton became president and yet this painful lesson is now ironically forcing the nation to face itself and its history of denials and exclusions in the spirit of learning and dialogue it is important to advance scholarship and critique and to continue asking and addressing difficult questions in the privilege of our classrooms and public programs such as these that prepare us for an unpredictable world I often remind my Christian colleagues that much of what they say and do needs to be in dialogue with and kept in check by the communities they claim to include if we extend our inter religious studies outside are comfortable contexts we quickly begin seeing our biases the limits of our rhetoric and the often white Christian liberalism which is profoundly different which is a profoundly different experience and communities of color this means attending to issues of power and place the wear of interfaith and being mindful that the assumptions we make in one context and the positions we take in one context will be challenged in other contexts the presence of Islam and Muslims is critical today in theological schools and seminaries not only for the reasons of historical exclusion but also to acknowledge the profound contributions to Western civilization Islam is an American religion here right from the time African Muslims were enslaved in the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade and has a long struggle in rich history of african-american Muslims who have upheld the faith as mentioned before Islam and Muslims make significant contributions to how we collectively reflect upon ourselves in profoundly new ways in inter-religious and interdisciplinary contexts where we study and live our faiths Islamic Studies is not just an add-on to how we think about teach and practice into religious studies it is integral to it we need to study and reflect on the Islamic tradition in its own specificity in history and we need to do so in the context of mutually constitutive histories histories of overlap entanglement and messiness but also histories of shared intellectual and spiritual learning this is my CIS plug the Center for Islamic studies plug the Center for Islamic studies exemplifies the critical role that Islamic studies and Muslims play in theological schools and the larger Academy in my own context as we reflect on the CIS is first decade and I'm so honored that our former president dr. Jim Donahue who helped establish the center is is here along with dr. Jain puritan as well thank you both for being here as we reflect on the CIA's first decade and think to the years ahead addressing the challenges we face today and anticipate in the future the Center for Islamic studies provides and facilitates opportunities for dialogue at a time of heightened national heightened divisions nationally and internationally to date our 45 MA and PhD students and graduates and Islamic Studies along with our faculty and visiting scholars and research scholars bring vast experiences and histories that transform the gtu and beyond coming from 17 countries and speaking reading or writing 32 languages this is a remarkable global diversity that characterizes Islamic Studies at the GTU there are major contributions that the study of religion in theologian in the plural and in theological context can jointly make because inter-religious education aims to equip students with skills and professional competencies of sensitively navigating commonalities and differences within and across traditions we have the opportunity as a group of scholars and faith practitioners to advance the positive role of religion in academia and public life in media the arts museums public policy law social justice work business and religious communities I think of this work as mediation translation and boundary crossing as it reframes religions and religious practitioners as sources of divisiveness to ones that promote dialogue and understanding through critical engagement advancing religious and inter-religious literacy in theological schools which includes understanding people in their intersectionality and understanding things in their historical social geopolitical and economic context has a tremendous transformative potential in the Academy and the larger public sphere thank you [Applause] Thank You dr. Jay weather ah before we get into questions from the audience I am going to take my own privilege of being an emcee and as a question not as you were to kick it off but I I have actually ten questions but I won't go through all because you your talk was quite thought-provoking I loved what you had to say about the European in the Eastern West and the binary and that the dominant view of the you know what the European is becomes Universal where you started this talk I thought it was great and of course secularism itself there's a lot of questions I have about that but secularism itself seems to me like a dogma you know it it's it seems to be anti dogmatic when it comes to religious people but they actually have a dogma of their own in a sense but the thing that we interested me the question I want to ask you really it has to do with the framing the frames that you talked about and I will give you one quick thing which is I had the honor of working with an author as a book editor I was working with George Lakoff who was at UC Berkeley who did a lot of work on cognitive frame cognitive framing and he had this fantastic little book called don't think of an elephant for those of you haven't heard of it that was the title of the book and that was a question he used to ask his classes in the first day of class he would begin by saying don't think of an elephant and he paused and he said what happened when I said that everybody thought of an elephant so the point being that if you are you know and I