Week 1: The Worldwide Connection
Last week we had the pleasure of conducting an online class with students from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. It was a great opportunity to converse and the call was effective at facilitating discourse between us and the students! Half-way through the class, we were divided into several breakout rooms and this provided us with a great chance to be able to get to know the other students. We were given the prompt, “If powerful aliens came to Earth and there was no language the humans and aliens could use to communicate with one another, what in the world would you show them to convince them that our species is worthy of survival?”Shortly after joining, I was greeted by two kind faces and we immediately hit it off. We discussed similarities that we had, from musical tastes to entertainment and for a second we completely forgot about the prompt. It was great to see that despite the different lives we lived and the distance between us, there are certain binding factors that allow us all to converse. We eventually started discussing some of the differences between us and asked me about my experience with the States and whether I had ever gone there. In actuality, I have! Multiple times in fact, I have been to a bunch of different cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, just to name a few. So they asked me about my experience and we bonded over our shared disgust of the monstrosity that is the triple threat of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC! This slowly made us start discussing culture and by extension religion. That is when we begun to notice significant differences in the way we lived. Based off their experiences, I learnt that religion and culture are two separate entities. This contradicts what is regarded as the norm here, with religion and culture being directly intertwined. I even had to explain to them that we sometimes struggle to differentiate the two and it really becomes a hassle! We started to discuss differences in religion and I loved the fact that they were so interested in Islam, so I gave them a quick overview of the religion. The things we realized are universal between us in terms of the locations and things we discussed I think is mainly our appreciation and inquisitive natures. When we discussed Pennsylvania for example, I was incredibly interested in the Amish people and how they deviated from the Catholic branch of Christianity. In turn, they were also incredibly interested in how different people practiced the faith of Islam and how these differences could range from culture to culture and nation to nation. To answer the alien prompt, we ended up deciding that after seeing the “monstrosity” we discussed earlier they would leave the planet anyways! Sorry to cut this week’s edition short but that was the gist of it! See you all next week!
Thank you for the kind words. I did really enjoy our conversation, especially about the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC combination restaurant. Your quick overview of Islam was very good and was nice to have. I haven't really been given much education on it and Pennsylvania has a very low population of Muslims. I feel like I got more out of you explaining than I would have just reading a textbook as well. I'm glad you also had a good time with our discussion.
ReplyDeleteI find it so interesting how we both have different experiences in terms of topics to talk about. I cant help but find it surprising how little people know about islam despite it being the second largest religion in the world. And it's interesting you bring up the topic of culture and religion intertwining, cause that was a culture shock for me coming to uae. Growing up in a non muslim culture as a muslim i found that i never experienced culture and religion as being the same thing. Im curious to know if you believe that culture influences religion or the other way around? Controversially, i find that those two need to be separated. Despite the normalization of intermixing them i would argue that they don't (and shouldn't) overlap at all. In the case of islam for example, there are several cultural practices followed by muslims which the religion does not condone. What ends up happening is islam becomes almost a form of justification for practices such as 'honor killings,' racism, tribalism'. In the long run the line between religion and cultures associated with the religion becomes blurred. I would love to hear your response!
ReplyDeleteHi Khalid! I thought it was super funny and interesting how the beauty that is Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC is what connected you guys and also somehow made you guys delve more into culture and its relation with religion as well. I love that conversations about fast foods can evolve into deep conversations about subjects so different from what you started with. I also think its very interesting that you have found religion and culture to be directly intertwined and are almost the same thing there. Other people I have spoken to that practice Islam would probably not agree with this statement, but they are also from different parts of the world so maybe that is a reason why. It probably goes along with how you were saying differences in how people practice the faith of Islam can range from culture to culture. But yeah! This blog post was a super interesting read and I look forward to seeing what you write next!
ReplyDelete-Margie Winter