In today’s blog post we’ll take a look at how we teach the history of the Islamic world as part of our integrated Islamic studies curriculum. This part of our curriculum, which begins in second grade, integrates Islamic studies with social studies.
Islamic History vs. History of the Islamic World
Most Islamic studies curricula devote at least some time to Islamic history. A typical curriculum focuses on the biography of the prophet and some key events that took place shortly before or after his life. Some Islamic history curricula “set the stage” by providing context on Pre-Islamic Arabian Tribes and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) and Sassanian Persian empire. Many curricula will also cover events which occurred one or several generations following the demise of our beloved Prophet, thereby exploring the lives of the Prophet’s household, his companions, and their descendants over a handful of generations.
On the other hand, many full-time Islamic schools in the United States teach history as part of social studies curricula that are completely separate from Islamic studies. Generally, these curricula are built almost entirely upon textbooks written for secular public schools.
What is typically absent from both curricula is detailed coverage of the history of the Islamic world—that is, the history of the parts of the world with Muslim-majority population, or significant Muslim minorities—as separate from what we call Islamic history, which is typically concerned with the history of Islam (i.e., the biography of the prophet and surrounding events). Islamic studies curricula almost exclusively focus on Islamic history, while K-12 secular American history curricula typically devote considerably less than 10% of their total instruction time to Islamic history and the History of the Islamic world combined.
Why Cover the History of the Islamic World?
We believe that for students to make sense of their place in world history, we need to give more coverage to the history of the Islamic world. For one thing, we anticipate that many of our students will come from Muslim backgrounds and trace their origins to Southwest Asia (the “Middle East”), Central Asia, and South Asia. Only through engaging with the histories of their ancestors’ homelands can students from these backgrounds truly feel “seen” in their study of history. This kind of engagement should extend beyond name dropping select Muslim inventors from the so-called “Golden Age.” Moreover, by focusing on how the religion of Islam greatly informed the flourishing of this culture, students can also develop a cultural identity that is deeply rooted within Islam and the Islamic tradition.
Showcasing Diversity in the Islamic World
We are also writing our curriculum to illustrate a history of the Muslim world that is populated by diverse people from different backgrounds. Islam thrives not only in North Africa, the Southwest, and South Asia, but also in Subsaharan Africa, Southeast Europe, and Southeast Asia. While it would be impractical for any curriculum to give equal coverage to every Muslim community and nation, past and present, we feel that it is essential to highlight at least some of this diversity.
It is essential that students understand that even if they had Arabic names and mostly wrote in Arabic, many of the famous multi-disciplinary Islamic thinkers of the Middle Ages were not ethnically Arab, and nor were the remainder all Persian. Many of these thinkers were in fact from ethnic groups that might be better classified as Central Asian. Similarly, the great religious scholars of the school of the Prophet’s household (ahl al bayt) came from and resided in a variety of places throughout history, as the centers of learning shifted from one place to another including in cities in present-day Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Iran, and India; our curriculum aims to showcase this diversity.
But What About the Muslim-American Experience?
Of course, our students will be building identities with connections to places and cultures beyond the Islamic world alone. As children growing up in America, our students will also feel connected to America specifically, and to the so-called “Western world” in general. How can our coverage of history speak to this part of the students’ identities?
We also anticipate that we will have students who do not trace their heritage and ancestry to any Muslim majority land. For example, some students’ ancestry may be “American,” broadly speaking; some may come from families with parents or grandparents who came to Islam from other religious traditions. How can we ensure that these students feel just as “seen” as their counterparts?
God-willing, we will address these questions in the coming blog posts, which will highlight how, in addition to presenting Islamic history and the history of the Islamic World, our curriculum aims to tell more long-running related histories. The first is the story of how the Islamic and Western worlds shaped one another. The second is the story of Islam in America.
Image: The Alhambra, Granada — Credit: Noor Zainab Hussain