The Chronicle of Higher Education
Daily News, Wednesday, October 31, 2001
http://chronicle.merit.edu/free/2001/10/2001103101t.htm

A Georgia Professor's Web Site on
Islam Attracts New Attention

By BROCK READ

"Islam literally means surrender, implying surrender
to God. And a Muslim, literally, is one who is
surrendering," writes Alan Godlas, an associate
professor of religion at the University of Georgia, in
the introduction to his Web site devoted to Islamic
studies.

The Web site is a comprehensive collection of links
and resources documenting Islam's history, orders, and
sacred texts, as well as information on its place in
the modern world, its stance on women's rights, its
art and architecture, and its history of mysticism.
Mr. Godlas has maintained the site since 1997, but the
September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and Pentagon have given it unprecedented
popularity.

The premise of the Web site is straightforward: Mr.
Godlas scours the Internet for informative articles
and resources and divides them into categories like
"Islam and AIDS," "Liberal, Post-Liberal, and
Progressive Islam," and "Sufism, Sufis, and Sufi
Orders: Islamic Mysticism." Two types of links make
the cut, he says -- primary-source material from
Islamic Web sites that highlight the religion's own
viewpoints, and scholarly research on the subjects.

"It is one of my general purposes to give a balanced
viewpoint," Mr. Godlas says. A section on Islam in
Afghanistan includes links to Web sites and articles
supporting the Taliban, details of the United States'
and United Nations' past plans to undermine the
country's fundamentalist government, and an academic
paper on the nation's future.

Finding useful resources online can be a challenge,
according to Mr. Godlas. "There isn't a whole lot of
academic material on the Web. I think scholars have
been a little slow to publish online," he says. But
the quality of the material, he says, has improved
greatly since he founded the site: "There's gradually
been a nice number of pieces coming in."

The influx of Islam-related materials has allowed him
to include some further-flung links, including a
sizable section on the mystical tradition of Sufism,
his area of concentration, and even a Web site showing
the prayer ritual of the Muslim folk-rock musician
Richard Thompson. Mr. Godlas found that site because
it featured a link to his own page.

Several college professors have used the Web site to
augment courses on Islam, including Amir Hussain, an
assistant professor of religious studies at California
State University at Northridge. In courses about Islam
and contemporary religious thought, Mr. Hussain has
often directed his students to the site and used
videos from it to demonstrate Islamic practices.
Mr. Godlas's is "far and away the best Web site for
the study of Islam in North America," Mr. Hussain
says. "It's comprehensive without being overwhelming."

Although academics have known about the site for
some time, the September 11 attacks spurred much
greater general interest. In the wake of the attacks,
Mr. Godlas posted a number of responses from Muslim
organizations and scholars, including
comments made available by the American Academy of
Religion's Study of Islam Section, on whose steering
committee he serves. The responses -- and the general
information he has collected -- attracted attention.

In the past, an average of 250 people would visit the
site every day, Mr. Godlas says. Now -- aided by
prominent links to it from the Web sites like National
Geographic's -- the daily total is in the low
thousands. Mr. Godlas tracks his visitors and says
that a significant number of visitors log on from
Malaysia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and the United
Arab Emirates.

He has also heard from journalists seeking
background on Islamic traditions. "It's been a vehicle
that has attracted the press," he says of the site. "I
got a call from The Wall Street Journal when they did
an article about Muslims shaving their beards so as
not to stand out." Before the Internet became a widely
used information tool, reporters would have looked to
scholars who had published multiple books on Islam;
now, he says, "they'll just put 'Islam' into a search
engine and e-mail the owners of the pages" they find.

"One of the positive things that has come out of this
crisis is that the American public's interest in
finding out about Islam has skyrocketed," Mr. Godlas
says. "Because of this particular event, and now
especially our mobilization militarily, it's crucial
for people to understand the difference between
militant extremism in the name of Islam and Islam per
se. And to the degree that people don't understand
that [distinction], Muslim-Americans in particular
will receive the brunt of any prejudice that derives
from that misunderstanding."

At the same time, he says, response to his work has
been overwhelmingly supportive. "Right away I
received two negative e-mails," one of which appears
in the Web page's guestbook, "but after that
everything has been so positive -- people expressing
gratitude for the diverse information I have on Islam,
people also asking what they can do to help make
Americans more aware that Islam is not the enemy."

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