remember I came to this country in 1974 in time to see Richard Nixon leave the White House and one of his famous lines was I'm not a crook and what did their whole country think watching it on television you're a crook so my question is really about frames and so if you're talking about frames that include for Islam that include violins that include you know subjugation of women that include you know this whole binary of aslam and in the West one of the lessons I learned from George Lakoff was that you if you try to negate a frame you reinforce the frame if I stand up here and say Muslims are not terrorists I've just done exactly what I've reinforced that frame of terrorism right so the question really is how do you begin to the answer seems to be to create new frames rather than sort of challenge or try to negate the frames that are on there and how do you begin to do that and you mentioned a little bit towards the end of your talk about that but I'd like to hear any thoughts you have about how do we as as Muslims and about Islam begin to change the frame of Islam and of Muslims and create new frames that don't have anything to do with those things but that have to do with a lot of other amazing things about Muslims in Islam no this is my question and I will see if other people have questions thank you thanks of fear for for that question so yes lay coughs work I think is really important and you know he says frames are the kind of cognitive structures to which we think about the world right and reframing is very hard because it actually asks us to think about the world in different ways which is very difficult I would argue that reframing is very difficult I mean he talks about it in a political context and has in its work of those of you who haven't read it is is really really important but one of the things is that reframing is very hard to do because there's a kind of a national and political inertia of the frames that are already present right so when you think of refugees you already think in a certain way when you think of just say the word walls you know you think in a certain way it's it's not just about the reframing because it's very hard to do as I mentioned once you reframe you're either seen as an apologetic oh I'm going to use Islamic art well yes I actually think Islamic art needs to be part of the conversation and the entire contribution of Islamic aesthetics to the West or scientific contributions but that's red is apologetic because people will say well that's just the past that's that doesn't answer for all the violence in the world so there are dominant frames I think that are in the world that we have to work through and reframing is very hard because again it's either seen as you've missed the point or you haven't actually spoken about violence because that's usually the elephant so to speak in the room or it's just seen as you know yeah it's just it's just seen as apologetic that you're not really dealing with the frame in question so what I offer is that we have to be more nuanced in the frames that we use we have to fill in those frames with different ways in which to see the world right is the the kind of dominant lens of violence and fundamentalism but we have to as I said put them in different kinds of historical social geopolitical perspectives right so we don't just think about violence any particular way or violence as belonging to a certain group of people that some are victims of it and some of are the oppressors I think there are different ways in which we have to nuance those frames I mean that's one one argument the frame of women gender and sexual minorities it's a it sounds apologetic but you know we can we can sort of tease those out by saying well yes there been more Muslim women presidents and leaders in the Muslim world and there have been in the West right now it sounds apologetic but it's true and it's and it's important fact right or the fact that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has recognised the third gender does that all of a sudden make Pakistan more progressive does it mean that it's way ahead of the curve in terms of the u.s. in its in its ability to do that so you can you know be recognized as third gender on identity cards in Pakistan this Lama Cree public right but when we think Islamic Republic or an Islamic state we already think certain things it's already scripted for us so I think part of our task in in in in in academia and Beyond is to nuance those frames is to provide different ways in which people actually live their lives the other is is the fact that that we learn we live within these large frames but how people actually live their lives is so nuanced and it's so complex right these frames don't tell us much about how what people's lived experiences are they don't tell us what people's emotions are they don't tell us what how people embody certain kinds of ethical or moral habits right I think those are all really important ways in which we knew answer frames it's very hard to think outside of them when I start talking about as I said Islamic art and architecture and the marvels of the Islamic tradition this way people find it very hard to digest that you know and yet there's a need for it and yet there are people who absolutely love this but it's it's it's seen as often apologetic so I think it's it's just about the nuance that we have to add thanks for your question can you okay I'm going to use the opportunity to give one more plug since you mentioned Islamic art in two weeks or less than two weeks actually you know we can have from today on Sunday December 17th right here at Zeta know college we're going to have a event and the title of the event is a silent theology of Islamic art it's actually the title of an article that were publishing in the journal the Renovatio