Excerpt:
A new seminar course, AMS 339: Religion and Culture: Muslims in America, will be offered next semester and has already become overenrolled with interested students. It will provide for the first time an overview of the long history of Islam in the United States, dating back to the slave trade in the 17th century, in addition to discussing this history's implications for American culture and policy.
Aly Kassam-Remtulla, associate director for Academic Planning and Institutional Diversity and the course instructor, said he designed the course out of a desire to talk about a piece of American history that had not yet been addressed in Princeton's course offerings while providing insight into the culture of people who identify as Muslims today.
"My course offers one dimension of the present reality," Kassam-Remtulla said. "It provides insight into the past reality that a lot of people are unaware of — the history of Muslims coming to this country as far back as the 17th century."