on sunday we had our first class on islam. our professor is a muslim woman, who for egypt seems quite liberal. she has a phd in islam and i believe she is a sufi which is basically a mystical branch of islam. with her we toured three different historic mosques, which was really fascinating. one, the mosque of ibn tulun, is the oldest mosque in egypt, built in the ninth century. another was both a school and a mosque, and it had four huge arches on each side where the four schools of islamic law were taught. and the third was from the ottoman era and it resembles a european church. each of them are massive. we learned that islam has changed drastically through the centuries depending on who was in charge. like, for example, fifty years ago muslim women didn’t veil themselves. but now the veil is basically considered synonymous with islam in much of the world.
