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.

 

A Mosque Near Ground Zero

I have been here in my country, Tanzania, for the last two months. In the last few days, I have been following the controversy raging in the USA around the idea of building a mosque near Ground Zero, New York.

As a Tanzanian, I am saddened by the ignorance and Islamophobia that I see among many Americans. Here in Tanzania, we have mosques, churches and other places of worship everywhere. We know they have a right to be there. At the University of Dar es Salaam, for example, the mosque and the church are only a few yards apart, and everyone is comfortable with that situation.

As a Christian, I am used to hearing the muadhin calling Moslems to prayer, from every mosque, before sunrise and at different times during the day. These broadcasts are so much part of my life here in Tanzania that I miss them when I am in the USA, where I teach. The ignorance and prejudice I have mentioned exists also in so-called Islamic countries, and it would quickly rear its head if someone tried to build a church there.

I listened to President Barack Obama's speech in support of the idea of the mosque near Ground Zero, and I felt happy to hear the US Government defending a basic human right.