journal which is the journal of the eternal college by a scholar at the College of William and Mary and he's going to be here along with two practitioners of Islamic art and we're going to do have a discussion about that I think you answered my question very well I think we have some questions from the online if you do have some Haroon we can start with those or the question in the audience here we can start with that thank you I just wanted to know if you could speak a bit more on the departmental divisions that kind of push Islam kind of out to the side of traditional Western academic institutions and maybe offer some advice to students that are either already attending or planning on attending a Western academic institution to study Islam and Muslims in a traditional academic field as opposed to within fields and departments such as Islamic studies or religious studies Middle Eastern Studies etc and the best way to navigate such an academic environment yeah thanks thanks for the question and thanks again moment for helping put this event together so I think it's important question and I know we get some of these questions a lot and people are trying to navigate how to think about Islamic studies so I'm not one of those people who say don't study Islam and in in in the Western Academy I know there are many who advocate that I actually think that there are it's important that scholars who happen to be Muslim who want to study Islam should do so in a variety of fields whether it's Near Eastern Studies Middle East Studies religious studies anthropology my own field sociology literature I think these are the diverse ways in which we can benefit from a large kind of body of knowledge so I think it's it's important to see oneself as being able to be part of these it's not restricted to any one discipline the field in historically has been divided between those who kind of do what used to be called orientalist Oriental Studies or Orientalism you know fill illogical work text space work what historically has always been sort of divided as the Great and little tradition so you know textual fill illogical illogical studies happen on the one hand and then more anthropological sort of little traditions happen on the other so the practices and the texts or the text and context that has by and large been questioned I mean even though we have departments that kind of uphold that it's been questioned I think there's a more kind of integrative approach to thinking about even the texts that we study should be thought of context historically and and if relevant today so I think that students who are thinking about doing this who happen to be Muslim should see all of these as opportunities and I think increasingly see opportunities in theological schools and divinity schools where there is an opportunity to study confessional II normatively it's not always easy to navigate but we can do so also in the context of other traditions and I think that's really important you know I think having the ability to study our own traditions in the context place like gtu for example is just it's an amazing opportunity to be able to study Islam textually normatively confessional II but to also be with Christians Jews others in the class those who are not confessional to ask these questions in a sensitive way and that doesn't preclude being critical I think that that's that has to be included as part of this you know so I think it's it's not an either/or I think that one should see all of these places as opportunities and then again different disciplines and different departments have different methodologies the one that I can one department that I can't make a plug for increasingly at least in in it and it's kind of move towards more sort of security studies as political science I mean a lot of funding around Islam and Muslims is going to political science in in kind of security and terrorism studies right this is sort of changing the way I mean it has departments competing with each other and within those departments or people who think you know in different ways but I think that this is this is now part of how people think about the sort of larger Islamic studies and then I think it's just wonderful the work that they to know College is doing as a liberal arts college with each other a graduate program coming up to be able to study a classical tradition normatively in the same way that other traditions have been given that opportunity so I think that that's that's also an amazing thing it's not for everyone you know people might not want to do the Classical Studies come to cheat you if you don't want to do the classical stuff and if you want to do the classical stuff come to you know so I think there's a lot of opportunity and we're seeing that right here on Holy Hill right with Zaytuna College with the GTU and with UC Berkeley a public university where there's an increased interest in public theology the Luce Foundation for example has just funded the Berkeley Center for the Study of religion they're increasingly doing work with us here at say tuna at at gtu I think these are ways in which we can have conversations across disciplines which are not so isolating for people who think of themselves as religious and therefore not having a space in a secular context I think that that's changing yeah thank you for the question so much of what you talked about is very much rooted in political in modern nation-states and so I was wondering if you could speak to the relationship between nation building projects and some of the frames that you're speaking of because in my own work in the pre-modern periods some of the very frames that you're speaking of you find that kind of discourse in pre-modern texts and so I'm wondering if you see any kind of fundamental sort of shift when you do get