Guggenheim Fellow Sachiko Murata Translating Chinese Text on Islam

Guggenheim Fellow Sachiko Murata Translating Chinese Text on Islam: From her trove of teachable moments, Dr. Sachiko Murata recalled a conversation with a student who unabashedly, and with what she hoped was benign ignorance, disparaged an Arabic title he’d spotted on her office bookshelf. “ ‘You’re such a nice person, how do you study this terrible thing?’” she was asked. “This was just seven years ago. Oh, that kind of attitude …”

Her voice trails off.

That a college student would be so reactionary troubled her, she explains, especially in an era when the essence of Islam is being obscured by terrorists twisting the message to serve their own purposes.