![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/02\/800px-Alhambra_by_night.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I sometimes need to remind a few of my critics that I\u2019m paid to profess Arabic and Islamic studies, not to do apologetics. \u00a0That\u2019s always been the case, and it remains so still today.<\/p>\n
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For instance, I have just, within the past few minutes, finished grading a stack of student papers from my course on the Humanities of Islam, which focuses principally on literature, art, and architecture.<\/p>\n
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Now, though, I need to get ready for tomorrow\u2019s classes. \u00a0(No rest for the wicked! \u00a0And who, those critics might be inclined to point out, could possibly deserve rest, by that standard, less than I<\/em> do?)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In my class on Islamic philosophy, we\u2019re reading Lenn Evan Goodman\u2019s translation of the twelfth-century Arabic allegorical philosophical novel\u00a0\u1e24ayy ibn Yaq\u1e93\u0101n<\/i>\u00a0(<\/i>\u062d\u064a \u0628\u0646 \u064a\u0642\u0638\u0627\u0646,\u00a0Alive, son of Awake<\/i>) \u2014 also known, in Latin, as the Philosophus Autodidactus \u2014 <\/b><\/i>that was\u00a0written by the Andalusian or Iberian philosopher Ibn Tufayl (Ab\u016b Bakr Mu\u1e25ammad ibn \u02bfAbd al-Malik ibn Mu\u1e25ammad ibn Tufayl\u00a0al-Qays\u012b\u00a0al-Andalus\u012b; ca. 1105-1185).<\/p>\n