the rise and kind of establishment of nation-states or is that not a necessarily significant um transitional moment yeah it's a it's a really important question thanks dr. Sabet you know I think that they're one of the ways in which the clash of civilizations sort of binary works is that a lot of the sort of antagonisms between what we've come to call Islam in the West are age-old antagonisms right that Muslims have always thought of themselves outside of the fold of Europe and Europeans have always thought of themselves and this is just a kind of propensity towards a clash so the things that we can say today about Islam and Muslims in the West is the same things that we are often saying even prior to the crusade so that's one line of argument that is that the clash is based on these age-old divisions right and and the age-old demarcations of space and time you know both this kind of spatial and temporal markers but I think the difference in within modern nation-states which is very recent is that they're these are now nation-building projects you know as professor Assad's work shows that secularism is a certain kind of political doctrine so it demands people to behave in certain ways right you're you're demanded to behave in a certain way you're regulated by time and new ways that you weren't in pre-modern times right as I mentioned the example of prayer you know your days for many people personally their day could be marked by prayer but the public sphere is not navigated by your prayer time prayer time has to be a religious accommodation that's made in a secular sphere that might not be a bad thing but when that's the only way of seeing the world and and that that's the only way in which we can think of people living decent lives and then we have all sorts of regulatory bodies that tend to work in people's interests but or claim to at least those add to the ways in which we are moving or there's a kind of propensity towards a homogenize ation of how we live our lives right so the UN or World Bank and all these other you know international bodies create certain kinds of ways in which we all are supposed to inhabit this same space and time the other part of that is that we as Muhammad's work shows there's a sense that we think that our way of life is the best way of life we can't imagine that there are other life worlds that have different kinds of histories that that can coexist that do coexist that we live in different languages you know I think that these are really important points to bring up the kind of particular ways in which people attempt to live their lives so as an anthropologist I'm interested both in you know what are these large frames of temporality in space and how do we find ourselves in that and then just everyday stories of how someone lives their life and you'll see that these can be vastly different right I don't know if it gets to the heart of your question but I try to I there are sort of what we would call the same frames that keep reemerging but how they're employed how they're mobilized look very different in different historical moments and and and right now the kind of president presentist social media world that we live in again is another kind of homogenizing of the world so on the one hand we think of ourselves as being much more aware of each other there's a much there's an ability to be in contact in ways we hadn't historically but along with that are major things that we should be concerned with right and again social media is another way in which a form of universal I kind of universalizing of the world happens and most are still excluded from that right including I didn't even get on the kind of economics of all of this but the kind of economic exclusions that happen as a result of that a long way too long whirlwind of an answer but hopefully we can continue can you take a question if I could take a question from online as a non-muslim now being made aware of these frames but who continues to watch lots of TV what's the fundamental thing or questions I must ask myself when consuming media reports about Islam and Muslims well I you know it's hard because if you say well be wary of the news you sound like number 45 right so I don't want to sound like him but yes be critical in the way we consume our news and get it from multiple sources right print TV speaking to people visiting communities I mean I think we really need to diversify the way in which we think about our sources of information the other eye you know I would add to that is that shouldn't be the only place we go for our information about tradition you know this is like 1,400 years of history 1,400 plus years of history in the Islamic tradition that is vastly diverse that is complex and that the news media shouldn't be our go-to place to learn about this we should we need to read we need to diversify the languages we know and I think we need to do that with each other's traditions you know I think it's really critical that the ability for us to see our own traditions in nuanced ways the complexity of our traditions you know we all get that I think we all get how messy our traditions are right and how we relate to them what Talal Asad calls you know that it's he says it's part of the problem in at least in the academy of how to study Islam is that we don't have the kind of conceptual frameworks we don't have the right conceptual tools right it's not just Islam is not just as I said the textual but tradition which is just the Quran and Sunna it has to be an interpretive one as well and Islam is not just whatever any Muslim says it is right he says it's we're lacking the conductance because conceptual tools of this text and context and he offers what he calls an Islamic discourse of tradition it's the various ways in which we relate in various times and places