The Arabic Script in Nigerian Hands: Ustadh Yushaa Abdullah on Arabic Calligraphy Education in West Africa

Yushaa Abdullah stands between two of his framed artworks, which were done in the Thuluth script in the colour black on beige paper.
: Two of Yushaa Abdullah’s artworks were exhibited and sold at the Dubai International Arabic Calligraphy Exhibition, 2017

Although Latin has become the dominant script in West Africa, one Nigerian calligrapher, Ustadh Yushaa Abdullah, has made major efforts to bring back the culture of the Arabic script to the region. Yushaa, who completed his studies in Turkey, is West Africa’s first certified calligrapher (he holds an ijazah). Here, we talk to him about his work, what led to his interest in Arabic calligraphy and the school he founded to teach various Arabic calligraphy scripts to students in Nigeria and the Republic of Niger. Yushaa also plans to develop a teaching technique alongside Nigerian scholars to more widely disseminate the rules for writing the traditional Arabic Hausawi script, which was developed in West Africa and is still taught to children in Nigeria today as part of their Islamic studies training.

Continue reading “The Arabic Script in Nigerian Hands: Ustadh Yushaa Abdullah on Arabic Calligraphy Education in West Africa”

Crafting the Syllabus: Representation, Expertise, and Student Learning

By Sophia Rose Arjana

Woman holds up a book titled “Weiled Superheroes” amidst other books in the background set on tables for display.
Author with her book at the American Academy of Religion (AAR)

If you were to ask me to describe what my first syllabi fresh out of graduate school looked like, I would say aspirational. I aspired to design courses that reflected my areas of main areas of expertise—Islam, theory and methodology, Orientalism, comparative religion, and pilgrimage. In other words, I saw myself as someone deeply committed to diversity, postcolonial critique, and critical engagement. However, I eagerly showed an early syllabus to a mentor and he remarked, “This looks great. But, it is all men.” My liberal, even somewhat leftist, doctoral program had not helped me erase my self-doubt about who counted as an expert. 

Fast forward a decade. Today, as a tenured faculty member with four published books, engaged more broadly in the disciplines of religious studies, history, and critical theory, and more carefully reflecting on the problems of representation and equity in the classroom, the issues of expertise, representation, and inclusivity are core to my pedagogical design. These guide the ways I craft my courses, present a history of the field, choose texts for my students, introduce the topic of citational politics, and craft assignments for different types of learners.

Framing the Study of Religion

The problem of representation often comes up in discussions of the Academy and the way we design courses. I am white, a Muslim convert, and privileged. For these reasons, I must be honest about the history of the study of religion. It has a racist, colonial, and sexist past (and present), but how do we help students understand this? If we are not helping students understand the field of religious studies, as well as how the religious worlds people inhabit have been imagined, constructed, and then used as agents of power, then I am afraid that we are failing as educators. I find this an especially critical issue in world religions courses, where instructors often launch into the big five traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—with no foregrounding of how religion is “defined,” who has delineated what counts as a religion, or how these assumptions impact the way we understand our subject. 

Starting the course with a unit on how religion is defined and the history of the field is one way to address these issues. Two articles I use, Richard King’s “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of Hinduism” and Gregory Schopen’s “Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,” elucidate many of the problems in the study of religion. They also serve to introduce the first two religious traditions in the course—Hinduism and Buddhism. King and Schopen ask hard questions and require students to think critically. Students can be coached into this critical enterprise in a variety of ways such as through reverse outlining and journaling their reflections on the course readings. King and Schopen are white, male scholars is a fact that provides an opening for us to discuss other voices represented in the class, such as Diana Eck, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Su’ad Abdul-Khabeer.

