Islamic and Middle Eastern studies have often been silent on the issue of race in Islam. Similarly, theories of pedagogy have failed to provide clear guidance on how to address this topic in a classroom setting. This has been both a theoretical as well as a practical issue in my teaching, since introducing the concepts of race while navigating students’ misperceptions and limited understanding of Islam can be a complex task. The senior seminar I taught entitled “Race and Slavery in North Africa and the Middle East” allowed students to venture into Islam’s racial complexities and provided them an opportunity to compare the Arabs’conception of race with the Western idea of race within the framework of their various disciplines and courses in International Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. Drawing upon interdisciplinary material, we discussed the negative images of Blacks in Moroccan folk literature in light of a history of slavery and on-going racial stratification in Southern Morocco. Our cultural analysis of selected Moroccan folktales aimed to highlight the representations of the imagined identities assigned to Blacks as a result of racial stratification. It also aimed to shed light on the derogatory messages that are hidden in Black stereotypes and the racist ideology that in subtle and not so subtle ways serves to keep Black people in their place. This paper will explore ideas for pedagogical strategies on how to engage directly with race in Muslim societies while counteracting the misconceptions students have about Arab Muslim culture. Drawing upon extensive literature on race and multiculturalism in the classroom by Helen Fox, Franklin Tuitt and other theorists who have fashioned pedagogical strategies that challenge students to recognize the implicit assumptions they bring to the classroom, I discuss strategies to integrate responsible academic learning with a venue for an open discussion about race in a Muslim society such as Morocco.