to the foundations of the of the tradition which are the Quran and Sunnah and the multiple ways in which we relate to that and the multiple ways we which we relate to that are specific our specific historically specific politically specific socially specific so I think that that's sort of one way of of thinking about it the other is just read like read voraciously read other stories and read the right things because there's a lot of of course academic works that are also problematic I think we need to read we can offer lists you can go down to the websites but yes I think it's an important thing to move from a source like television for for our news media to multiple sources and included in that are academic sources to kind of give us the this of nuance the other often people offer is that well meet a Muslim you know hang around with Muslim eyes say well that's all so that also can be problematic but you know then you're then you're left with this well you better meet the right kind of Muslim and then you could open up the whole kind of forms of what was the right kind of Muslim so but it is I think important there's a lot of good work that's being done with a lot of Muslim organizations that sort of advancing this opportunity to to to to meet with one another and to learn about one another and it doesn't have to always be on things theological what our texts say might be one area of interest but it can be on joint projects of any kind water issues poverty issues homelessness environment you know there are many things that we we often do just work on together so thanks for your question dr. roni this point perhaps you want to end but dr. Jeeva many of the thoughts you shared got me thinking about the frames itself and as I am a student of pre-modern Islam more than contemporary which we all have to live but I was thinking that if you were if you one thinks about knowledge production and the society then there is a series of ten films that were done which are titled when the world spoke Arabic exactly the same kind that we are looking at today the domination of the of Western science is a not knowledge production that then seems to be linked with the temporal and the spatial that you were talking about there was a time that the world rhythm was awakened if you were to take between Baghdad and Cairo and Cordoba and Granada knowledge production happened in those parts of the world that happened to be Arabic and Muslim that pursued knowledge when most of Europe was in the dark ages and so inevitably those rhythms and the temporal and the spatial was dominant in the world of the time the known world of the time exactly within the frames that you were describing says you were talking about it I wondered what what is different right so the analysis is very important and for Muslims to think about their being that kind of a frame in some ways one could argue simplistically that imperialistic mind frames do have a dominant dimples and then there is the knowledge production that somehow fits into it albeit in our times now you know the globalization the the internet all of that makes a very different case for it right so how do you think and despite that I'm reminded of many many texts that I teach where people were interested in other parts of the world even though they lived in the dominant knowledge production societies they were even Battuta you're talking of Baroni these are people that either went to India and London languages and somehow try to understand their tradition with other very formidable traditions and so Nasser claustro these are travel logs that we think about that went to other parts of the world so is there that lack which comes into what is now nativism and nationalisms is that one of the you know one of the frames to look at and how do then we look at the frames that are dominant now how do we look at our own traditions and compare where there could be as you know someone has said we're not all born with pluralist impulse they are learned and those learnings happen when there is enough curiosity and not insular traditions right so of course you know you and I agree that one of the most in to import and interventions for lack of time that you didn't mention is Shahab Mohammed's work what is Islam where he talks about the the Balkans to the bengal phenomenon where muslims live very very diverse lives right so come back coming back to your question in terms of sort of frameworks and how in order to counter those frameworks you often end up reiterating some of it and then your suggestion was no ants I recently just yesterday they before came back from Egypt and it was very interesting even to see among most this was a Muslim group from the UAE visiting Egypt for the first time and one of the persons that said at dinner was really interesting for me who think who is very much.now believer of an experiential education she said to me the one thing that's already changed in my three days here is I will never look at the Egyptians the same way I have had I have met Egyptians in the UAE and they have I have had not the best of experience with Egyptians compared to the Egypt the real Egyptians that I see in Egypt and I will never look at the Egyptians in a biased way that I did based on the three people that I met right so what you have here is a an increasing interest in allowing the dialogic frameworks to work in a way but again looking at those dominant frameworks that you're talking about I'm very much reminded of those you know the pre-modern ones and I wonder how one has to in some ways accept certain frameworks that are dominant because their knowledge production society wherever that knowledge was produced and how within that then to look at different rhythms that work for different parts of the world and obviously people when they go to