The Spring Semester Has Started

The spring semester started on February 8 here at St. Olaf College. I am teaching three courses: First Year Writing, Folklore, and Muslim Women Writers. I have taught First Year Writing many times and Folklore a number of times, but will be teaching Muslim Women Writers for the first time.

Teaching a course again and again does not diminish its freshness. It is always a different experience, even if we are discussing the same texts. My Muslim Women Writers course is going to be even more of a novelty, as I have noted, and I wish to say a word about it.

I will be teaching the following texts:

1. Aboulela, Leila. Minaret. Grove. 
2. Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Scribner.
3. Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Waveland Press, Inc.
4. el Saadawi, Nawal. The Fall of the Imam. Telegram Books.
5. Hossein, Rokeya S. Sultana's Dream. Feminist Press.
6. Mattu, Ayesha. & Nura Maznavi. Love, InshAllah. Soft Skull Press.
7. Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. Random.

Of all these works, I have only read Minaret, So Long a Letter, and The Fall of the Imam. In preparing for the course, I have been reading other works, particularly Amina Wadud's Qur'an and Woman and Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke.

I have already talked to the class about Islam, dwelling on Muhammad, The Qur'an, the hadiths and the five pillars. I will be saying more based on the readings, the first of which will be Sultana's Dream.

A Course on Muslim Women Writers

I am delighted that in the spring, 2016, I will be teaching a new course, "Muslim Women Writers." Having taught works by Muslim women writers like Mariama Ba, Nawal el Saadawi, Alifa Rifaat, and Leila Aboulela, mostly under the rubric of Post-colonial Literature, I have decided to create a course devoted solely to such writers.

The Muslim world is perhaps the least understood or most misunderstood part of the world among Americans, who tend to see it as homogeneous, and to whom the very name Muslim conjures up images of religious fanaticism and terrorism. They tend to imagine Muslim women as perpetually veiled or burka-clad, suffering in silence under archaic religious and cultural traditions. That there is a longstanding tradition of writing by Muslim women in languages such as Urdu, Arabic, Turkish, Hausa, Swahili, French and English is not well known among Americans.

This course will explore the prevailing misconceptions. With a focus on writings in English and some translations, we will discuss writers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Senegal, and the USA, in the context of Islam, Orientalism, Islamophobia, and Islamic feminism. It will illuminate the ways Muslim women writers imagine and interpret their condition within the framework of culture, religion, and gender.

 

Author Seenaa's Book Event, Minneapolis

On Sunday August 2, I got a Facebook message from my friend Peter Magai Bul who lives in Chicago telling me that a sister, Seenaa Oromia, activist and author of The In-Between: The Story of African Oromo Women and the American Experience, was coming to Minneapolis to do a book signing the following day. I had not heard about this author and about the event, and I thanked Peter and told him I would make every effort to attend.







I did go. When I arrived, the proceedings were underway. There were quite many people in the audience, and several people kept coming. I even saw two young women and one young man who had been my students at St. Olaf College. We were delighted to see one another.






Several speakers spoke about the condition of the Oromo people at home in the Horn of Africa and here in the U.S.A., their efforts to advance their struggle for justice in their homeland and in the USA. They spoke about the condition of women in Oromo society, which is male dominated, and the need for emancipation and equality. Another speaker spoke about Seenaa and her book.





Then Seenaa was invited to speak. She talked about her upbringing in Oromia and how her mother inspired her to be strong and self-confident and to value education. She talked about the sorry condition of women and the need to fight for women's rights and called upon religious leaders--Christian and Muslim--to use their influence in society to advance those goals.






Then there was a question and answer session. When this was over, a book signing followed. She signed the books while photos were being taken. As I approached the table, Seenaa recognized me, recalling that Peter Magai Bul had told her about me. Needless to say, we were delighted to meet and had our pictures taken.




I learned much that evening and met some new people. I was impressed by the turnout for the event and how attentive and engaged the audience was in the presentations and discussions.




I have begun reading The In-Between, eager to learn more about issues concerning the Oromo--especially women--from a woman's perspective. It is clear, right from the beginning of the book, as it was from her talk, that Seenaa sees the issues as not only specific to the Oromos but as universal.

I wrote about this book event on my Swahili blog, but when word of it spread, several Oromos inquired about it, and I promised I would write in English as well.

