In designing undergraduate courses on Arabic culture or Arabic literature in English translation, one faces challenges not only in terms of which texts, periods and regions to focus on, but also how to frame the texts under study when it comes to its Arab-Islamic cultural content. In this paper, I explore strategies I’ve used in selecting relevant primary materials with an eye towards not only creating a coherent overall variety of primary and secondary sources, but also keeping firmly in mind the prospective audience: undergraduates at a large public university who are taking an overview class within a liberal arts framework. Most of the undergraduate students in the class have not had prior familiarity with Islam and its culture. Among the many challenges students face, some arise from the text itself, through the decisions of authors, translators and editors who make choices about which key terms or concepts to leave in the original language, which to translate or gloss, and how to arrange any translations within the published text. Drawing on several specific texts, and with insight from the process of teaching them, my presentation focuses not only on translated words and phrases, but more specifically, on the use of terms with specific socio-religious content and import. I then, based on my experiences, suggest what in which classroom engagement with such texts could be optimally improved and enhanced. The goal is to interrogate how to introduce aspects of Islam as a background for the content presented within the framework of the ‘secular’ space of the public university classroom.

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.

Issues related to Middle East are now being covered in many political science courses. However, because Middle East is almost synonymous with Islam for many students, no matter what the scheduled topic is, the discussion quickly gets centered on Islam. Students’ common misconceptions concerning Islam can be summarized in three main groups: 1) Muslims are fundamentally different from other faith-based communities; 2) Muslims do not change, evolve or progress; and 3) there exists no diversity among Muslim societies. The specific strategy proposed by this paper may be helpful in targeting these misconceptions. The strategy involves in a two-fold comparative analysis that both examines at a case over time and compares various cases at a given time. As such, specific readings, assignments, and in-class exercises that include not only academic writings, but also literary, music and art are assigned and discussed. Based on the experience from an upper division political science course, this paper also includes students’ responses to the objective of illustrating that Muslims are neither unique, nor unchanging, nor uniform.