I guess the pros and cons of this class can be summarized by the following:

--The professor cares and you will learn A LOT about Islam

Now normally, a class where you learn a lot, and where the professor cares is a good thing. In many ways for this class, it is a good thing: the professor responds to emails, the professor has engaging lectures, and the course modules are very well designed. Furthermore, I learned more about Islam than I ever imagined I would have. Regardless of your experience with Islam, you WILL learn about things you will have no idea that existed. This class really opened my eyes about what Islam is and isn't.

That said, the professor acts as if this class is the only class we're taking. The workload makes engineering upper-divs look like cakewalks. During a typical week, you will be assigned 80 or so pages, and you WILL be tested on them. One week, I was assigned 160 pages of reading. Yes, that's right, 160 pages of dense reading, that ranges from really engaging to mind-numbingly boring. You will also need to acquire Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World and An Introduction to Muhammad. Those books are NOT listed as required books, but they are.

Exams are generally not too bad, but you will have 3 of them, weighted equally. You will be given a study guide for each of them, and exams are short response. Fortunately, the study guide has questions that will be on the exam, and since they're open note you can really prepare for them. Modules are also graded on correctness, and discussion sections are mandatory, with participation graded. Discussion sessions do cover tested materials. Like most GEs, the discussions were well organized (Azeem Malik was an awesome TA). Apparently, there's some extra credit, but never needed it; my grade was never seriously in jeopardy.

In normal years, there is a final paper required for this class. Fortunately, due to COVID, it was made optional (no-harm), but I imagine it would be hard to do

Maybe if we were on the semester system, the class would not be as bad. Then again, Dr. Sayeed would probably use the extra time to pile on even more work. Regardless, we're on the quarter system. so the class has horrible amounts of work.

But if you are really interested about Islam, and have a lot of time on your hands, this class actually teaches you a lot.

I am going to keep it real with all of you, there is not one person who I know that took this class and loved it. For all of my LS majors, I am still deciding whether this class is worth the extra GE credits. For other humanities majors I advise against taking this class unless you're really into learning about Islam.

I believe this class has potential but right now it is a little bit of a boring, confusing mess. The faculty involved in Global Islam are all very understanding and are really good at getting back to you. However, I found a lot of their instruction as vague. You are required to do about 3 hours of reading a week which is not fun because they are long and dense, but you have to read them and pay attention in class because you never know what will be asked on the weekly quizzes. The topic is very broad and although the professors try to centralize on the 4 "big themes", a lot of the information is random and doesn't exactly follow a pattern. Although I do like the professors as people, they somehow make the topic extremely boring. The research and writing specialists are nice, but are also not very helpful with the assignments.

The grading structure is based on 6 things. Attendance 10%, Participation 10%, Weekly Quizzes 20%, Response Paper 25%, Final Paper 20%, CoCurricular Activity 5%. The lowest quiz grade is dropped. There are 4 prompts for the response papers, you only have to do 3 of them, 500-600 words each. Final paper, 5-6 pages max, is broken down into 5 sections including related questions, articles, thesis and outline, revised thesis and outline, and final draft. I had a really difficult time figuring out what the paper needed. The directions and rubric were unclear and vague. The cocurricular is just a 2-3 hr activity you do outside of class and you have to write a 2 page response on it. The key to doing well in this class is building a good relationship with you TA, doing all the assignments, and participating in discussion. Your TA is your grader for everything so questions or details on assignments should be reviewed by them.

It is not inherently a difficult class, it is just a lot of work and it is not very fun. I do appreciate that faculty and staff are all a really nice and passionate about what they do but the structure and clarity needs a lot of work. Just prepare your friends and roommates for complaining about how much you dislike the class. I hope this helps.

Prof. Sayeed is very intelligent and engaging. However, there were a few things about this class that I didn't like...

1. She doesn't allow any form of technology in class (so all notes must be handwritten) and only posts a few of the slides from lecture. Because I'm a slow writer, I ended up missing a lot of the information and couldn't refer back to most of the slides because they weren't available. :(
2. The tests were very inconsistent! The first one was incredibly easy and the last two were pretty hard. They include fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and multiple choice reading comprehension questions.

The breakdown is as follows: 3 midterms, 0 finals, 1 six-page paper, and participation points for showing up to discussion. There are a lot of readings (which I didn't really do) and there was 1 pop-quiz that was just factored into participation. We also got one 5-point extra credit assignment and study guides for all of the midterms.

Overall, I feel like I learned meaningful information and liked the class material. It was stressful at times but if you study enough for the exams you should get at least an A-. The paper was also graded really generously so that's a plus!

I guess the pros and cons of this class can be summarized by the following:

--The professor cares and you will learn A LOT about Islam

Now normally, a class where you learn a lot, and where the professor cares is a good thing. In many ways for this class, it is a good thing: the professor responds to emails, the professor has engaging lectures, and the course modules are very well designed. Furthermore, I learned more about Islam than I ever imagined I would have. Regardless of your experience with Islam, you WILL learn about things you will have no idea that existed. This class really opened my eyes about what Islam is and isn't.