Providing a history of the field, even a brief one that covers the past century of religious studies in the U.S., also helps to show the assumptions we may have about other people’s religious worlds. The transition of the field from one focused on theological prescriptions of other people’s religious worlds that compared Christianity to other traditions (often poorly) to the study of these traditions in schools of divinity, and now the study of religion in the secular university, illustrate how the field has changed. Students can also learn about this history by looking at a specific scholar. My effort at this is called the “Theory and Methods Report,” where students choose a scholar on whom to write a brief report and construct a bibliography of the scholar’s work. The list they choose from includes queer, Black, Native/indigenous, and postcolonial scholars including Amina Wadud (a favorite of my students), Judith Butler (who we also study as part of the unit on Jewish thought), and George  “Tink” Tinker, the Native scholar who I worked alongside at my first job out of grad school. Students like this assignment because it gives them the freedom to choose a scholar to explore, in some cases they choose someone that they identify with their own community.

The Text Is the Expert

Who among us has taken over an existing course, only to look at the course readings and see a list of all male-authored texts? I have, and too many times to count. In one case, I was asked to teach a class on global religious literary traditions and all of the texts were written by white men. Not one female expert. Not one scholar of color. I threw out the old syllabus and wrote my own. The students responded beautifully, as new voices spoke to them in unexpected ways. Texts by Indigenous authors introduced Native American beliefs and experiences, something that most  of my students have no experience in. When we teach courses that have all male authors, or all white authors, this is who students see as intellectual authorities. I call this “The Text Is the Expert” problem. When we offer other ways of seeing the world, entire new ways of thinking can emerge. 

In the study of Islam, we often see the framing of the subjects we teach revolving around Orientalist prescriptions regarding who counts as a legitimate Muslim—Sunni, Arab or South Asian—and situated in a tradition deemed as “orthodox.” The problems with these issues  are too lengthy to discuss here, but they challenge us to do better. In my class on Islam, I use the historical novel by Laury Silvers titled The Lover, which centers upon a diverse set of characters who are Sufi, Shi’i, African, from the upper class, and the poor. The second formative text I use is Liz Bucar’s Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress, a study of Muslim fashion that focuses on the aesthetics and sartorial choices of women in Tehran, Yogyakarta, and Istanbul, exposing students to places they may not be familiar with. These two books are white-authored, but this is countered by the book review students must do as part of the course from a curated list of South Asian, Persian, and Arab scholars, as well as units in the course on topics such as Muslim fashion, which centers on African-American Muslim communities. This fall, I am adding a third book to the existing two, Su’ad Abdul-Khabeer’s Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip-Hop in the United States. I also teach a course titled Islam in America, which is centered on Black Islam, communities, and contributions; most college students are woefully ignorant about the history of Muslims in the U.S., in part because of the way we teach but also through the media’s framing of Islam as a “foreign” or “exotic” religion from faraway places, the assumption is that most American Muslims are new to U.S. soil.  

Connected to the selection of texts for students is how we use texts in the classroom. Citational politics is another place where questions of fairness, equity, and justice present themselves. One great resource for thinking about this is Kecia Ali’s 2017 lecture “Muslim Scholars, Islamic Studies, and the Gendered Academy.” Every time I watch this with my students the people we cite matters. Beyond resources like Ali’s masterful lecture, conversations need to take place centered upon the problems created by ignoring female scholars, scholars of color, and queer scholars, which not only marginalizes their work but can impact their careers. The numbers of times a scholarly work is cited can be used, and is used, to influence decisions about hiring, promotion, and tenure.

Teaching First-Generation, Working Kentuckians

Course design also reflects my student community and geographical location. I teach in southern Kentucky at a state school with a large number of first-generation college students who work—sometimes more than one job—to put themselves through college. The town my university is located in is diverse, with large Muslim and immigrant populations, a vibrant African-American community, and a noticeable progressive movement. In many cases, the first time a student has been in the same room with an international peer, or American Muslim, is in my classes. The fact that so many of my students are overwhelmingly driven, focused, and committed to their educational journey impacts course design, as do my own concerns about student success. I don’t give quizzes, tests, or exams because they create high levels of anxiety in my students, whose majors range from Nursing to Arabic. Instead, all the assessments in my courses are based on writing and creative projects ranging from reading journals (Pilgrimage and Islam), using software to construct story maps (Saints, Monsters, and Superheroes), and mapping religious figures (World Religions). 

