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The past two years mark a tumultuous period in the United States’ relations with Middle Eastern nations. U.S. forces have fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and political efforts to reduce the violence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have achieved little success.

While soldiers and diplomats try to implement U.S. policies abroad, academics at UCLA are finding that an increasing number of students are looking to learn more about the Middle East and Islam.

“It seems to me that a lot of students are reading up on the Islamic world,” said history Professor Ghislaine Lydon, who is coordinating a core course on Islamic studies.

UCLA offers graduate degrees in Islamic studies, and Brad Hansen, the second-highest ranking official at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, has a master’s degree from the program. For undergraduates, courses on the Middle East and Islam are dispersed across a wide range of disciplines, from history and Near Eastern languages and cultures to the Arabic language.

In 2002, enrollment in classes dealing with the Middle East increased 10 percent over 2001 levels, said Diane James, a counselor at the von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Frequently, students curious about the Middle East want to learn more about the area as it relates to issues that connect to U.S. politics.

“Usually, in courses relating to the modern Middle East there have been a lot of questions about the Gulf War, the situation in Afghanistan,” said Munir Shaikh, a graduate student in Islamic Studies.

Near Eastern languages and cultures Professor Ismail Poonawala said he has seen a slight increase in the number of students studying the Islamic world, but added that not all of the new students are motivated by a desire to better understand U.S.-Middle Eastern interactions.

“I think you come across a variety of reasons,” he said.

In addition to the campus’s catalogue courses, Fiat Lux seminars offer another avenue for students and professors to explore issues surrounding the Middle East.

“I liked the format of the course, where the students are not pressured by grades,” said Near Eastern languages and cultures Professor Andras Bodrogligeti.

“There is a greater freedom of discussion in the classrooms,” he added.

Bodrogligeti, whose research focuses on central Asia, taught a Fiat Lux seminar in fall 2002 and drew on his travels in Uzbekistan, which in the United States is often described as a center of extremism, though he disagrees with this conception.

“So that was one of the challenges ... to find out one of the hotbeds of fundamentalism is not a hotbed at all,” he said.

While the mass media has increased its coverage of the Middle East as the United States has heightened its political and military involvement in the region since the Sept. 11 attacks, many at UCLA are critical of news coverage of the region.

Poonawala took issue with connections made between the Islamic religion and terrorism and said the likes of Osama bin Laden and his followers constitute only a small portion of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, commenting that reporters should modify the frequently used term “Islamic extremist.”

“Well, I think they should remove the title ‘Islamic,’” he said.

Additionally, Shaikh criticizes coverage of the current U.S. occupation of Iraq for not showing a fuller range of Iraqi reactions to the presence of U.S. troops in their country.

“I think it is important to try to achieve a degree of balance,” he said.