Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (16 page)

The A.A.R. experience I share first is the most recent one, which coincidentally followed 9/11 by a mere two months. Perhaps the intensity of my comments about teaching Islam in America and the time when I was making those comments did little to open dialogue. None followed during the question and answer section. That presentation was for the “Identity, Scholarship and Teaching: Studying Cross-Culturally and Ethnically” panel, in the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession at the A.A.R. meeting held in Denver, Colorado.

My contribution to the goal of the panel could be seen as very narrow, very specific, and very personal. Yet I had hoped it would become a helpful contribution to the analysis of what this means to academia in general and to the study of religion and diversity in particular. I would especially like to posit some critical consideration to the study of Islam in Western academia,

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even more so to Muslim Women’s Studies, despite my frustrations. Islam as an academic subject cannot be taught with equal effectiveness in every academic setting. Several factors adversely affect the quality of the learning experience. Furthermore, to use a Malcolm X metaphor, a Muslim woman academic is not an equal diner at the great dinner table of academic life. I reflect on matters of teaching and learning in light of a series of overlapping factors that adversely affect both teaching Islam and teaching as a Muslim female. I offer data collected from the experience of teaching Islam in hopes of contributing to valuable analysis and strategies for improvement in all aspects of teaching diversity. I have not established a standard to defini- tively measure or evaluate the information I have collected. This has been my personal experience, so the relative degree of how one or another factor might adversely deconstruct an environment conducive to effective Islamic Studies could also benefit from a more objective examination.

Over my first few years, I collected information informally from two divergent sources. I read with detail the negative comments made on stand- ard student evaluation forms – the final weapon for recalcitrant students to use their anonymity for particularly harsh commentary. I also took refer- ences from those students with whom I became very close, the ones who would often take every course I taught, and who clustered around me both inside and outside of the classroom. They would not only tell me what some other students were saying when I was not present, but they would also take their classmates to task for exaggerations during class discussions. They were the ones who informed me that my style of dress led others to confess they “thought you were going to throw that Islam thing at us, so they dropped the course.”

Later, I developed two specific evaluative sources for collecting infor- mation directly from students about their perspectives, which could be constructively incorporated into my teaching and pedagogy. As stated previously, pragmatically speaking, a curriculum cannot stand alone without acknowledgment of and response to the learner. It was my genuine desire to improve my teaching to meet the standard of learner I am assigned to teach. I had also enhanced the use of technology in teaching Islam. A proposal I submitted specifically aimed at increasing images about the softer sides of Islam into the lessons was accepted for a teaching and tech-

nology grant.
19
Ironically, that was the same semester some Muslims

decided to blow up the World Trade Center. Although the long-term profit from this grant has proven beneficial and I have created basic Islamic Studies, with each topic increasingly better comprehended and appreciated,

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my best efforts that semester were no competition to the amplification of mass media sensational coverage considering their advantages in manipu- lating modern technology.

One of the strategies I used for constructive evaluation was an extra credit project for students to connect course materials with the use of technology. This became reduced to random lists of U.R.L. addresses with no substantive expressions of how the particular websites would be integrated into the course development to enhance student experience. Other students did submit ideas that helped to assess students’ critical thinking about the course and its development – especially with regard to current events. My basic introductory course on Islam, now totally techno- logically enhanced, primarily covers the fundamental developments of Islamic theological ideas, dogma, creeds, rituals, and practices starting from its beginnings. Only a short amount of time would be available for applying that background information to current events. So I developed several courses explicitly on modern global trends and on Islam and women, but fewer than 10% of the students who had previously learned the basics ever signed up.

The other important source for collecting student feedback was offered for free credit in the form of two questions on the last of several non- cumulative assessment examinations. One question asks: “If there was one thing you would change about the course what would it be and how would you incorporate it?” With no reason for their choice they more construc- tively phrased suggestions for future incorporation. While student responses included specific additional topics, logistical information, or comments on things like attendance policy, there have been some helpful directions for meeting student needs more concretely.

However, one frequent suggestion is to teach Islam relative to Christianity. While, on the one hand, familiarity with Christianity is under- standable, on the other hand, using Christianity as the standard for understanding all other religions has serious and potentially damaging results in continued misunderstandings. This is not a comparative course, like one available on Western traditions. That which distinguishes the three Abrahamic religions is too easily dismissed as insignificant or re-interpreted through a lens incongruent with the integrity of the non-Christian tradi- tions by obscuring certain points crucial to their distinctions. When such points of distinction arise for critical reflection, this method has led students to reduce these matters by constructing such an amalgamation that important distinctions are meaningless.

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For example, revelation and monotheism are essential to Judaism, Chris- tianity, and Islam. The habit of overgeneralizing the meanings of these two terms actually violates the importance of their distinctions. Although all three revelatory monotheist traditions describe themselves as evolving from a unified origin – God and prophets – they do not form one religion. The significant distinctions of these two concepts help define the unique worldview of each faith system. Whitewashing the differences between Islam and Christianity may make teaching them more palatable to the average undergraduate student of Christian background in the south, but this method can also violate the integrity of Islam. At a most fundamental level, for example, Islam’s idea of monotheism, or
tawhid
,
completely rejects the idea of the Trinity. It is more important to engage in the distinction of Islam’s view without using it to disagree with the idea of the Trinity in order to feign commonality.

