Category Archives: Teaching Resources

Sex Education in Yemen

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Teaching Resources, Yemen


Photography by Boushra al-Moutawakel

from Yemen Times, June 24, 2013

It’s a sensitive subject in this conservative and religiously observant country. Who is talking about safe sex? In a recent online survey carried out by the organization Time to Talk, lasting 11 days—from May 11 to May 22, 2013—the organization asked 300 Yemenis that question, among others. Here are the results of their survey:

More men than women completed the survey, approximately 93 percent men and 7 percent women, all of them holding Yemeni nationality and spread over different age groups, with the largest prevalence among the 19-25 age group (28 percent), and less participation on the part of people in the age of 15-18 (6.12 percent).

The Yemeni respondents cannot be considered to be a representative sample of the Yemeni population because while there are currently as many males resident in Yemen as there are females, the number of men who voluntarily took part in our survey outnumbered the women, with an account for approximately 93 percent of all respondents.

However, almost all age groups present in the Yemeni population are well represented in our group: 19-25 (28.57 percent), 26-30 (19.39 percent), 30-35 (23.24), 36-40 (13.27 percent). The Yemeni age groups least well-presented were young people aged between 15-18 (6.12 percent) and the over 40’s (9.18 percent). Of those who responded to the survey, 54.17 percent are single and 45.83 percent are married. Continue reading Sex Education in Yemen →

Muslim Journeys

Film and Video, Folklore and Proverbs, Islam in America, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Miniatures, Scholars, Teaching Resources

The National Endowment for the Humanities has a fantastic website on Islam with a variety of resources, especially valuable for teaching about Islam, but also just for browsing. The outreach part of the project is “The Muslim Journeys Bookshelf,” a collection of 25 books and 3 films, noted as “a collection of resources carefully curated to present to the American public new and diverse perspectives on the people, places, histories, beliefs, practices, and cultures of Muslims in the United States and around the world.” American libraries can apply for receipt of this collection. Available on the site are images, samples from texts, audio recordings and short film clips, web links and a bibliography.This website is worth spending a few hours on and coming back to; it is precisely what a virtual museum should be.

Here is a sample text excerpt to whet your appetite. This is from al-Jahiz, who died in 869 CE, on “The Disadvantages of Parchment”
Continue reading Muslim Journeys →

Journaling On, but why?

Anthropology/Sociology, Islam: Introduction, Journalism and Media, Teaching Resources


Recently I received news of three new journals with laudable goals: one is Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies, an online, open access, peer-reviewed journal; the second is The Sociology of Islam Journal, which will be published by Brill on a subscription basis. The third is Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia (ACME). When I started my graduate career in the early 1970s there were only a few journals dedicated specifically to the study of Islam and none to the anthropology of the Middle East or Central Asia. Der Islam, Studia Islamica, the Muslim World were solely for Islam, although they rarely had sociological or anthropological articles. Most scholars published in journals of their discipline or broader Middle Eastern Studies, such as the Middle East Journal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Arabica, Quaderni di Studi Arabi, and the like. The first journal devoted solely to contemporary Islam, with an anthropological focus, is Contemporary Islam, founded by Gabriele Marranci. The first journal created for the anthropology of the Middle East is, appropriately enough, Anthropology of the Middle East.

As the co-editor of a major Springer journal, Contemporary Islam, and the editor-in-chief of an online, peer-reviewed open access journal, CyberOrient, I am probably the last person who should be complaining about more new journals. It is not really a complaint as much as it is a contemplation: why are there more and more subscription-based academic journals when library budgets are being skimmed and few scholars can afford the exorbitant individual subscription prices of major presses? Is it the case that there are too few journals out there? Given the quality of the articles I sometimes see in professional journals, it seems as though quality or cogency is not always significant for getting into print. An argument could be made that there are so many more academic scholars these days, that new journals are needed to accommodate them. I can see this point, but then why not create open-source journals, like Mashriq & Mahjar, which can as easily be peer-reviewed as those distributed by major publishing houses?

