Tahir Abbas

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences of teaching sociology of Islam at an elite British university: the University of Birmingham. As a trained economist with postgraduate degrees in social science and sociology and as a former Whitehall civil servant, my foray into the world of Islamic studies has only been recent. Indeed, it was the events relating to British Muslim minorities between 1999 and 2001 (namely, the arrests, trial, and sentencing in relation to the mostly Birmingham-born “Seven in Yemen” in 1999; the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC; and the urban disturbances in northern England 2001) that propelled me to interact with this vast and rich field of learning and scholarship. These three events compounded matters in relation to identity politics, Islamism, and international political economy. Having already researched and written on matters related to education and class,1 entrepreneurship and culture,2 and Islamophobia and the print news,3 my new focus on Muslim minority issues stemmed precisely from my existing interests in ethnicity, culture, and multiculturalism.4

Upon joining the University of Birmingham in 2003, I spent my first two years concentrating on teaching a specialized course, “Ethnic Relations in Britain,” to finalists. In 2005, I began to teach a new course, “Islam, Multiculturalism, and the State” to finalists. In this article, I discuss the resulting insight into teaching to a largely non-Muslim audience issues relating to Islam and Muslim minorities.

Curriculum Content and Development

As a British-born Pakistani Muslim growing up in the 1970s, my own education in relation to Islam was never quite ideal. Indeed, I have learned more about Islam later in life than during my early years of attending mosques in local community settings. This new learning has focused on history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and theology. As a result, in class, when it comes to communicating matters in relation to the Qur’an, Sunnah and the hadith, I feel I can only spend one whole session on it. The approach is to ensure that I am at least able to offer an introduction to the religion, its origins and its scriptures, but not to use the opportunity to proselytize or essentialize. The aim is to provide a full enough introduction but to ensure that students have enough direction to be able to further glean insights into Islam on their own. Three important texts here are Barnaby Rogerson’s The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography (Abacus: 2004) and The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad: And the Roots of the Sunni-Shia Schism (Abacus: 2006), and Maxime Rodinson’s Muhammad (New Press: 2002).

An important issue beyond that of the course’s premise (that it is largely directed towards social science and humanities students within the university), is its content. In my teaching and research on “race,” ethnicity, and multiculturalism, I have endeavored to provide an historical background to the many issues at play. Given my own training as a social scientist, I seek to do this in a way that usefully highlights the context and the narrative in relation to how ideas have emerged and spread. In the study of Islam, many things need to be demystified, such as the popular perception that Islam was spread by the sword; that it is expansionary (and jihadi) in nature; that it oppresses women, minorities, and non-Muslims per se; and that it will not rest until it has achieved complete control of the world.

These perceptions are fed directly and indirectly to students who are, in everyday terms, just as likely to be misinformed by the media and popular political discourses as are most other people in society. My role is to clarify as well as encourage students to think for themselves. In relation to Islam’s origins, this certainly entails analyzing the religion from a sociological, political, economic, cultural, and theological perspective. Essentially, the literature here needs to be secular, agnostic, and Islamic, as this reflects the nature of the students as well as of British society.

Furthermore, without an Islamic perspective that suggests that Islam is divinely inspired, one cannot present a complete picture, irrespective of the students’ dominant belief systems. Therefore, an important goal is to ensure that the students receive a complete and full analysis of historical events and their interpretation, as this will lay the seeds of analytical thinking that will leave them in good stead throughout the remainder of the course. After my students realize that Islam is a religion like any other, one born out of the drive by individuals and groups with an inspired message of hope, redemption, and salvation, we move on. But not before they are aware that it emerged out of pagan Arabia. Once an initial appreciation of its origin is presented, it is important to trace the early years, particularly its expansion beyond the Arabian peninsula. Moreover, the important literary and scientific contributions made during Islam’s “golden age” (750-1258) need to be relayed to the audience.

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