Nevertheless, I have made many adjustments to adapt the curriculum to the particular learners, while remaining committed to teaching Islam within the integrity of its own worldview, and on the basis of its own principles. It is not the counterpart to other religious traditions, a sub-category to some

standard established externally, nor a

reaction to sensationalist media

coverage. Meanwhile, I must still create courses that will draw in and keep a certain number of students each semester as part of the university’s expec- tation of all instructors. Coincidentally, millions of Americans tuned in to an Oprah Winfrey program,
Islam 101
. Despite the tremendous public interest in understanding Islam, it is still difficult to entice students into genuinely preparing themselves for an in-depth study of the complex issues of Islamic thought, development, reform, and, in particular, matters of Muslim women. I cannot realistically teach about the integrity and complexity of Islam at the level of undergraduate education if the goal is to reduce it to oversimplification to fit its most immediate circumstances or to resemble popular entertainment.

The other A.A.R. experience was also with a “special topics panel” focused on the study of Islam and gender. I was one of several women invited to participate on a “Women, Religious Studies and Backlash” panel for the section on the Status of Women in the Academy at the national meeting in San Francisco, Fall 1998. I availed myself of the opportunity to make a plea for greater inclusiveness and support while intentionally invoking the very places of tension between the powerless and the more powerful in the academy with regard to this special section. So I highlighted aspects of extra-Islamic backlash but also intra-academia backlash, in order

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to make it clear that U.S. academic settings – including the A.A.R. – can be part of the problem or part of the solution.

I was not viciously attacked, as I have experienced when facing Muslim confessional audiences about the problems of theoretically addressing gender justice, but neither were there comments on the points I raised, to ease the tension of the dilemma of double academic marginalization. At that time I had been involved with the A.A.R. for over a decade. This was my first direct dealing with either the Women and Religions sections or the sub-committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (S.W.P.). I felt hopeful that it could yield a place and time for coordinating bilateral

discourse. The following spring I proposed a topic on Islamic Public Ritual Leadership and Gender,
20
which was accepted by both the Islam section and the Women and Religion section. However, the Women and Religion

section orchestrated a special panel in conjunction with the topic. Since the

A.A.R. does not permit a proposal to be delivered in more than one session, I opted for the Islam section. In my letter of apology to the Women and Religion section, I explained that I thought this particular topic would benefit most from the input of Islamic scholars more familiar with the field. Having made the tough decision to reject the Women and Religion section, the following spring I proposed exclusively to that section the topic “Making Space for Critical Studies of Islam and Gender in U.S. Academia.” The rejection letter stated the usual: no reflection on the quality of the proposal since many other factors may contribute to the possibility of a particular proposal being rejected, including whether or not a topic
might fit in with the other proposals for that section
. I sent a reply to point out the irony of trying to “create a space” while being rejected because there was no space. I indicated that the Women and Religion section continued to be unbalanced by the dominance of Euro-American, Judeo-Christian perspec- tives on the larger phenomenon of Women and Religion. Women of diverse faith perspectives will not fit unless they succumb to the standard already

created without consideration of their religious peculiarities
21
or until a

separate space is created. While preferably this space would be created within that section, some Women and Religion scholars have opted to split off from the larger group, for example the Womanist Religion section. While I applaud the proliferation of women’s studies of religion sections, I worry about networking and cross-fertilization in the case of so many divisions.

Perhaps as a follow-up, or perhaps as a coincidence, the next spring three specially selected female Muslim scholars and I were sent an informal email

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invitation to discuss the status of Muslim women in the academy for yet another special panel of the Women and Religion section. I noted we were still not part of the larger body. I was uncomfortable with the informality of

the

joint email address that seemed to belittle our status as intellectuals

or scholarly equals. Although the four of us were

from four distinct

circumstances, someone unknown to me was hailing all of us on a first-name basis. I also had no insights into who had participated in the actual formation of an event that was ostensibly
for
us. I declined the offer with the simple:
Thank you for the offer; I’m afraid I will have to decline.
In response I was sent a message:
Sorry you won’t be with us – as I recall, it was your idea that got this going originally
.

After conversing with one of the other four colleagues on the email invitation, I sent another message including:
I must conclude that this program was orchestrated in a way that continues to marginalize Muslim women and our concerns. The best I could come up with involves taking more time to plan it with some meaningful input from Muslim women academics themselves. If that can happen, I would be more than happy to consider it for a future date. This invitation will not address whatever “idea” I might have had originally.

The final response on the matter read:
Forgive me. I did think that having an open meeting at the last A.A.R., getting input from 7 or 8 women who came up with this idea, asking another Muslim academic to work on it and co-write the invitation would have been sufficient
. She agreed to
discuss the matter further with S.W.P. committee at their February meeting, and share my thoughts with them
.

These narratives direct attention to several points. Just as the study of Islam under the larger heading of Orientalism was critically analyzed by the late, great scholar Edward Said in his book of the same title, as a matter of intellectual discourse that supports other political agendas of oppression and imperialism, so does the attempt to construct Muslim Women’s Studies face formidable pre-existing obstacles and complications in academia. It is also subject to a new set of impediments that are obscure, unnamed, and even unknown. Yet “academic” contributions are increasing expedientially with little evidence of proper preparation for logical, critical, and con-