The University of Chicago Diversity & Inclusion

“The blind man carried the lame man on his shoulders, and the lame man served as the blind man’s eyes,” says Almutawa. Working together they raided the orchard, destroying the trees and fruits, and later denied their crime.

The widely shared parable, which illustrates the unity of the body and soul in moral choices, also shows how different cultures often come back to similar religious themes, says Almutawa, who is concentrating on Jewish and Muslim philosophy. An Arab from Dubai, Almutawa is part of a small but growing number of scholars from the Arab and Islamic world who are venturing across traditions by studying Hebrew and Jewish thought.

It is a phenomenon that James Robinson, Assistant Professor in the History of Judaism and Almutawa’s advisor, considers “the maturing of our field.”

At the Divinity School, faculty and students like Almutawa are encouraged to cross disciplines and open conversations across fields. One student learned Sanskrit and Latin to compare Medieval Catholic and Buddhist philosophers, while another compared devout Modern Iranian and Catholic women within patriarchal traditions.

Almutawa is looking at how a group of little-studied Medieval Muslim philosophers from Basra, Iraq, influenced Jewish thought. Because of her native fluency in Arabic and background in the Quran and classical Arabic and Islamic literature, Almutawa is uniquely situated to puzzle out the texts and decipher their meanings, her professors say.

“I love these books,” says Almutawa. “I love their languages. I love thinking about the history behind them—why they were written and how they were transmitted to us.”

Diversity of Religious Thought Fuels New Insights

Almutawa came to the subject of Jewish and Muslim philosophy while studying the Hebrew language, which she began learning at the Divinity School.

Since its founding, the Divinity School has been fundamentally devoted to the scholarly understanding of religion, and its place in the context of society, economics and culture, says Dean Richard Rosengarten. About two-thirds of the faculty hold appointments in other departments or schools of the University.

It is the only Divinity School in the country that has a single faculty and curriculum educating both for the professoriate and the ministry. “And from there, freedom of thought comes,” Rosengarten says.

The school’s basic assumption is that religion can be seen in many different ways, says William Schweiker, Professor of Theological Ethics and the Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion. Some students become religious leaders as pastors or rabbis. Others pursue paths of pure scholarship, whether digging up pottery shards from first-century Palestine or studying Buddhist meditation. Almutawa tapped into the school’s diversity of expertise, tracing ideas among medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers.

“The diversity of disciplines at the Divinity School makes it possible for me to study how such tales traveled from India, to Greece, to Jerusalem, to Iraq, and finally to Spain,” says Almutawa, “why they were told and retold, and what they mean to the people who received them in the 10th century.”

Tracing Narratives from the 10th Century

Almutawa studies a group of Muslim scholars and philosophers called Ikhwan al-Safa or the Brethren of Purity. They compiled a four-volume philosophical encyclopedia in 10th-century Basra, including sections on math, science, poetry, psychology, and religion.

“They believed they could reach God by understanding the world around them,” says Almutawa, “that learning was a form of worship.” They thought that the more learned they became, the more elevated their souls, and the more they were able to understand God.

She is especially interested in the many stories, narratives, and dialogues that run through the Ikhwan’s writings, and comparing them to Jewish texts—how these tales were told, their roles in philosophical texts, and how they changed from one tradition to another.

“I’m always amazed how liberal and open and creative the medieval thinkers were,” says Almutawa.

The Ikhwan wrote at the beginning of the Golden Age of the Arab and Jewish worlds. In the courts of the rulers, Muslims and Jews together discussed philosophy and the sciences. They were extremely creative in how they defined religion and interpreted divine scriptures.

The theologians’ and philosophers’ opinions in these centuries also were diverse and often shocking to a modern reader, Almutawa says. But what is most exciting is that the Muslim and Jewish philosophers learned about God from each other—and sharing the same deity allowed them to share other aspects of life, she says.

“In our highly Balkanized society, we’re told that all religions are warring against each other and we can’t study them academically and they have nothing to say because religion is just about emotions,” Schweiker says. “At the Divinity School, we’re doing something very different that is unique and important.”

Moon took notice of the southeastern Asian nation long before the rest of the world. This past spring, a devastating cyclone wiped out thousands of villages in the country now known as Myanmar, an impoverished country under a military junta that has been accused of the torture and sexual assault of its citizens.

Given the circumstances, it would be easy to give up hope. But Moon’s idealism has stayed with her since her first introduction to Burma as a teen-ager, through her time at the University as an international relations student, and into her professional career.

Chicago Experience

At Chicago, Moon discovered like-minded people looking to make a difference in the world. She teamed up with Amnesty International for a film festival and was invited to dinner with the vice chair of the Burmese student unions. “As an advocate, I felt I should have personal experience,” Moon says.

She completed a summer internship funded by the University of Chicago Human Rights Program. The internship partnered Moon with the Burma Lawyers Council. When she returned to campus, she focused on her personal experiences to inspire others to get involved. “I met young men and women from the ethnic minority villages who shared personal stories of the military coming in and holding guns to mothers’ heads. I met 19-year-old girls who held my hand because they were so excited I was there. They said, ’Please don’t forget about us. You being here shows that the world cares—we need your help.’

“That was life changing. When I got back to campus, I wanted to organize,” Moon says.

After a lot of research and some significant pestering, Moon organized the first student-led trip that also took faculty to the Thai/Burma border. The group met with organizations providing food aid and construction materials to internally displaced people in Burma, visited a refugee camp, met with organizations training young people, and talked with backpacking humanitarian aid workers and former political prisoners.

Post-Graduate Advocacy

After graduation, Moon accepted a full-time position with the U.S. Campaign for Burma, and she expanded the trips to include students from multiple campuses, including Chicago.

Today, she sees a landscape ripe for change. She started an organization, 8/8/08 for Burma—dually named for the start date of the 2008 Olympic Games and in remembrance of 8/8/88, the date of one of the biggest democratic protests in Burmese history, when the military killed 4,000 protesters and civilians.

Leveraging the Olympics for Democratic Change

Over the past nine months, Moon’s organization has encouraged China, the largest ally and investor in Burma, to use its unparalleled influence with Burma’s military dictators to promote genuine democratic change in the country. Although many think China will continue to face questions about its human rights practices, Moon’s organization is taking the modern, global image that China is projecting and challenging the country to take a stand. The history of the Olympics as a celebration of brotherhood and peace provides the perfect platform for the debate.

Despite the size of the task and the obstacles the country faces, Moon is optimistic. “My vision of a free Burma has a lot to do with the potential for humanity and the whole world. If we fail Burma, we have really screwed up. The condition is ripe for us to be creative and do something to build a positive model for what it means to be human beings.”