I have always read books to learn about people. Surely, this way of getting to know the world is quite common. But, does it make sense? Is it possible that books are just an elaborate trap that keeps each reader hostage to private exchanges between them and some remote person’s printed words? (We sit in our private homes, read our private books, think our private thoughts, and all along are deceived into thinking that we actually encounter other human beings.) This is a real stalemate, a solution for which I found in Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy. Ong opened my ears to the world of sound, “the natural habitat of language.” New questions became thinkable. All of a sudden, my interest in the Qur’an became perfectly compatible with my study of American Muslim communities. Muslim American discourses became for me the field to carry out an anthropology of the Qur’an, which is a way to learn about people by examining how they weave the Qur’an into their lives and speech. My current work addresses the question of how the Qur’an is becoming an American sacred text. The short version of my answer comes right out of Ong – when it becomes an American spoken sacred text. The long version is filled with the details of how American Muslims speak.

Courses Taught:

• Islamic History II (Fall 2010)
• Islamic Political Theology in the 20th Century (Winter/Spring 2011) Muslims in North
• America and Europe: Discourses and Practices (Summer 2011)
• Understanding Islamic Congregational Life, with Scott Thumma (Fall 2011)
• The Qur’an and Its Place in Muslim Life and Society (Winter/Spring 2012)
• Muslim Public Speaking: History and Practice (Summer 2012)