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   from the issue of November 11, 2004

     
 
Professor's work centers on Islam, its role in society

 BY TOM HANCOCK, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

Understanding Islam and its role in the world is important for Americans in our post-Sept. 11 society, said Simon Wood, the Islamic specialist in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. He started his position at UNL this fall.

 
Simon Wood, assistant professor of classics and religious studies, teaches a special topics course on “Topics in Islam” on Nov...
 Simon Wood, assistant professor of classics and religious studies, teaches a special topics course on “Topics in Islam” on Nov. 3. Wood’s doctoral work focused on modern Islam, and he teaches classes this fall in comparative religion and the role of Islam in the modern world.

The position is a new one at UNL and comes out of the department’s long-stated goal to expand the religious studies program to other religions, especially Islam, said associate professor Thomas Rinkevich.

“This goal had since become fortuitous in view of the world situation of late,” he said.

Islam’s significance was reflected in the first few minutes of the first presidential debate between George Bush and John Kerry, he said. Islam and the Muslim world were mentioned several times in the context of American foreign policy.

Americans should understand where Muslims stand on the war in Iraq and on U.S. foreign policy in general, Wood said. Most Muslims in the world are opposed to the war in Iraq. Arabs, who constitute about one-sixth of the number of Muslims worldwide, tend to see what is happening in Iraq and what is happening in Palestine as the manifestation of the same thing, he said. Muslims are opposed on one hand to the foreign policy of the government of the United States, Wood said, but they aren’t opposed to the American people.

It’s also important for Americans to learn that Islam isn’t a religion that is “over there” somewhere, Wood said. Islam is in fact the fastest-growing religion in the United States with six million adherents, a dramatic increase over the past three decades. It’s growing fast for two reasons, Wood said, which reflect two aspects of the Muslim community. About half of the increase in the last few years is from immigration from Muslim countries, especially since the 1970s. The second reason for growth is the number of conversions of African Americans to Islam.

“It will be interesting to see to what extent the history of Islam in the United States follows a similar path that Catholicism and Judaism took,” Wood said.

Islam has not been assimilated into American society, he said, and a current debate is whether there is such a thing as American Islam or whether that is a contradiction. The Islamic community is divided concerning whether American Islam should be a goal, he said.

Wood, a New Zealand native, earned his bachelor degree in religious studies and history at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. After finishing his degree, he took three years off to tour Europe and India.
Hugh McCloud, one of Wood’s professors in New Zealand, referred him to Mahmoud Ayoub at Temple University in Philadelphia when he learned of Wood’s interest in Islam. Wood pursued his graduate degrees at Temple and taught at Lehigh University near Philadelphia.

Wood’s doctorate from Temple is in religion with a focus on modern Islam, covering roughly the last 200 years. His work is primarily on texts and not confined to a particular geographic area of the Islamic world. Wood spent 14 months in the Middle East, including two months in Jordan and one in Cairo to develop Arabic language skills. He came to UNL in July to begin his first full-time position.

Wood’s doctoral dissertation focused on a book written by Muhammad Rashid Rida, who lived from 1865 to 1955. The book, The Criticisms of the Christians and the Arguments of Islam, was a response to what Christian missionaries were saying about Islam and proved Rida to be an important modernist thinker, Wood said.

At UNL, Wood is teaching classes in the history of comparative religion and in Islam in the modern world, specifically examining the ways Muslims have responded to the challenges of modernity. In mass media and in popular political discourse, Islam often gets stereotyped in a monolithic way, Wood said. The latter course he will teach will challenge the understanding of Islam as a monolithic entity and emphasize the diversity within Islam, such as secular trends, traditionalism, modernism and fundamentalism.

Islam has evolved into a religion with various understandings of the faith, both from its beginnings and into modern times, Wood said. The Sunni and Shia understandings date back to the beginning of Islam. Their primary difference has to do with the understanding of authority. Sunni Islam has a more consensual idea of authority, with the ruler taking his authority from the consensus of the community, Wood said.

In Shia Islam, authority associated in the leader is more intrinsic to the leader. Leadership is passed down from person to person, with an understanding that the line traces back to Muhammad. In Shia understanding, the 12th imam to fit this description was hidden by God hundreds of years ago but is still alive. That person is known as the hidden imam, or teacher, and is believed to still be sending messages to the faithful. The religious authority of the Shia clerics is derived from their role as deputies of the hidden 12th imam. This waiting for the hidden imam to make himself known creates a messianic expectation similar in some ways to Judaism and Christianity.

Wahhabiism, a faction within Sunni Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, is a more recent development of Islam, dating from the 19th century. It is known for being conservative, fundamentalist, rigid and puritan, as well as for its critical attitude toward other forms of Islam, particularly Shiism. Most terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were influenced by Wahhabiism, but it’s important not to directly associate Wahhabiism with terrorist Islam, Wood said.

Wood is continuing his research in the same area as his dissertation, specifically on the works of Rashid Rida, especially what he wrote about Muslim-Christian relations. He said he also is interested in the phenomenon of fundamentalism in world religions. Also called “maximalists,” fundamentalists promote an expansion of religion into typically non-religious spheres of life, such as political, economic, educational, social and cultural arenas. Wood will be teaching a class in the spring semester on fundamentalism in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.


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