that part of the world do get converted and like their afternoon siestas and don't want to work 9:00 to 5:00 right after a good lunch you sleep and then you work from 5:00 to 8:00 again so you know again the whole question is how do we then interpret those frameworks but I wanted to bring some of the pre-modern perspective particularly with Sabhas question of of whether nation states does that and the more current ones in terms of how globalization works in a very different way we're on the one hand the irony of knowing everything at your fingertips and and the exact opposite happening where people want to go into their own frames because that's exactly what makes them comfortable oh right yeah I thank you dr. Nargis Ronnie who's one of our longest visiting scholars research scholars along with Carole beer who I think the two of them has been the longest visiting scholars with us so thank you for all the work you've been doing you know it's it's not a response to that so I think you lift up a lot of really important points and how do we think about the frames in pre-modern and modern times as doctors about was also mentioning you know I I mean I don't see these as you know what I'm offering I hope is not a kind of a political intervention but more of a kind of a case for the humanities and a kind of the kind of aesthetic sensibility and ethical sensibility of how we think about the world right and that has to be nuanced I think you know as I said in this kind of present issed political environment and the corporatization of our universities and institutions there's very little room to actually think about nuance to bring historically excluded histories into parlance because we're it's very instrumentalists we want if you're going to be talking about 8/10 century it better be relevant to something you're doing today otherwise it just doesn't make it anymore it doesn't cut it anymore and it's not funded anymore that's another big part of it right the funding sort of pushes us into how we think about these different frames but I you know I think you raise a really important question about how do these frames change and travel just travel help those frames do we think in more nuanced ways about the world it's hard to do that because you know one of the one of the pitfalls of the advocating for pluralism isn't what do we do with societies that aren't or that are largely a cultural or a language we know that no society is completely like that but there are predominantly of a culture right we many nation-states kind of fought against that we fought against what nation-states attacked that were tied to an ethnicity are now plural so what it means to be German today could be German citizenship but there are people who also say being German as an ethnic identity right so a lot of what we in terms of today in terms of loss the people are feeling in terms of their nation-states has a lot to do with how we have moved from nation-states being tied to certain kinds of ethnic groups to nation-states that are now thought of in terms of citizenship and how people can belong so is it okay for me to say that I'm Canadian or do I have to say where I'm really from you know I guess I can do that in the u.s. context but these are I think questions that relate to you know what we do with societies that are pluralistic in their own way but might not appear pluralistic to us do that mean does that mean that they're aggressive does that mean that they don't fit the modern world because their societies aren't plural you know so there is a kind of sense that you know Americans get it right I mean the kind of American exceptionalism is that we are the most pluralistic country in the world and that's amazing and that is an incredible thing at the same time it's not without its own tensions that's why you see increasingly people wanting to go in their own communities because that's a place of comfort for them it's a place of identity it's a place of being sustained you know it could be language as well people just even living in a certain language you know evoke certain things but I think what I'm trying to advocate for is a certain kind of ability to recognize the multiplicity of the ways in which people live their lives as having validity an equal validity and the fact that our way of life is not the only way of life for the world an American Way of life is not the way most people live their worlds and it cannot be imposed through war and drones on people or other kinds of institutions UN World Bank and other things so I my worry is that this tendency towards a kind of homogenous Asian of the world is kept in check by the everydayness of people's lives the the complexities the joy is the sorrows the lived experience of people and I think your there is something to be said about you know how do we how do we think about when Arabic was you know I'm in a pre-modern times when Arabic was a kind of world view you know again I think we need the nuance we need to think about how people traveled where they went yes there were imperial powers as well you know yes as there was nomination so we need to think about all those complexities I'm not offering a kind of political solution except to say that there's maybe an ethical responsibility we have in offering the same kind of change and ability to see the nuance and others that we demand of ourselves I can see it because you're here but you know one of the ways in which for example there was a reference to Rumi as you know he's the love poet because you know most beloved poet in the West because he's his Muslim Ness is downplayed and I still recall professor irani or your sacred text lecture at the g2 library in 2008 where you basically put Rumi back into the Islamic tradition right Rumi who is also you know who's whose work can be seen as tough