That said, the professor acts as if this class is the only class we're taking. The workload makes engineering upper-divs look like cakewalks. During a typical week, you will be assigned 80 or so pages, and you WILL be tested on them. One week, I was assigned 160 pages of reading. Yes, that's right, 160 pages of dense reading, that ranges from really engaging to mind-numbingly boring. You will also need to acquire Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World and An Introduction to Muhammad. Those books are NOT listed as required books, but they are.

Exams are generally not too bad, but you will have 3 of them, weighted equally. You will be given a study guide for each of them, and exams are short response. Fortunately, the study guide has questions that will be on the exam. Modules are also graded on correctness, and discussion sections are mandatory, with participation graded. Discussion sessions do cover tested materials.

In normal years, there is a final paper required for this class. Fortunately, due to COVID, it was made optional (no-harm), but I imagine it would be hard to do

Maybe if we were on the semester system, the class would not be as bad. Unfortunately, we're on the quarter system. so the class has horrible amounts of work.

But if you are really interested about Islam, and have a lot of time on your hands, this class actually teaches you a lot.

Professor Sayeed is a very academic professor. When she lectures, she never states anything with certainty and made sure to be inclusive and accurate in all of her statements. She does assigns a lot of reading but her tests are pretty easy if you read/ pay attention in class and the final essay is not too bad. I also have Cameron Zargar as a TA who is excellent in discussion and is a cool guy overall. So if you try somewhat in this class, you can generally get an A and learn quite a bit about Islam.

Professor Sayeed is a great professor who really cares about her students and their learning. She is very fair and willing to adapt the syllabus and give extra credit when needed. The class was very interesting and I enjoyed going to lectures. The information covered is very contemporary, relevant, and feels like it is actually applicable to real life. There is a required field visit to an Islamic institution to be incorporated into the final paper for the class, which was relatively difficult to arrange and actually do, but it was a meaningful experience that I ultimately enjoyed. Overall, I would definitely recommend this class and would definitely take it again with Professor Sayeed.

Pretty hard class if you have zero background in Islam. TA's said that the professor made the class harder this year, so the grade curves aren't the most accurate. Midterms weren't easy. I would have taken another GE if I had known.

This class was one of the most interesting classes I have taken in UCLA so far. Professor Sayeed takes care to ensure that we learn outside of the classroom, and frequently invites different guest speakers to lectures so as to provide us with different perspectives. Her lectures and slides are incredibly clear and well organized, and she highlights key terms that would definitely come out for the quizzes and midterms. There was once she brought the first and only Muslim judge into lecture to speak with us, and many other times where she brought in various PHD candidates from other universities specialising in a variety of topics to teach us too. Grades comprise of 30% participation (in discussion sections only, not for lectures - but active participation is required i.e. students have to come prepared with answers for reading prompts. This really depends on your TA - I had a pretty strict one, where even though I attended all the sections and responded to every prompt earnestly, I received 97% for participation), 15% quizzes (there are 2 pop quizzes, normally given nearing the end of the course. Quizzes do require you to study beforehand), 10% midterm (requires memorisation of arabic terms, and ID and response for readings), 20% papers (2 papers 10% each, TAs tend to grade harshly at the start and more leniently towards the end) , and 25% of the final paper. The final paper requires a field trip to a local Muslim institution of your choice (note that transportation is not provided, although Professor Sayeed makes the effort to coordinate with select institutions beforehand). There is a lot of flexibility in the paper as long as you consult your TA/Professor before embarking on the project. There are many extra credit opportunities to take advantage of, many of which are extracurricular seminars where Professor Sayeed was the facilitator. Overall, even though the class was a lot of work, the assignments and lectures were all very interesting and engaging. Would definitely take this class again.

A lot of work but fair grading. Take Evan as TA, fair grader and a great TA overall. Discussions are mandatory but very engaging. A lot of readings but skimming should suffice

I took this as a GE expecting it to be a lot easier than it is. If you are like me and REALLY hate reading, just know by not doing the assigned reading you really screw yourself. Luckily I switched to pass no pass and saved my GPA. This is because the midterm really ruined me. It was half multiple choice which was based off vocab terms (easy) and a second half based off reading. So don't expect an easy A. I wish I was more interested in the subject because every discussion I had to lie about doing the reading and try really hard to make something up about the readings to get the participation credit. There is no final which is nice but there are two papers you have to write. The first paper was really easy and is really short (like 2-3 pages). You have to visit a Muslim institution for the final paper but she arranges a lot of places you can go to for this so finding a place isn't a problem. Try and find somebody to share an uber with because I spent way too much money on that. If you are interested in the subject you'll enjoy this class otherwise, not so much.