Most Muslims are not Arabs.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the Hispanic population.
Islam considers Jesus one of its most important prophets.
If this data on the religion of Islam and the Middle East is new to grownups, imagine what children will make of it?
Sense, hopes MTSU’s Middle East Center. On Saturday, the center promoted a workshop on how to teach children about Islam and the Middle East.
“It has that ripple effect,” said the center’s outreach coordinator, Amy Staples, an associate professor of history at MTSU. “Every time you teach a teacher, how many classes of children do you reach? So this is really an attempt to have an impact where that impact can be broader.”
The workshop, “Teaching about the Middle East,” was conducted by Audrey Shabbas of Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Relations and is the center’s first outreach event.
Shabbas talked about how perceptions of the Muslim and Arab worlds have been blurred. She noted that one misperception is that Kurds are not Muslim. Most are, she said, and most are Sunni Muslims.
That most Muslims are not even Arabs, she added, is another.
“They are not even in the Middle East,” said Shabbas, who is married to an Iraqi and identifies as a Muslim.
Center administrators maintain that if stereotypes such as Arabs as suicide bombers or “desert dwellers” are destined to doggedly remain if not interrupted at the elementary school level.
“Students ask more questions, especially if they see it in the news,” said Staples. “What is the difference between Sunni and Sh’ia? Who are the Kurds, and how do they fit into this? The media has divided them into three groups.”
Julie Menke, a teacher at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in Murfreesboro, said the media often reports out of proportion for sensationalism.
“It is always good to have correct information to share with the children, and sometimes the media is not doing a very good job of that,” said Menke.
The “Nation of Islam,” Shabbas noted, refers to followers of Louis Farrakhan, not a highly diverse religious group.
The iconography, history, language and theology of the Islamic religion is so complex, she added, that much of the historical data has never been taught because it is not known, such as the scattering of Spanish Muslims fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.
The word Allah, said Shabbas, is just the Arabic word for God. Allah is the word used by Arab Christians for God.
“It doesn’t make any more sense to say Muslims worship a god called Allah than it makes sense to say the French worship a god called Dieu,” said Shabbas.
Issues of women and power are a major source of misunderstanding about moderate Muslims, Shabbas said.
“Where Muslim women are being oppressed, it’s in spite of Islam, not because of it,” she said.
Many African-Americans, she said, who were taken into slavery carried the religion with them to America, where it was squelched.
Staples said children are being directly impacted by negative information after the attacks on Sept. 11.
“As a whole [Muslims] are certainly as diverse as the people of the United States,” said Staples. “When we look at the people of the Middle East, they don’t identify themselves as Iraqis, but identify themselves more with their language group.”
Allen Hibbard, director of the Middle East Center, said the workshop was just the beginning of a broader effort by the school and the center to advance its presence as an international hub for Middle East Studies.
“This event is part of our plan to have an outreach dimension as part of a mission of the center,” Hibbard said.
In the near future, MTSU plans to offer a minor in Middle East studies and eventually a major, he said.
