Islamic Introduction

When Saeid Golkar teaches the “Intro to Islam” course, one of the first things he asks students is, “What do you know about Islam?”

Loud silence.

“They usually don’t want to say anything about that. They prefer not to talk about it. I think they think I want to enforce my ideas on them, so they try to be cautious,” says Golkar, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

“I can say most of my students don’t know anything about Islam,” he continues. “Or, if they know, they have a very negative stereotype about Islam.”

A native of Iran and a Muslim, Golkar came to the United States in 2009 when he was run out of his teaching position at the University of Tehran for not being Muslim enough. He didn’t blindly agree with the country’s political regime—ruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—which demanded unquestioning belief in the creation of an Islamic state around the world.

An internationally recognized expert on Islam, Golkar’s resume is several pages long and cites multiple instances of being interviewed by national and international news outlets including Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and CNN.

He has published dozens of essays in journals worldwide, authored a book titled “Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran,” and is working on another, “Dictator’s Educational Dilemma: State and Political Control of Universities in Iran.”

He has been a member of such think tanks as The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the National Endowment for Democracy.

In all his work, one of his primary goals is to show Americans—and Western nations, in general—“that the Islamic world is not really a homogenized group,” says Golkar, whose family still lives in Iran.

Islam is the official religion in 26 countries around the world and has 1.8 billion followers. It is divided into several sects, with Sunni and

Shia the most familiar, but there are several smaller ones such as Zaydi, Sufi and Bahá’í. Different sects have different views of what Islam is and how it should be practiced.

With that many Muslim countries, people and beliefs, there is no way everyone acts the same, Golkar says.

“Some of them are crazy without any doubt,” he says. “My idea is, “OK, let’s talk about who these crazy people are. Not everybody is crazy.”

For people in the United States and its allies, one of the major obstacles to understanding Islam is the definition of “rational,” he adds.

When a Muslim blows himself up or stabs or shoots others in the name of Islam, it’s entirely rational to believe that all Muslims are crazy, Golkar says. Yet, to Muslims who kill themselves and others, doing so is rational.

“Why? Because you are going to heaven and you meet the prophet, and if you are crazy, you believe that 72 virgins are also waiting for you,” Golkar says.

“If you are poor, unemployed and are suffering from inequality, discrimination, this is a very rational thing that you kill yourself in the name of Allah and you go and meet all of this. This is the part that the Westerners usually don’t get.”

The thought process of Muslim leaders like Khamenei can be seen in the actions of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, Golkar says.

“All of them are obsessed that they want to create a great civilization,” he says. “They see themselves as somebody who is coming to realize this idea.

“This is not something that we understand here. We are very shortsighted in the West. We have an election. We just want to go to the election and get to vote, so we have to satisfy our constituency. The story is very different in authoritarian regimes.”

Just look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Golkar says. Although the warning signs were in plain view and even discussed by some experts, the overarching belief was that Putin wouldn’t actually do it.

“But that’s how the dictators think,” he says. “They don’t think like us; they don’t have the responsibility to answer to the public. There is no election. They have their own mentality.”

Archaeology and Arrowheads: Student discoveries on display at Chickamauga Battlefield

The arrowhead may be 10,000 years old.

Bullets, a cannonball fragment and buttons trace back to the Civil War. A rusty knife and fork are from World War I.

Each is on display in glass cases at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

Each was uncovered on the battlefield by a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Over the course of several weeks in 2020, students found dozens of Civil War artifacts, including minié balls—the bullets of the war—pieces of flags, shards of 150-year-old glass, chunks of charcoal from campfires and nails from wooden boxes soldiers burned for warmth.

“It was the first archaeological work that had been done on the battlefield in quite some time, so we thought it’d be kind of fun to showcase the community partnership with UTC and the National Park Service,” says Morgan Smith, UTC assistant professor of anthropology who led the 2020 explorations.

“It shows a lot of trust in the professionalism of the archaeology program and the promise of the students.”

By digging, uncovering and identifying the artifacts, students get the chance to conduct the same type of work they’ll be doing if they choose a career in anthropology or archaeology, Smith says.

In addition, the National Park Service gets archaeological surveying done for free as well as making sure the historic significance of the artifacts remains intact.

“As cool as it may be to have your very own minié ball to take home and show off, it ultimately takes away the provenance of that item and its correlation to the park, as well as a part of the greater picture that it can show if it is found in its origin,” says Abbey Vander Sluis, who graduated from UTC in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and now works at the Chickamauga Battlefield as an archaeological technician.

“Once an artifact is removed from the site where it was found, the artifact loses its historic value. We no longer understand the circumstances and events surrounding that artifact.”

Vander Sluis helped curate the exhibit of UTC-uncovered artifacts, working with the battlefield’s Museum Curator Julia Poland.

“It was very exciting to be on the other side of the archaeological world and working in the museum aspect, postcleaning and cataloging of the objects,” Vander Sluis says. “I like to think that I helped connect the park with UTC for future field-school opportunities.”