Teaching early Muslim history: Facilitating criticality through a source-based approach

This chapter reflects on teaching early Islamic history to MA students from Muslim-majority countries at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London. It provides an account of a source-based history course on the seventh century, which aims to wean students off thinking about the life of Muhammad in terms regularly used for ’secular’ historical texts. Just as educators have a duty to challenge the politicised use of history in the creation of nationalist myth, I argue that they also have a duty to muddy the waters of religious narratives.