When we first started the Islam unit, I wrote about how I was excited to read The Cairo House because my roommate had read it before and said it was a really good read and that she thought I would like it. I just realized that I never followed up on what I thought of the …
Author Archives: Corrina Riess
Changing History (December 3 Class)
In class today, we talked about what China or the Islamic Middle East would be like if a notable event in history didn’t happen, such as Christopher Columbus or lack of US military presence in the Middle East. When class ended, I was still thinking about this, and I remembered an article I saw back …
Something interesting relating to China’s one child policy
Today in class, the topic of China’s one child policy came up briefly as we discussed current events in the countries we have studied this semester. In that brief discussion, a deep memory that I forgot was even in my brain popped out, and it is related to this one child policy. When I was …
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Cultural Differences Surrounding Marriage (November 19 Class)
I always knew that there were many cultural differences between America and other places when it came to marriage. We even saw it in the China unit when we learned about arranged marriages and how the women oftentimes have no say in who they end up marrying. These types of differences were also seen many …
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Sufism and John 3:16 (Nov 14 Class)
I found Sufism to be very interesting! I have heard the term before, but since I have limited knowledge on Islam, I always just thought it was a different type of Islam, similar to Sunni and Shia. Upon reading further, I learned that it is not necessarily a type of Islam, but a different “take” …
Favorite Quotes (Nov. 7 Class)
I can’t actually decide which quote is my favorite. For me, it depends on my mood, or what I may be going through in life. Senior year of high school, I was faced with the dilemma of choosing my senior quote for the yearbook. I knew of many people who had a specific inspirational quote …
Documentary (Nov 5)
I found the documentary on the Hajj very interesting. I thought it was fun to kind of get a first-hand view of what the Hajj is like, and I like how straight and to the point the whole thing was. Sometimes, there are hour long documentaries that can be cut down to about 20-30 minutes …
More Qur’an vs Bible (Oct. 31 Class)
I particularly liked the reading we had to do in preparation for class, because it came from the Qur’an, but we were also given passages from Genesis as a supplement. I knew that there were connections between the two texts, but I never actually took the time to go through and find those connections myself. …
Qur’an vs. Bible (Oct 29 Class)
In class, we had a discussion about the Qur’an and how it is similar to or different from the Bible. I think it can be argued either way, because there are definitely some similarities and differences. Of course, the Qur’an uses mostly Arabic names in some cases, such as Allah for God, Yusef for Joseph, …
My main man Reza Aslan (Oct 24 Class)
When I was buying the books for this class back in August, I was delighted to see that we were reading a book by Aslan. Two years ago, I took one of the special topics religion classes, and that semester it happened to be about religion and politics, so we read one of Aslan’s other …