Dr. Sherman Jackson’s two-day seminar at NYU was a crashing success, if I may say so. He covered an incredible amount of material over the two days (and I still think he only gave us his cliff notes!).
Dr. Jackson began by laying out the nature of culture and politics in 7th century Arabia. Different concepts that lead to the understanding of the minds of the peoples who lived in those areas and how that would at once effect how the Arabs would receive Revelation (big “R”) and in turn how they would influence revelation (little “r”). We were introduced to new ways of seeing the Prophet SAWS, more specifically, seeing him as either more human or indeed, human for the first time for many of us.
We also examined the concepts of shirk and kufr, two words that are commonly tossed around by Muslims today but without much historical or lexical knowledge of these words. From here we moved on along a time line from the Prophet SAWS receiving his Prophethood and up till the Muslims leaving Makkah and arriving in Madinah.
There’s so much to cover, and I will take the time to give a more indepth summary but I simply wanted to give an idea of what went on and also to express my, and all of the others who attended, gratitude to Dr. Jackson for taking time out of his very busy schedule (as well as time away from his family) to teach us. For two days I saw a master orator disseminate a lot of tightly packaged information and give it to us in digestible bites. I hope NYU can woo Dr. Jackson into returning with the second half of the Sirah of the Prophet. Thank you, Dr. Jackson - may Allah bless you, keep you and reward for your efforts. Amin.
I would highly recommend reading the new book, September 11 In History, A Watershed Moment?, edited by Mary L. Dudziak. The book features a very well written essay by Dr. Sherman Jackson, Islam(s) East and West: Pluralism between No-Frills and Designer Fundamentalism (