Amanullah De Sondy |
On September 18, 2014, the day that Yemen-born Mufid Elfghee, also known as the “Rochester man,” was indicted in federal court for being an ISIS recruiter, the University of Rochester hosted a lecture with the intriguing title, “Interrogating Islamic Masculinities.” The flyer for University of Miami assistant professor Amanullah De Sondy‘s lecture stated:
Rigid notions of masculinity are causing crisis [sic] in the global Islamic community. These are articulated from the Qu’ran, its commentary, historical precedents and societal, religious and familial obligations. This lecture will interrogate this global gender and sexual crisis as we attempt to understand Islam and Muslims in the world today.
The juxtaposition of Elfghee’s indictment and De Sondy’s lecture is an apt emblem of the profession’s increasing insularity and abandonment of the American public. While radicals recruit their fellow Americans to join a murderous, misogynistic army dedicated to ethnically cleansing much of the Middle East under the banner of a restored Caliphate, Middle East studies professors continue their decades-long descent into politicized and trivial scholarship.
