The past two years mark a tumultuous period in the United
States’ relations with Middle Eastern nations. U.S. forces
have fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and political efforts to
reduce the violence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have
achieved little success.
While soldiers and diplomats try to implement U.S. policies
abroad, academics at UCLA are finding that an increasing number of
students are looking to learn more about the Middle East and
Islam.
“It seems to me that a lot of students are reading up on
the Islamic world,” said history Professor Ghislaine Lydon,
who is coordinating a core course on Islamic studies.
UCLA offers graduate degrees in Islamic studies, and Brad
Hansen, the second-highest ranking official at the U.S. embassy in
Kabul, Afghanistan, has a master’s degree from the program.
For undergraduates, courses on the Middle East and Islam are
dispersed across a wide range of disciplines, from history and Near
Eastern languages and cultures to the Arabic language.
In 2002, enrollment in classes dealing with the Middle East
increased 10 percent over 2001 levels, said Diane James, a
counselor at the von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Frequently, students curious about the Middle East want to learn
more about the area as it relates to issues that connect to U.S.
politics.
“Usually, in courses relating to the modern Middle East
there have been a lot of questions about the Gulf War, the
situation in Afghanistan,” said Munir Shaikh, a graduate
student in Islamic Studies.
Near Eastern languages and cultures Professor Ismail Poonawala
said he has seen a slight increase in the number of students
studying the Islamic world, but added that not all of the new
students are motivated by a desire to better understand U.S.-Middle
Eastern interactions.
“I think you come across a variety of reasons,” he
said.
In addition to the campus’s catalogue courses, Fiat Lux
seminars offer another avenue for students and professors to
explore issues surrounding the Middle East.
“I liked the format of the course, where the students are
not pressured by grades,” said Near Eastern languages and
cultures Professor Andras Bodrogligeti.
“There is a greater freedom of discussion in the
classrooms,” he added.
Bodrogligeti, whose research focuses on central Asia, taught a
Fiat Lux seminar in fall 2002 and drew on his travels in
Uzbekistan, which in the United States is often described as a
center of extremism, though he disagrees with this conception.
“So that was one of the challenges … to find out one of
the hotbeds of fundamentalism is not a hotbed at all,” he
said.
While the mass media has increased its coverage of the Middle
East as the United States has heightened its political and military
involvement in the region since the Sept. 11 attacks, many at UCLA
are critical of news coverage of the region.
Poonawala took issue with connections made between the Islamic
religion and terrorism and said the likes of Osama bin Laden and
his followers constitute only a small portion of the world’s
1.2 billion Muslims, commenting that reporters should modify the
frequently used term “Islamic extremist.”
“Well, I think they should remove the title
“˜Islamic,'” he said.
Additionally, Shaikh criticizes coverage of the current U.S.
occupation of Iraq for not showing a fuller range of Iraqi
reactions to the presence of U.S. troops in their country.
“I think it is important to try to achieve a degree of
balance,” he said.