Rethinking Islam from Pakistan to Texas

Two Harvard professors are spearheading a new initiative aimed at defeating "a clash of ignorances," a clash, they affirm, that perpetuates misunderstanding, prejudice, and fear between Muslim and Western societies. Fueled by widespread global illiteracy about the nature of Islam and Muslim civilizations, this clash has dangerous implications for nations that are increasingly becoming multireligious and multicultural in character. Traversing the world from Texas to Pakistan and Boston to Kenya, Ali Asani and his colleague Diane L. Moore are helping secondary school teachers recontextualize Islam and provide new interpretations and understandings of the religion to teens throughout the world.

"By empowering secondary school teachers with new insights into the nature of religion in general, and Islam in particular, we aim to cure the emerging generation of the cultural myopia that afflicts much the world's current views on Islam and the cultures of the peoples that practice it," said Asani, professor of the practice of Indo-Muslim languages and cultures at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Moore is professor of the practice in religion and secondary education at the Divinity School.

Central to the program is Asani's cultural studies approach. Instead of viewing Islam merely through doctrinal texts, devotional practices, or interpretations of the Koran, Asani stresses the importance of drawing from a deeper well of historical, political, and economic contexts to understand how Islam developed in the Arabian peninsula and spread throughout the world, adapting to indigenous customs and cultures.