At the first Global study meeting after the winter break, the speaker Shino Yoshen, who is the instructor from Where There Be Dragons. She didn’t talk about anything complicated, and I think to give us only a surface of information about Islam is much more helpful than going through great depth. Compared to the first seminar I went to, which is the Sunni-Shia event by professor Douglas Sloan Crow, this one has much lesser information, but I definitely absorbed better at this one.
I like the way Ms. Yoshen involves her experience during the seminar, which makes it interesting to learn about. She starts with introducing the Five Pillar in Islam, which gives me a more direct idea of the religion-the central idea, and the essential attempt of the religion. I was surprised when I heard that the Muslim need to pray five times a day, including the first one at the early sunrise. The bonds between people and religion are inseparable, and I start to see why tiny differences between Sunni and Shia can lead to great conflict. During the discussion part, I learned the difference and the origin of Sunni-Shia, which I have no idea before. In the last section, Ms. Yoshen focuses on three questions that most people have misunderstandings on. It also eliminates some of my confusions too. The fact that a woman wears clothes to cover most of their bodies is due to their higher status really overthrown my ideas. From this activity, I learned a lot about Islam and it gave me a really solid fundamental idea of the Islam religion.
I will give myself a participation grade of 2. I was fully engaged in the whole exercise because I was interested in learning about this religion. However, I didn’t ask any questions during the whole seminar, which is a little disappointed. But all in all, I think I did all right. I chose the video for the preparation material before class. I learned about the differences between Sunni-Shia, and the origin of the conflict. Although There was a lot of information, we didn’t use it that much for the class, and it is a little disappointing.