Why do these types of assessments work? One reason is that they allow students to pursue themes and topics they are interested in. For the mapping project, a student may choose the religious tradition they are most familiar with and create a map of the life of Jesus. A surreptitious reason these assignments are included is that they allow me to sneak in skills students need. The reading journals require Chicago Style footnotes, the story maps require research skills, and the mapping project requires an annotated Chicago Style bibliography. On the first day of class, I gauge student anxiety about these assignments by doing an Emoji Exercise, where every class member places emoji stickers on huge, blow-up pages of the syllabus, so that we can process their concerns >:-( and relief 🙂 together.  

This year, while we all struggle with a pandemic and our own growing lists of anxieties about teaching, research goals, and stalled progress on writing projects, is also a good time to think about how we are serving our own students. As I often tell them, my pedagogy is inspired by Buddhism, designed to create the least amount of anxiety and to model compassion. A critical part of this pedagogy is focused on justice for my discipline, my less privileged colleagues, and my students. 

Disrupting Dynamics of Imitation: An Interview with the Founders of Hajar Press

Image of a series of circles getting smaller around eaach other. Each circle is segmented. The text besidew
Hajar Press’ Logo

Established in 2020 by Brekhna Aftab and Farhaana Arefin, both London-based editors, Hajar Press is an independent publishing house that prioritises people of color. After crowdsourcing initial funds in late 2020, Hajar Press launched in early 2021 with an innovative subscription scheme including six books, the first of which was Fovea / Ages Ago, by Sarah Lasoye, followed by works by Jamal Mehmood and Heba Hayek. 2021 will continue to see Hajar publish Lola Olufemi, Cradle Community and Yara Hawari. Publishing across genres, Hajar is very specifically political, not only in its aims to de-centre whiteness but also for its stances on abolition, Palestine, capitalism, and racism, as well as its attempts to push back against Amazon’s domination of the book market. In Hazine’s interview with Aftab and Arefin, they tell us more about what makes Hajar so unique, how they differ from the mainstream publishing industry, and how they seek, as women of colour, to generate community through their books.

Continue reading “Disrupting Dynamics of Imitation: An Interview with the Founders of Hajar Press”

The Pen’s Screech: Muslim Spiritual Practice of Arabic Calligraphy

By Noman Baig

A 2' x 2' white paper sheet depicts Arabic letters in modern Kufic. Each letter is painted in gold and brown watercolor. The letters are composed in an upward and downward style and overlaid on each other.
Figure 1: Arabic letters in modern Kufic, 2’ x 2’, Alina Baig

To propose and teach a practice-based course in a highly academic setting is a formidable task. Practitioners usually face resistance from theoretically minded academics who perceive hands-on training as a lowbrow vocation. Last year in 2020, after practicing Islamic calligraphy for a year under a disciple of Kashif Khan (b. 1978), I decided to teach an undergraduate course on the subject at the newly established liberal arts college Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan. My home department, Social Development & Policy, rejected my proposal on the pretext that traditional art has no place in developmental studies; that it does not address pressing challenges in the way the discipline of economics does.

After initial resistance, the newly launched Comparative Humanities program[1] agreed to host the course as a creative practice requirement. Designed as an experimental course, Divine Proportions: Introduction to Islamic Calligraphy fused drawing and thinking into a singular aesthetic experience of the Islamic arts. The challenge was teaching aesthetic theory in tandem with drawing. The gap was overcome when I took the lead in teaching the historical-mythical aspects of the art. The calligrapher Ustad Kashif Khan took the responsibility of teaching calligraphy. In the first half, students discussed the readings and delivered presentations. In the second half, Ustad Kashif Khan taught them the art of drawing letters.

