When Fulbright Scholar Dr. Mukhtasar Syamsuddin discusses the “Muslim World,” he has several different world to discuss.
“The Islamic culture is the only one in the world based on the Koran, but the Muslim culture is a social construct,” he said. “There are Muslim Americans, Muslim Canadians, Muslim Arabs, Muslim Indonesians.”
Syamsuddin, a Muslim Indonesian, will share these worlds with Northeastern State University over the next six weeks through the Fulbright Visiting Specialists Program. Syamsuddin is the first Fulbright Scholar to be hosted by NSU.
Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.
Syamsuddin teaches philosophy and philosophy of religion at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. Theme of his Fulbright visit is “Direct Access to the Muslim World.”
Garments Syamsuddin said he wears in his home country reflect what he said was the diversity of Muslim culture.
Holding his hands to his shoulders, Syamsuddin explained “the clothes you wear must cover your body from here to your foot. You have to do this primarily when you go to pray.
Syamsuddin wore a wrap-around sarong in two hues of green to show what Indonesian Muslim men wear. Muslim men in Arabia usually wear looser floor length robe-like garments he said. Syamsuddin also wears trousers.
He said Muslim women in Indonesia wear headscarves, but “they’re just closing up their hair, not closing up their eyes.”
“In Iran, women close up all of their body but their eyes,” he said.
Syamsuddin said he also will spend his six-week visit clarifying Islamic terms such as “jihad,” which, he said, are misunderstood.
“Jihad is to do your religious commitments truly,” he said. “It does not mean you have to fight against another Muslim or another person. Terrorism is not an expression of jihad.”
He said jihad is a misunderstood word “not just in America, but in the Islamic world itself.”
He said Islamic terrorists see unbelievers as the enemy and have tried to kill them.
“”But according to Islamic teaching, the unbeliever is not the enemy,” he said. “One Islamic teaching is to keep their life in harmony, not in conflict and not to kill.”
Phoenix
