What It Means - Day 40

This past Friday my Dar al-Islam: India class was honored to Skype with Dr. Seyyed Nasr, one of the world's leading scholars.  I'd like to say that my prestigious position in the academic universe played a role in putting this together, but I think we all know that I'm essentially a near lifeless small fish in a stagnant small pond.  Rather, my most excellent student Ines de Haro got it into her mad brain to contact Nasr directly to ask if he would Skype with us.  I had told the students a story about how, a year earlier, Nasr had very graciously answered an email that I had sent to him, and apparently this was all it took to inspire Ines to act.  I've frequently quoted Nasr in the past, and doubtless will do so repeatedly in the future.  He's the author of The Heart of Islam, along with fifty others books (many of which I own), as well as the editor of the Study Quran. Even if I were not devoting a year to discussing, clumsily, my thoughts on faith, there simply aren't too many days when I'm not reading something by Nasr.  Happily, beyond being a brilliant scholar, Nasr is also a kind and generous man, who gave us an hour out of what was certainly a very busy day. No matter the question he would carefully consider it and then launch into a brutally nuanced ten minute answer.  It wasn't simply that the student had the opportunity to talk to a Muslim scholar, it was also that they had the opportunity to talk to a scholar. Towards the end of the chat I told him that earlier in the day we had Skyped with Qasim Rashid (the next blog post), a member of the Ahmadiyya community, and Nasr, not surprisingly, gave a wonderful discussion of their complicated status in relation to Islam, even throwing in "that's a tough one" at the end. We definitely had one of those classic Core moments when Nasr proposed that the Ahmadiyya "are orthoprixically Muslims but many would argue that they aren't orthodoxically Muslims." It was definitely one of my favorite moments during my time here at Champlain. And Nasr also took time out to reflect upon the time he had spent in Vermont and the natural beauty of the state.

At the end I told Dr. Nasr that I only had one more question, which was about Sufism (which, I'm certain, he's the world's leading authority).  After I finished the question he smiled and said, "Actually, that was two questions." I could only reply, "Yeah, I cheated." 

Since we had read so much of his work Nasr had already risen to the level of folk hero to the students, and the Skype session only reinforced it.  As you can tell from the looks on their faces they had a wonderful time. In the end center of the picture is the occasionally excellent Ines de Haro who put the entire thing together.