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Seeing and Hearing Omar ibn Said

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2022

Courtney Dorroll ,
Colleen Ballance  and
Philip Dorroll
Courtney Dorroll
Affiliation:
Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA
Colleen Ballance
Affiliation:
Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA
Philip Dorroll
Affiliation:
Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA
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Abstract

This article will illustrate how using interdisciplinary student-faculty collaborative research can help decolonialize Islamic Studies. This article will be based on a case study of our recently completed student-faculty collaborate research project, Seeing and Hearing Omar ibn Said. Faculty members led a student-faculty research and public outreach project regarding Omar ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim man from the Senegambia region. The students’ work focused on the biographical opera Omar, which was planned for debut at the 2020 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. This interdisciplinary collaboration combined religious studies, history, and performance studies. The students produced outreach materials designed for public engagement and education. Ultimately this article brings to light several important topics: the pedagogy of interdisciplinary studies, giving students agency in an interdisciplinary setting, and the lack of recognition of early Muslims in America.

Keywords

student-faculty collaborative researchMuslims in Americainterdisciplinary studiespedagogystructural racism
Type
Special Focus: Spotlight on Pedagogical Perspectives and the Politics of Representation
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , June 2021 , pp. 56 - 68
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc.

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References

1 Wofford College is located in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a three hour drive from Charleston, South Carolina.

2 Alryyes, Ala, A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar ibn Said (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 3-4Google Scholar.

3 Halverson, Jeffrey R., “West African Islam in Colonial and Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 36.3 (2016): 414Google Scholar.

4 Michael A. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” The Journal of Southern History 60.4 (November 1994): 685-86.

5 Ibid., 706-10.

6 Alryyes, A Muslim American Slave, 61.

7 Sylviane A. Diouf, “God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People: Islamic Reformists and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” in Ala Alryyes, ed. and trans., A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar ibn Said (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 166.

8 Ibid., 169-74; J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 151.

9 See, for instance, his inclusion and usage of the 67th chapter of the Qurʾan, Sūrat al-Mulk, at the beginning of his autobiography: Alryyes, A Muslim American Slave, 18. This Qurʾanic chapter discusses God's total dominion over all human beings, emphasizing that it is God who is truly sovereign over the lives of individual human beings, not any human ruler or master.

10 Wes Blomster, “Fanfare for Charleston, The Founding of Spoleto Festival USA,” The 2001 Spoleto Festival USA Program Book, published by Spoleto Festival USA Marketing and Public Relations Department, 17.

11 Ibid., 18.

12 Ibid., 19.

13 Ibid., 20.

14 “Rhiannon Giddens Is Writing an Opera,” New York Times, June 10, 2019.

15 Alryyes, A Muslim American Slave, 195-201.

16 Omar ibn Said, Letter to John Taylor (Spartanburg County Historical Association, 1853). Accessed February 13, 2021, https://www.niu.edu/arabic-slave-writings/spartanburg-manuscript/index.shtml.

17 The quote asserts the need for “belief in God's total omnipotence and determination of all events [qadar], its good and its evil [al-imān bil qadar khayrihi wa sharrihi].” In other words, this quotation refers to the Sunni Muslim theological assertion that all events come from God's specific and planned determination, regardless of whether we perceive these events as being good or evil from our limited human perspective.

18 Ibn Said, Letter to John Taylor, page left, line 6-8.

19 “The ‘aqīda of Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī,” in W. Montgomery Watt, ed., Islamic Creeds: A Selection (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 69-71.

20 Moustafa, Laila Hussein, “Interdisciplinary Education for Teaching Challenging Subjects: The Case of Islam and Violence,” in Dorroll, Courtney, ed., Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia, and the Internet (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 95-108Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 98.

22 Spoleto Festival USA, “Exploring Omar: Complex Identities in the Arts,” YouTube Video, 26:48, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ALEqo1Aqs.

23 Spoleto Festival USA, 2020 Spoleto Festival USA Ticket Brochure, 102, https://issuu.com/sfusa2014/docs/spoleto_ticketbrochure_2020_final.

24 MacArthur Foundation, “Rhiannon Giddens,” Class of 2017, macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2017/rhiannon-giddens.

25 Spoleto Festival USA, 2020 Spoleto Festival USA Ticket Brochure.

26 Spoleto Festival USA, “Exploring Omar,” YouTube Video.

27 Wofford, “The Resilience Project,” https://www.wofford.edu/Wofford.edu/Documents/About/resilience-project/toolkit.pdf.