Continue reading “The Pen’s Screech: Muslim Spiritual Practice of Arabic Calligraphy”

Resources for Learning Non-Arabic Sudanese Languages

By Hatim-Arbaab Eujayl

Updated June 21 2021

This list began on Reddit in response to the number of people I’ve come across on the subreddit interested in learning non-Arabic Sudanese languages, which you can still find here. The goal is to provide any prospective learners of non-Arabic languages spoken in Sudan with a variety of language-learning resources. The languages I’ve been able to find resources for (with the help of many others) are:

The Old Dongola Throne Hall, an ancient building used by the royal family of the kingdom of Makuria, which overlooked the kingdom’s capital of Old Dongola, which is approximately 50 miles from the modern city of Dongola, where Andaandi Nubian, also known as Dongolawi Nubian, continues to be spoken. (Photo by Hans Birger Nilsen, Creative Commons License)

  • Andaandi (Dongolawi Nubian)
  • Beria (Zaghawa)
  • Berta (Funj)
  • Bidawiyet (Hadandawi/Bishaari)
  • Fòòraŋ Bèlè (Fur)
  • Gaahmg (Ingessana)
  • Masarak (Masalit)
  • Nobiin (Halfawi/Mahasi/Fadijja Nubian)
  • Tìdn-Àal (Midob/Darfur Nubian)
  • Tigre/Tigrayit (Beni Amer/Habab)

Each and every language resource listed on here, unless stated otherwise, is completely free: as a lot of these languages are endangered and thus already have less learning resources than more widely-spoken languages, it’s important to ensure prospective learners aren’t further inhibited by financial barriers. Be sure to contact Hazine (hazineblog [@]gmail.com) or myself (Twitter: @HatimAlTai2) if you have any resources to add, or any comments on the resources here!

So, without further ado:

Continue reading “Resources for Learning Non-Arabic Sudanese Languages”

Call For Pitches: Open Access Series

See below for Arabic.

How do you employ open access technologies in building community archives? What principles do you take to consideration when building accessible resources for communities, including for those with disabilities? Hazine is seeking 4 pieces on the open access movement concerning archives and resources from or pertaining to the Mashriq, Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Turkey, or Iran. If you’re a researcher, an archivist, a librarian, an artist, an editor or any other interested party, tell us how open access policies have affected you and your work.   What technologies have you used to build open access materials? What is the role of social media in the open access movement? What are the limitations of open access? 

Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com by May 15th, 2021. Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are, along with links to any published writing (if applicable). Pitches (and pieces) are accepted in English and Arabic. We are open to different forms of style as we expand this category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography, this one on pedagogy in museums, and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less; however, we are open to other creative formats.  Each pitch will receive a response; if you do not hear within a month, please reach out to us via email. Each piece is paid 100 USD upon publication. 

Please note: we are not accepting archive reviews of open-access digital collections as part of this series. 

كيف تبني المصادر المفتوحة وما هي المبادئ الأساسية لبناء هذه المصادر؟ تسعى خزينة لنشر من 3-4 مقالات عن حركة المصدر المفتوح ومبادئها في المشرق والمغرب وشرق أفريقيا وغرب أفريقيا وأفريقيا الجنوبية وآسيا الجنوبية وجنوب شرق آسيا وتركيا وإيران. إذا كنت أمين أرشيف أو أمين مكتبة أو مؤرخاً أو فنانًا أخبرنا عن المصادر المفتوحة وكيف أثّرت على عملك. هل قمت ببناء أرشيف اجتماعي مفتوح المصدر؟ ما هي التقنيات التي قمت باستخدامها؟  هل تلعب وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي دور في انتشار هذه المصادر بعد نشرها على الإنترنت؟ هل يوجد حواجز أمام حركة المصدر المفتوح؟

