About Islamic Cultural Studies

Islamic Cultural Studies is an integral part of the Liberal Arts Curriculum. Whether we think of Islam as a religious tradition, Muslims as builders of vivid local cultures or Islamic civilization as a force of development in global history, Islamic Culture has deeply shaped our contemporary world. How Muslims world-wide claim a place in the emerging global world system will crucial shape the destiny of that system. In the wake of recent political events, many Americans are waking up to their ignorance about Muslims and the importance of Islam.

Islamic Cultural Studies demands an inter-disciplinary approach and an inter-regional focus.

Religion:

To understand Islam as religion, we turn to the discipline of religious studies. Religious studies focuses on basic concepts such as belief, ritual, scripture and pilgrimage to make sense of Islam as the fastest growing world religion. With striking similarities to Judaism and Christianity, Islam is nonetheless distinct and offers to the world exciting concepts in scriptural interpretation, sacred history and rational philosophy.

History:

To understand Islam as a civilization, we turn to the discipline of world history. World history focuses on the social transformations fostered by the spread of Islam and the political, economic and social structures that supported it. World history could lead us to look for Islamic contributions to irrigation, the spread of the eggplant and the bathhouse,
innovations in paper-making or the construction of highly centralized states.

Culture:

To understand Muslims as people in all their diversity, we turn to Cultural Anthropology and Sociology. Anthropology focuses on the cultural symbols, concepts and codes that Muslims in particular settings use to structure and interpret their worlds. An anthropological approach is especially useful in asking questions about contemporary
practices like gender socialization, the construction of family and use of the body as symbol.

Muslims live a series of overlapping local cultures in diverse regions that include the Middle East, Northern Africa (and the Mediterranean Sea), Western and Southern Asia (and the wider Indian Ocean region). These areas defy easy generalizations and represent areas about which most students with American high-school educations are
woefully ignorant. These areas are complicated to describe in prose, but they are easy to visualize with a map. They are regions spanning two watery expanses (the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean) and two sandy expanses (the Sahara Desert and the Central Asian Deserts).

Beyond these core zones, Muslims are increasingly present in North America and Europe, both as immigrant communities and as indigenous ones that are undergoing processes of conversion and acculturation. The immediate Philadelphia urban area is very rich with
diverse Muslim communities and institutions, making it an ideal research site for undergraduates.