"When I first began teaching Islam, there was no road map. In 2001, I was a visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Iowa-the first full-time professor of Islam in the history of the state. I was in my 20s, still finishing my dissertation, when the attacks of Sept. 11 unfolded. Suddenly, I found myself trying to explain a 1,400-year-old religion to students who had watched the Twin Towers fall on live television."
"I discovered that my task was not only to introduce students to the theological, historical and cultural breadth of Islam but also to help them unlearn the simplistic caricatures they had absorbed from media and politics. Islam was not a monolith. It was not synonymous with terror. It was, like Christianity or Judaism, a faith defined by argument, diversity and adaptation."
"Those class lectures eventually became the foundation for No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam, first published in 2005. I hoped the book would serve both general readers and university classrooms. To my surprise, it quickly became a popular text for teaching Islam in the United States and far beyond. It has been translated into dozens of languages, adopted in seminaries and world religion courses, and read in mosques, churches and synagogues."
Early university instruction in Islam lacked established curricular models, and the Sept. 11 attacks forced educators to explain a 1,400-year-old religion to students shaped by live media images. Teaching responsibilities expanded to convey theological, historical, and cultural diversity and to counter simplistic caricatures equating Islam with terror. Course offerings grew substantially across disciplines including history, political science, gender studies, and literature, and the pool of instructors diversified. A popular introductory book emerged from classroom lectures and found broad adoption and translation. Growth in the field has coincided with increasing political scrutiny of Islamic studies in recent decades.
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