Summer program focusing on Islam in India

By Linda Harbrecht - Lehigh University - Bethlehem,PA,USA

Friday, December 1, 2006

A six-credit, one-month summer program focusing on Islam in India will be introduced in May. Rob Rozehnal, assistant professor of Islamic studies and comparative South Asian religions, will lead the course, which is titled "Islam in South Asia: Sufi Saints and Muslim Missionaries."The class will be co-taught by Matthew Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

"This is a really unique and innovative program," Rozehnal says. "We'll be exploring the encounter between Islamic and Indian civilizations from multiple perspectives. India will definitely be a 3-D assault on the senses for students, in terms of its food, its social landscape, and the summer heat.

This is designed to be a thoroughly atypical study abroad experience—an intense cultural immersion."While in India, students will visit a number of significant Sufi shrines, mosques, and Hindu temples. The program will also benefit from the academic support of three prominent Indian universities: the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, Jamia Millia Islamia, and Aligarh Muslim University.

Understanding “the incredible diversity and dynamism of Islam”

Rozehnal says that through his classes and his writings (as in his forthcoming book, Islamic Sufism Unbound: The Chishti Sabiri Order in 21st Century Pakistan ) he attempts to account for what he calls the "truly global nature of the Muslim world.

"I think it's vital to remind students of the incredible diversity and dynamism of Islam around the globe,” Rozehnal says. “The lived reality is far more complex than what we see through daily news reports. South Asia is the demographic center of today's Islamic world. There are some 130 million Muslims in India, a minority community among a vast Hindu majority. There is no better way to communicate this than to get students out of the classroom and immersed in the dizzying complexity of today's India."

Rozehnal joined the Lehigh faculty in 2003 and was recently named a Frank Hook Assistant Professor. In addition to the history and practice of Sufism in South Asia, his research interests include ritual studies, postcolonial theory and religious nationalism.