Dear friends…

Try to answer each of the following questions in 3-4 pages, so that the total for the whole assignment is around 9 to 10 pages. The papers are due right after you get back from break, by Tuesday at Midnight. Make sure they are typed, spell checked, numbered, stapled, and that your name apears on top right corner.

Here are your three opportunities for further reflection:


1) Muslims oftentimes introduce their faith by stating that it is “not a religion”, but a “whole way of life.” Read back over what Paden says are the problems of applying a Western idea of “religion” to other religious traditions. In what ways does the Islamic tradition challenge our notion of religion as something that is primarily concerned with a “system of belief”? I want you to site three or four examples of ways that Islam is manifested in practice in society, especially in ways that go beyond our own fascinations with “belief.” Do not pick prayer or any other example of the “five pillars.” You might choose to focus on social, artistic, aesthetic, or architectural examples. Give citations from Paden, Chebel, and Essential Sufism in your essay.

2) Try to capture the ethos of the Sufi dimension of Islam. How do they want for humanity to relate to each other? To the Divine? In your essay, be sure to address the roles of love, “remembrance”, and humor. Be sure to give a few references to appropriate quotes from the Essential Sufism volume.

3) Read everything that Chebel has to say about rituals like prayeR. Then go back to Paden’s discussions of ritual. Talk about the concept of Prayer (Salat) in the Islamic religious world as not something that is “mindless and repetitive”, but as a ritual that shapes individuals, communities, the calendar, architectural space, and even systems of purity. Again, what I am asking you to do here is to connect together the material from Islam with what we have talked about earlier in Paden.