here but who's also as an Islamic legal scholar right that's not the Rumi that's represented and one of them I think arguments that you made so profoundly is that Rumi is universal and universally appealing not because he is moving beyond Islam but because in fact his universalism is a result of his particular roots in the Islamic tradition and being Muslim and I think that still resonates with me so putting Rumi back in the into the tradition is the universality of Rumi not the exception so thank you for your question doc dr. Munir if I could close with a couple final questions that I'm going to combine Alan from facebook asks in a world where there are sectarian wars between Sunnis and Shia and this example what role does religion play to unite us in an inclusive framework and then what inspirations can we draw from to continue our efforts to be beautiful and share beauty while knowing that whatever we produce may end up in an ugly frame yeah thank you for the question so one of my categories was you know increasingly the the tensions that we're seeing amongst she hasn't Sunnis that often fits and it could fit in any of the categories but especially in the Middle East and Bs you know we think of increasingly that kind of violence in that part of the world I would offer once again that that diversity within Islam has always been there we need to look at the different political and historical moments in which those differences are exploited to create tensions you know and I think that it would be it's it's important not to say that these are just religious or theological tensions well those theological differences are part of the tradition that it's important to note that the kind of political context in which those divisions are exacerbated so we often hear today in Iraq it's more divided than it was during Saddam's time that's not all of a sudden because Muslims of different persuasions started hating each other it's because it's a political context in which that unfolds right and we see that all around the world those tensions often bear on Sunni Shia and other relations in this part of the world as well right and I think it's important to recognize that diversity is part of the Islamic tradition it's always been there we look at right people who want to go right back to the prophetic time but also the Quran you know built into the Quran is as God reminds us is that diversity is part of how we are created male and female nations and tribes so that we know and one another so I think that this knowing one another is both important intra Islamic Lee amongst Muslims and into religiously and and outside of the tradition as well I often see that people will exploit outside of the Islamic tradition non-muslims will also often exploit the tensions within and we do that with other traditions as well I mean I think it's it's it's it's a broad way in which we work about you know exploiting the tensions within so the fight remains there you know there's lots of books that have kind of come out on saying the the next phase of the tension is not with Islam in the West it's within Islam right and and so I would again offer that we not see these as we see religious differences and diversity as part of the tradition with all its messiness with all its beauty but that we also see the socio-political context in which those differences are mobilized and I hope that you know that we arrive at I mean in some ways maybe it's probably a good way to close but you know beyond just the the surrender or the submission that many of us as Muslims aspire to the kind of Islam the surrender and then the Iman that comes with that right the cultivation of belief and the understanding of it all towards a kind of asan right a kind of pursuit of beauty and excellence and that is not restricted to any one person that is for everyone and so maybe that might be a way to close and say that a lot of these tensions have been historically there their current they must be navigated and they must be navigated in ways that that are again both intra Islamic and inter-religious as well Thanks thank you everyone thank you dr. gira and thanks to all of you for joining us tonight and those online joining us and for the great questions as well I think this brings to a close not only this evening but also the fall lecture series of Latino College rest assured that they will be they to know College will be firing up another lecture series come January and there'll be more talks and more enlightening discussions I hope and I do want to remind everybody about the 10th anniversary of gtu tomorrow of genomic study is this center of Islamic studies and also while we I put one more plug and I don't feel bad about or ashamed about putting these plugs because none of us are here to make money out of it this is a non profit set up in considering the talk of pluralism and Islam and all of that the new issue of renovation the journal we're putting out which will be coming out in two weeks the theme of that issue is actually tolerance and pluralism and so I urge all of you who are interested in that topic especially in context of Islam to pick up a copy or read it online with that I hope you all have a safe journey home and those of us joining us online thank you very much Salam alikoum and good night [Applause] you

Channel: Zaytuna College

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Keywords: Lecture Series 2017 Hatem Bazi, Lecture Series 2017 Munir Jiwa, Wide Shot, Two Persons, One Person, Medium Shot, liberal arts, munir jiwa, islam, muslim, academia, education, zaytuna college, islamophobia, the west, Contemporary Issues, Scholarship, Unity, Violence, Secularism, Colonialism, Liberal, History, Media

Id: IRnFtnftLPA

Length: 101min 10sec (6070 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2018