This paper outlines a number of pedagogical interventions for grappling empathically with religious, racial, and ethnic difference in the Islamic and Middle East Studies classrooms. Inspired by Becky Thompson, Michael Sells, Toni Morrison, and Tara Brach, I outline various exercises for approaching difference that seek to expand students’ capacities for empathy and emotional well-being. These include Qur’an recitation, creative writing and performance exercises, and mindfulness meditation. When students memorize and recite portions of the Qur’an, they connect with the tradition with their ears, tongues, and bodies—in ways that complicate facile divisions of insider/outsider and us/them. Creative writing, performance exercises, and meditative practices help to bring reflexive awareness to students’ inchoate anxieties about being out-of-place: feeling like intruders, colonizers, or voyeurs, rather than students of Islam. These practices allow students to foreground the singularity of their identities while learning to empathize with their classmates’ experiences, helping students to responsibly situate themselves in histories of exclusion, colonialism, and nationalism. They further provide an entry point for both Muslims and non-Muslims to empathize with a variety of Islamic traditions and relate to cultural “otherness” with tenderness and care.