Associate professor of Islamic Studies will lecture on Koranic Studies

Ruqayya Khan, associate professor of religion, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

December 2008

A honeymoon trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina has led one Trinity University religion professor to receive a Fulbright Award to teach a course on the Koran in Sarajevo for the spring 2009 semester.

Ruqayya Khan, associate professor of religion at Trinity, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant by the U.S. State Department and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board to teach at the University of Sarajevo.

Professor Khan first went to Sarajevo in June 2007.  While visiting the neighboring country of Croatia during her honeymoon, her new husband suggested a side trip to Sarajevo. While there, she was intrigued by seeing a European city with a Muslim majority population. “It’s amazing to see minarets in an Alpine setting,” she said. Professor Khan also met with the dean and members of the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo.

When she returned to Trinity, Professor Khan contacted the Faculty of Islamic Studies about teaching in Sarajevo. “I asked them if they would be interested in learning what scholars and academics in the United States and Canada have done on the Koran in the last 30 to 40 years,” said Professor Khan.

The dean of the faculty was enthusiastic about the idea and extended an invitation to Professor Khan.

A month later, she applied for a Fulbright grant and in the spring of 2008, she officially received notice of the award.

Professor Khan said she plans to teach how Koranic studies in North America have been innovative, incorporating the voices of many different Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

“I want them to understand that scholars and academics have made certain strides and advances in understanding the Koran,” she said. “American Muslims are interested in interpreting the Koran in modernistic ways, in ways that allow them to be who they are in the 21st century.”

At the same time, Professor Khan is interested in learning more about the experience of Bosniacs – Bosnians who are Muslim. “My teaching and research in the past mainly has been oriented toward Muslim-majority societies in the Middle East and South Asia,” she said.

Professor Khan further explained that Bosniacs have historically been the majority in this European region for 500 years, making them a fundamental part of the social and political fabric.  She hopes that teaching there will shed new light on “what it means to be a Western Muslim.”

Professor Khan will return to San Antonio in the summer, and, in the fall, she will launch a new course on the Koran she designed for the religion department. “We offer courses on the New Testament and on the Hebrew Bible so it seemed a logical thing to develop a course on the Koran,” she said.  

Courses taught:

• Religion and Childhood
• Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
• Islamic Literatures
• Women in Islam

Selected Publications:

Self and Secrecy in Early Islam, University of South Carolina Press, 2008.

" 'The Child on Loan': Childhood, Children and Adolescents in Islamic Studies," Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality: Perspectives from the World¹s Religious Traditions, November, 2005.

  "On the Significance of Secrecy in the Medieval Arabic Romances," Journal of Arabic Literature, January, 2001.

© 2008 Trinity University