A Note on Leila Aboulela's "Minaret"

One of the works we read in my Post-colonial Literature course this Spring was Leila Aboulela's Minaret. I planned to focus on two areas of the Post-colonial world: Africa and South Asia. We started with Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings, read  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and then Minaret, before venturing into South Asia.
 

Minaret explores the lives of Sudanese Muslims in Sudan--especially Khartoum--and in England. It unfolds initially at the University of Khartoum, where we encounter Najwa, the main character. We see how she relates to the community around her, especially fellow students, whose adherence to Islamic principles--such as praying five times a day--she observes with a certain aloofness.

Mostly middle or upper class, the characters in Minaret are a diverse community in terms of their political beliefs and their degrees of attachment to Islam. Cosmopolitan in outlook, they embrace, or easily coexist with, foreign, especially Western, influences. They communicate with friends and relatives abroad, and are able to travel abroad themselves.

Following a coup in Sudan, and the execution of her father by the new regime, Najwa finds herself in exile in England, together with her brother. Though she had not been particularly religious back in Khartoum, after arriving in England and experiencing alienation and other social problems, she embraces Islam, finding meaning and comfort in being a pious Muslim woman. Leila Aboulela presents this transformation in a seamless, persuasive manner.

Minaret offers a refreshing image of Islamic Sudan, a place which many associate with a rigid, conservative society. In contrast to conventional negative stereotypes, Minaret humanizes the Muslims, showing them as people like any other. My students and I liked this novel, and I plan to teach it again this summer.

Muslims in U.S. Colleges: The Somali Experience

Today, in Faribault, Minnesota, there was a meeting of Somali parents and youths to discuss the issue of Muslims in American colleges. Two Carleton College students organized the event. Aware of my longstanding engagement with the city of Faribault, including the Somali population, they invited me to be one of the facilitators of the conversations alongside a Somali Muslim man who has children in college, and a young Somali woman who is a college student.



We talked about admission issues, life on campus, challenges of being a Muslim on campus. I talked about the cultural differences Somali Muslims and Africans in general encounter on an American college campus, mindful of the fact that the school is both a product and reflection of its cultural context. The young woman on the panel reassured the audience, saying that though there are challenges to being a Muslim in an American college, they are not reason enough to discourage someone from going to college.

The gathering gave equal opportunity to young people and parents to air their views, expectations, and anxieties.












The parents stressed, again and again, that they want their children to succeed in school and college so they can have better opportunities in life.











It was humbling for me to hear some parents mention me as an example of what they want their children to be like. At the same time, it was a priviledge to be there as a source of inspiration and a role model for the youths. In fact, one young man recalled that I had spoken to him and his friends at the Faribault High School about five years ago and that he drew inspiration from what I had said on that day.




This was a valuable opportunity for everyone to learn and also to network.

Teaching "Twilight in Delhi"

My South Asian Literature class in now comfortably underway, in its fourth week. We started with Mulk Anand's Untouchable, which I have taught many times. We then studied Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi, which I had not read before.

Reading Twilight in Delhi in the wake of Untouchable has been a valuable experience, a broadening of horizons. While Untouchable relates the experience of Indian Hindus, Twilight in Delhi deals with Indian Muslims.

Never having read a novel about the world of Indian Muslims, I found Twilight in Delhi refreshing. Fortunately, I know something about Islam, especially coming from Tanzania, a country where about half of the population is Muslim and about half Christian.

I spent considerable time explaining Islamic principles to my students, as a way of establishing the groundwork for discussing Twilight in Delhi. I described the five pillars of Islam and showed three videos: this one, which presents the Islamic call to prayer; this recitation of the Quran; and a small boy's recitation of Surah Yasin.

Twilight in Delhi deals with such themes as patriotism, love, and marriage. It portrays family life, wedding customs, healing and burial practices. From its very beginning, Twilight in Delhi exudes nostalgia for the Delhi of the past, whose grandeur and magnificence fell apart as a result of British rule.

This novel presents the fate of Delhi as a metaphor for the human condition. In ways reminiscent of existentialist writings, characters in Twilight in Delhi contemplate and talk about the meaning of life and the transience of human achievements. This reminds me of Al-Inkishafi, the classic Swahili poem, which reflects on the demise of the old famous Swahili cities, making us wonder about the meaning of life itself.