Just a little Update

Hi there once again everyone! I haven't posted in a short while and I just wanted to update everyone on my current research and process that I've been going through. The Imam of the mosque has come back from his pilgrimage, and that means it's time for my to schedule my first interview! Shabaz had referred me to him previously, and suffice to say I'm pretty excited to get to sit down and talk about my topic with an Imam. It took me a bit of searching to find a place to E-mail the Imam at, but once I was able to find it I just sent a request and he responded within a day or so! We're all set up for an interview tomorrow that I'm sure I'll be posting a review of in the future. For our project we're expected to do two interviews, and lucky enough for me, my professor put me in contact with a man who happened to go to the same college I went to previously, and just happens to be doing his master's project on the power of faith, my exact topic. It's almost a situation too good to be true, as not only is he working on a similar topic, but he's researching it currently with all he's learned still fresh in his mind. I'm definitely going to be connecting with him in the future and likely will interview him so I can have sizable material for the "Power of Faith" branch of research that I was interested in writing about in my fieldstudy.

Recently I also took a look through some of the research that has come before me on topics of Islam and American culture, I found four or so great sources for my project, even something as detailed as economic workforce data from over 40 predominately Muslim countries! That particular study is going to be very useful towards my writings about gender equality in Islam, as I'm continuing to notice something that I first observed when I spoke to Shabaz, and I'm starting to think that the the idea of women being submissive to men in Islam is not exactly as true or as widespread as we're led to believe. I'll be sure to ask a few questions to the Imam on that topic to see what he knows as a Mufti, and will update soon with a review of the interview.