History 338: History of Islamic Civilizations
I took this class with Dr. Isaac during the Fall of 2020. This class focused primarily on the history of the Islamic civilizations in the Middle East. The class began with Muhammad and the creation of the Islamic religion and ended with the modern Middle East and all of the issues they are currently having.
Before taking this class, I did not realize how little I knew about the Middle East and how much I lacked an understanding of the Islamic religion. Although the class was too short to give a full insight into the religion and the troubles they face, I do believe I got a very good introduction to the basics. After ending this class, I feel like I better understand the complexities of the Islamic religion and how that contributes to the problems they are having today.
Overall, I believe that this class really helped me grow as a person and as an intellectual. I never realized the hidden biases I had towards certain groups of people and how that came from the social environment I grew up in. I am so glad that I was able to take this class and have my eyes opened to a completely new perspective and another side to history that I was not necessarily accustomed to hearing. In the end, I feel like I learned a lot about a new, complex, yet beautiful part of the global society I live in.
Most of our assignments in this class were based on reading the Qur’an and writing our thoughts about it in a journal. However, since we could not attend an actual jummah prayer, we ended up watching a video of one and wrote a journal about our thoughts on it instead. In my opinion, the video was very beautiful and I was glad to have been able to experience it in some way.