 قم بإرسال نبذة عن المقال الذي تريد أن تكتبه إلى البريد الإلكتروني hazineblog[at]gmail.com يوم 15 مايو (أيار) 2021 كحد أقصى. يجب ألا تكون النبذة أكثر من 300 كلمة وترافقها بعض السطور عن الكاتب. تقبل خزينة النبذ والمقالات باللغة العربية والإنجليزية، وترحّب بأساليب الكتابة المختلفة. نقوم الآن بتوسيع الجزء الخاص بكتابة المقالات على الموقع ويمكنك إلقاء نظرة على هذا المقال عن تصميم الخطوط الطباعية وهذا المقال عن الأرشفة لأنهم يُظهروا السمة التي نبحث عنها في الكتابة: وجهة نظر قوية. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، خزينة تقبل القصص المصورة. إذا تم قبول مقالك، يجب أن يكون 2000 كلمة أو أقل، وهناك مرونة في موعد تسليمه. سيتم دفع الكاتب 100 دولار أمريكي عند النشر. سنقوم بالرد على كل نبذة وإذا لم يصلك رد خلال شهر من يوم 15 مايو (أيار)، الرجاء الإرسال لنا مرة أخرى.

ملحوظة: لن نقبل ملخصات أو مراجعات للمصادر المفتوحة ضمن هذه الدعوة. 

What is “Open Access,” Really? – A Comic

Art and Words by Marwa Gadallah

(Find the Arabic version of this comic here.)

“Open access” is any resource you don’t have to pay for, that is available online and that has less obstacles to copying and using material – in short, anything that is available for all.1 As a movement in information sciences, it has been praised, but in our particular contexts, in mine as someone who lives in the Arabic-speaking world, I wonder about its limitations. What does “available for all” truly mean? 

What open access is can be defined by cultural factors, like language, history and even the significance of computer literacy. I presented on this with N.A. Mansour at the Digital Orientalisms Twitter Conference in 2020 in both Arabic and English. But we thought a visual medium might help us provoke thought on this issue even more. 

Alternative text is also available for each comic panel.

A woman wearing hijab stands before a metropolis with large buildings and skyscrapers called "Archives of the Internet". Some are company buildings that belong to the online archives East View, Gale, HathiTrust and Bloomsbury.
Continue reading “What is “Open Access,” Really? – A Comic”

The Presbyterian Historical Society

By Weston Bland and Joe Leidy

Content Warning: The following archive review includes discussion of missionary activity and of colonialism.

Presbyterian Historical Society (Photo credit: Presbyterian Historical Society)

The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia (PHS) has substantial holdings of missionary records in the Middle East which will reward exploration by scholars interested in the region. Because the PHS holds on-site archival records of Presbyterian missionary institutions and some American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) materials, their collections have the potential to cast new light on missionary activities and interactions with Middle Eastern populations.

Continue reading “The Presbyterian Historical Society”

On Rebellious Teaching: Lessons from a Black Feminist Gallery Teacher

By Alexandra M. Thomas

This piece is the second in our series on pedagogy, focused on themes of inclusivity and equity. The introduction to the series can be read here and other pieces in the series will be linked in the introduction as we publish them.

(exterior): Stone exterior of Yale Art Gallery building with tall, arched windows
The Yale University Art Gallery (Photo Credit: Creative Commons)

One of my greatest mentors, the Black Muslim feminist and queer of color theorist Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, once referred to the promise of coalitional politics and communal sociality as being akin to Toni Morrison’s description of Baby Suggs preaching outdoors in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Black lesbian teacher Ms. Rain’s multicultural classroom in Push by Sapphire. I hope for an anarchist learning experience, in which the passions and thought-experiments of my students overpower the presumed hierarchies of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ as subject-positions. When possible, I guide my students toward this collaborative, anti-hierarchical vision. 

I am rebellious in, with, and against the museum world. Sometimes this manifests when I stand too close to the art, and other times it is evident when I am taking a larger group of children into the museum than I should. I tell children that their lives are worth more than the art. I belittle the rules of the museum: “we have to do this but it sucks, right?” I have a political objective aligned with principles of Black feminist thought, which is to say I encourage my students to use visual and expressive culture as a mode through which to envision a new world free from racism, sexism, queerphobia, and all other antagonistic systems. The students I teach in the museum are not expected to consider Monet’s lilies or ancient Greek sculpture beautiful. If all we discuss while looking at a Jackson Pollock drip painting is what shapes, colors, and feelings we see, I am more than satisfied. 

Continue reading “On Rebellious Teaching: Lessons from a Black Feminist Gallery Teacher”