Mission Statement

The mission of the Islamic Studies program is to promote a better understanding of the Muslim world as a historical, cultural, literary, political, religious, and economic entity and to highlight the many and diverse Muslim and non-Muslim traditions and societies that have developed within it over the last 1300 years; to bring scholars in the Western Academy together with scholars from all areas of the Muslim world; and to promote a free and open exchange of views. The central purpose of the Islamic Studies program is thus to foster a scholarly atmosphere of open discourse on Islam and the Muslim world that is not concerned with ideological, confessional, or disciplinary boundaries.

It is also the mission of the Islamic Studies program to develop a broad range of curricular programs on the IUB campus that brings the expertise of its scholars to a wider community of students at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and to create opportunities through outreach for the public to interact with scholars and peoples from the Muslim world in wide-ranging and open forums.

Currently, IUB has over 60 scholars in six schools and over 15 departments that have research and teaching interests in some aspect of the Muslim world. Units such as NELC, Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS), African Studies, African and African American Studies (AAAS), East Asian Studies (EAS), and American Studies each cover the geographic breadth of the Muslim world. Scholars in the College who work in disciplinary units do so in various levels of cooperation with these area studies departments, yet there has been little coordination across departments in the College or between the College and other schools on the IUB campus. The goal of the Islamic Studies program is to serve as a bridge that will allow collaboration and cooperation among IU’s community of scholars and to share resources for the promotion of research on and understanding of the Muslim world.