This blog is my effort to catalogue my study abroad experience across the Middle East. It will serve as an online photo journal to convey my experiences and observations, as well as a forum for dialogue about issues that I intend to highlight during my studies here, be they from my work in the field or in the classroom.
This is just a small part of my overall effort to highlight concerns critical to the issue of Arab and Muslim populations in the global context. Questions I seek to discuss in the long-term of my academic journey include: what does it mean to be Muslim in a post 9/11 world? (identity politics). What is the influence of secularism and democracy on Islamic and Arab societies? How can traditional Muslim scholarship be used to address present-day concerns? Can modernity and Islam coexist? What is ‘political’ or ‘politicized’ Islam, and how do Muslim populations relate to this phenomenon? Such questions are essential to fostering a more wholesome understanding of Islam, the Middle East, and the people of the region to inform policy, future/complementary research, and social attitudes and practice generally.
