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.

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!

Very good class. Organized and interesting. Format was asynchronous with a module to complete each week. That format really worked for me, and the material was interesting rather than stressful. Prof Sayeed seems like a very knowledgeable and nice person.

Overall a very interesting and well-put-together, organized course. I took this with distance learning, but the video lectures were so professional and engaging. Definitely the best organized class in regard to having everything online, lectures were broken into short chunks with small activities in between. Professor Sayeed is also just genuinely a good lecturer. She is very knowledgeable and composed, and cares deeply about making learning about Islam rewarding and accessible. I learned a lot, but it was a pretty tough GE in terms of workload. There's a ton of required reading (2 books, many primary sources per week, articles, research papers, and documentaries), which can get tedious. That said, if you do your stuff, getting a good grade is not hard...The midterms/final were all open note, and you could choose 6 questions/prompts to answer from a list of 8. AND she gave us a list of (maybe 20 or so) questions that she would pull from a week beforehand, so you could prepare really well. The final paper was made optional for us. Overall, it was a challenging course, but it was engaging and rewarding. I don't regret taking it, and would recommend it to anyone who's willing to shift/broaden their perspective.

The production value of Prof Sayeed's lectures is incredible. They are fully shot in a studio with a green screen and her slides come up behind her as she's talking and there are transitions to photos and it's just wow. A great class to take online.
The modules also have quizzes and activities (you can retake multiple times) in between lectures so they don't get too monotonous.

There are 3 equally weighed exams. There is a study guide given out with ~15 possible short answer questions on it and 6 of those are on the exam (you pick 5 to answer and you have 90 minutes). You can pretty much answer the exam questions before the actual exam (by doing the study guide) if you are worried about running out of time.

There were a lot of readings assigned but tbh i didn't do them all, just the shorter or more interesting ones. Some were more reviews of what we learned in lecture.

Overall would take this class again, especially online. I learned so much about Islam that I never thought I would.

Overall, I really appreciated how well-structured this class was as an introduction to Islam. Professor Sayeed seemed very intelligent and concise during lecture. However, if you are simply taking this to fulfill a GE requirement, the workload is a bit much. There were a lot of assigned readings every week, as well as modules that make up a good portion of your grade.

Two of the books that were required weren't listed, so I never ended up buying them, which made certain discussions more difficult. I don't know why they didn't list the required books in the first place.

The exams were pretty reasonable since we were given study guides of all possible questions. That being said, I got B's on all of them (due to poor time management) but managed to scrape by with an A-.

I'd take the class again because I personally found it very fascinating, but if it's not required for your major and you don't like religion/history I would go for something else.

This class would be phenomenal for an Islamic studies student, which I am not. Do not take this class as a GE. It is beyond interesting, but will take up an absurd amount of your time if you want to retain any of the information you are learning. Lectures are interesting and pretty engaging, but the texts assigned are long and dense - some up to 40 pages long of dense, premodern history. Overall, interesting course but not worth the long readings, tiring studying, and blow to your GPA

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.

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This class is pure memorization. Professor Sayeed does not allow electronics, so no computers or iPads , but if you're a good notetaker and complete the study guides before each quiz, then you'll do really well. The course does not have a final -- only 3 quizzes and a final paper at the end which was pretty easy. Try to get Mohsin Ali as a TA. He's great, and if you send him answers to the discussion questions before your section that week, he gives you extra credit for participation (participation is about 20% of your final grade). Mohsin's office hours are very helpful, and he'll basically go over the quiz study guides with you (both the key terms and the short answer prompts). The quizzes are multiple choice and short answer, but there's an extra credit opportunity to receive 3-5 more points on a quiz if you attend an event with a guest speaker, and all you have to do is show up and sign in. This course does require a good amount of effort; Professor Sayeed's lectures are a bit dry, and she only has few slides each lecture but says a lot about each one; however, if you're willing to take good notes and memorize terms for a quiz, you'll succeed. There was one super easy pop quiz in lecture about the material we learned in that class period, so just go to class!

I took this class last quarter and loved it. Not only did it completely educated me about Muslims and the Islamic religion, but it totally changed my perspective. And really thats what classes are for, to change and educate students about real life and very relevant issues. Professor Sayeed was also a great professor. She has lecture slides, but they don't have much content, she likes to say a lot more than are on the slides. Her tests are VERY fair, and the paper at the end isn't bad at all! There's three midterms, no final, but a final paper. She also gives you a study guide for each test so you can know exactly what to look over. Overall loved this class, gave me a profound sense of knowledge and Professor Sayeed is very knowledgeable, sweet, and great at answering questions and being very open and clear!