The Muslim cultures minor promotes a study of Muslims and Islam in order to facilitate a critical and constructive engagement with issues that affect Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The point of this engagement is to prepare students to face the challenges of living in a multireligious, multiracial, and polycultural world.
Specifically, the minor's goals are to encourage, allow and facilitate the following:
- The College's mission to encourage teaching and scholarship that are "informed by, and . . . contribute to, the world's scientific and humanistic enterprises." Attention to the Muslim role in creating modern "civilization" advances this understanding.
- Opportunities for the College community "to share the responsibilities of citizenship and service in the global community." Global citizenship begins with knowledge, and the program provides access to the worlds of the more than one billion Muslims worldwide.
- The development and strengthening of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary programming around issues of concern to Muslim cultures, both contemporary and historical.