UA professors, student discuss post-9/11 teachings of Islam
- Savannah Bullard
- Nov 1, 2019
- 4 min read
Originally written for a class.
Steven Ramey, a UA professor of religious studies, was doing research for his dissertation in India when the Twin Towers fell in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. Ramey, a postgraduate student at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the time, said teaching Islam has become more critical in an academic sense, but not overtly hostile.
“What I’ve heard from students sometimes is an appreciation of – balance is a problematic term – but a more complex representation of Islam,” Ramey said. “Because at points, depending on who is the president, but under George W. Bush and Obama, they kept on asserting that Islam is about peace. And that people committing violence are not good Muslims, or not truly Muslim. And there’s a lot of people within Islam that agree with that.”
Teaching Islam in religious studies classes did not become more difficult after 9/11, Ramey said, but there were definitely adjustments that came with the territory. According to Ramey, the job market for professors with specializations in Islamic studies surged. With this came more questions and critical thinking.
“More people moved into the study of Islam [after 9/11],” Ramey said. “Not just in response to 9/11, but in response to the response. The question of violence in Islam was a big part of those, what seemed to be driving those jobs.”
Ramey stressed that the discourse about Islamic terrorism did not begin after the 2001 attacks. He added that teaching Islam using strictly peaceful ideals can leave students to criticize the more contradictory ideas in other parts of the Qur’an.
“Asserting [peace] as the final answer and ending it there leaves some students who can find violent passages in the Qur’an saying ‘well, what about this? This doesn’t make sense,’” Ramey said. “You have to get into the question of the approaches to the Qur’an and that there are multiple interpretations.”
Ramey describes his teaching strategy as one that focuses on “acts of interpretation” and allowing for disagreement, questioning and critical thinking.
“Students are asking sometimes ‘If Islam is just about peace, then where is this coming from?’” Ramey said. “And there’s a need to be upfront about elements within Islamic tradition that could be interpreted as condoning violence, even if most Muslims don’t interpret it in that way.”
Steven Jacobs, a professor of religious studies with a specialization in modern religion and politics in the Middle East, was preparing to teach a class at UA on the morning of Sept. 11. His wife urged him to find a TV to turn on the news, and although Jacobs is no stranger to tragedy, he said he remembers the emotions like it was yesterday.
“I have been teaching courses in Judaic Studies — including the Holocaust and genocide — since 1978,” Jacobs said. “My immediate reactions [to 9/11] were shock, denial, horror, and a profound sense of tragedy at what I was seeing. Even now, those reactions have never left me.”
Religion plays a vital role in the development of American society, Jacobs said. However, he urges thinkers to consider the consequences of a devout one-track mind.
“While we Americans regard religion — however defined — as important to our overall well-being, we are astoundingly ignorant of religious traditions other than our own, their history, and, most especially, the role they have played in the development of these United States,” Jacobs said.
Ibrahim Albannay, a UA senior and former vice president of the now-disbanded Muslim Students Association, agrees with Jacobs. Albannay was raised in Saudi Arabia and moved to the United States five years ago to attend school. He remembers a culture shock but was not prepared to see similarities between Americans and Saudi Arabians.
“The South and Saudi Arabia are kind of similar at one point, which is they are similarly religious to some extent,” Albannay said.
While Albannay said he did not experience much opposition from Americans for being Muslim, he recalled a time when he was invited to a party by acquaintances after attending UA’s International Coffee Hour. After hanging out with the students a few times, Albannay began to notice the increasing persistence for him to be “saved” in the Christian faith.
“That’s the part of the whole study abroad experience, is to listen to other people and these people listen to you,” Albannay said. “In their mind, they are right. It’s their intention that I am wrong and they are right, and they want me to be on the right path. Just tell me.”
For Albannay, he did not grasp the gravity of the 2001 terrorist attacks until he was older. He was in sixth grade when the planes struck, and although he understood something big occurred, he said he said he did not realize how pertinent to the Middle East it was until a few years later.
“After 9/11, the whole world’s attention was on the Middle East and the Middle Eastern people,” Albannay said. “People in America started looking at us in a certain type of way and being portrayed in movies as always the terrorist, that is kind of sad. Our mission right here, coming to America to study, is to clear the misconceptions about the Middle East and the Middle Eastern people.”
In the wake of 9/11, cultures shifted, conversations were had and tough topics were tackled. However, the consensus among Jacobs and Ramey stays: education will always prevail.
“Education, not only of undergraduate students, must remain the doorway to addressing these concerns,” Jacobs said. “Other institutions — churches, synagogues, mosques — must collaborate in forums to educate the others about the others. Other public venues, such as community fairs, must be available to the public at large to offer an opportunity to learn about these and other faith communities.”
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