There are several disadvantages I see with the expanding number of subscription-based academic journals. Continue reading Journaling On, but why? →

Pathologizing Islam and Pax Americana

Islam in America, Islamophobia, Teaching Resources

by Timothy P. Daniels, The Islamic Monthly, April 22

In the aftermath of a week of mainstream media coverage and elite political figure’s statements related to the Boston Marathon bombing, the ongoing processes of pathologizing Islam and its significance for Pax Americana are made evident. Initial questions about whether this bombing was the work of domestic or foreign terrorists or the work of “lone” wolves quickly turned to claims about Arab individuals, international students, and dark-skinned men with foreign accents as “persons-of-interest” and “suspects.” The specter of dangerous foreign “others” in Boston overshadowed the likely homegrown white-supremacist-Christian terrorism lying behind the eerie fertilizer factory explosion in Waco, Texas close to the 20th anniversary of the FBI massacre of the Branch Davidian “cult.” Fourteen dead, scores injured, and an entire town left demolished; however this devastating event was hurriedly pushed out of the news cycle and political rhetoric without any answers for why this blast occurred. The irrationality of this differential response became even more apparent after the FBI released and posted pictures of two suspected bombers and the subsequent massive military mobilization of forces and technologies to corner, capture, and kill these young men. As their identities as Muslim Chechens became known, the media began to speculate about their links to international terrorism and their presumed religious motives. Continue reading Pathologizing Islam and Pax Americana →

Iranian Studies Directory Online

Anthropology/Sociology, Archaeology and Antiquities, Iran, Scholars, Shi'a, Teaching Resources


Putting the world’s scholars and organisations at your fingertips, the Iranian Studies Directory (ISD) is a pioneering initiative to develop a comprehensive reference and research facility that will open up the fields of Persian and Iranian studies to academics, teachers, students, curators, professionals and lay enthusiasts across the globe.

If you are in any way involved in the world of Iranian or Persian studies, get networked now! Register with this public resource and connect yourself to other professionals and institutions in your field throughout the world.

Introducing IQSA

Islam: Introduction, Qur'an, Teaching Resources


The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) was formed in 2012 as a consultation leading to an independent learned society for scholars of the Qur’an. The Society of Biblical Literature was awarded a grant for this consultation from the Henry Luce Foundation, which was announced [link to press release] on 29 May 2012. The founding directors of the IQSA steering committee are Gabriel Said Reynolds and Emran El-Badawi, with administrative support for the consultation and grant from John F. Kutsko.

The goal for the consultation is to form an independent, international, non-profit learned society, whose members include scholars of the Qur’an from universities and institutions around the world. This collaborative work involves meetings, publishing, and professional development. IQSA will be a network for a diverse range of scholars and educators, and it will serve to advocate for the field of Qur’anic studies, in higher education and in the public square. Its vision of Qur’anic Studies is interdisciplinary, and it seeks to involve specialists in literature, history, archaeology, paleography, and religious studies.

As such, IQSA is not just a professional guild for scholars; it also welcomes the participation of the public. Its diverse governing body and members come from Islamic as well as Western societies. A core tenet of IQSA is “mutual understanding through scholarship.”

The steering committee is preparing to launch IQSA as an independent organization during three-year consultation, which involves drafting its official charter and developing its program resources. Membership in IQSA will be open and unrestricted, and you are invited to become a part of the IQSA network.

Visitors are encouraged to join the IQSA e-mail list through the homepage.

The World’s Muslims

Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islam: Introduction, Teaching Resources


The Pew Foundation has recently released a major worldwide survey of religion. As can be seen from the basic breakdown, Christianity is the largest in number of adherents, with Islam in second place. Here is the discussion of Islam:

Muslims number 1.6 billion, representing 23% of all people worldwide. There are two major branches of Islam – Sunni and Shia. The overwhelming majority (87-90%) of Muslims are Sunnis; about 10-13% are Shia Muslims.8

Muslims are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, where six-in-ten (62%) of all Muslims reside. Many Muslims also live in the Middle East and North Africa (20%) and sub-Saharan Africa (16%). The remainder of the world’s Muslim population is in Europe (3%), North America (less than 1%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (also less than 1%). Continue reading The World’s Muslims →