An Accidental Theologian: Thoughts on Islam in Public and Private Religious Universities

There are seven issues that I raise in this essay about teaching of religion in general and Islam in particular in a university setting. They are: teaching Islam; the nature of the university; the normative type of Islam taught; representation; the political act of teaching; activism; and partnerships between Muslims and Christian schools of theology. I begin, however, with a significant amount of information about my own background. I do this not to be self-indulgent, but because I think my example is illustrative of how a good number of non-Christian students come almost accidentally to the study of theology. As such, it is an important preliminary to the issues discussed below.