ENROLL

Noah Salomon

"Islam began strange, and it will return to being strange in the same way as it began. So good tidings to the strange ones!" So goes a famous saying (hadith) attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, placing the virtue of nonconformity to social norms at the very heart of what it means be Muslim. Islam's beginnings as something strange and rebellious within the context of its polytheistic Arabian birthplace, and the virtue of truth over numbers more generally, is seen by many not only as a noble past from which Islam emerged, but its inevitable future as well. This course will examine several non-conformist movements throughout Islamic history. The movements will be discussed for their unique contributions to Islamic theology, practice and social life as well as in regards to what they tell us about the orthodoxies against which they came to rebel, all within the context of submission to a higher power and truth.

Noah Salomon

This course rethinks how we understand Africa through attention to the role of Islam and Arabic culture in its past and present. Through religious texts, novels, and critical commentary from the continent, students will get a strong introduction to key trends in Islamic thought and activism, while exploring how attention to them might reshape our perceptions of both its history and present. Equally addressing Africa as geographic space and analytic category, we will examine its features--from the Sahara to the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and beyond--not as barriers, but as sites of complex, creative and often fraught exchange with the broader Muslim world.