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 took this class for my diversity requirement, so this was my first being exposed to this subject. Prof. Sayeed did a great job introducing and explaining the material to the class, and I really enjoyed listening to her lectures. As expected, there was a mandatory discussion, which was also very engaging and helpful because we went over the class material more thoroughly. Some of the reading materials were challenging to grasp but overall, it was not too bad. What I liked the most is the format of the exams - each exam had 4-5 essay topics but we were given study guides prior to that, which included all the possible essay questions that would appear on the exam. So, as long as you finish the study guide before the exam and answer those questions, you are pretty much set for the exam. There were also weekly quizzes and small assignments but they were pretty easy and short. The quizzes could be retaken multiple times until you get a perfect score, so they can be considered as free points.