Icon for Africas Islamic Experiences- History, Culture, and Politics
I’ve got an iPhone app! I don’t mean a new app on my iPhone. I’ve far too many of those already. I mean that is I have created an iPhone app…kind of…
What has really happened is that a book I helped edit has been turned into an application. The volume comes, in part, from a conference on Islam and Africa I helped organize as a graduate assistant under the direction of Ali A. Mazrui for his Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University. Before leaving the Institute when I began working for NITLE, my colleague and I had edited a number of the conference papers and begun initial steps toward assembling a volume on the topic. But as the book was not to be simply conference proceedings, but rather a truly cohesive collection of essays on the subject, the project wasn’t finished.
I wasn’t sure what happened to the project until Professor Mazrui sent me the book. I later discovered the app by accident when I was searching for applications that might be useful for the teaching of Arabic.
Though I am far from an impartial critic, I found it is an interesting and impressive volume, composed only in part of essays developed from papers delivered at the Islam and Africa conference. Because of this, I can’t take much credit for the book. It was, as Professor Mazrui so graciously acknowledges, a team effort, but it is definitely his vision, engagement and leadership that originated the project and saw it through to its completion.