About the Authors.
Maya Dworkis and Renee Syzdek created this page as an assignment for our religious studies course, The Millennium, during the spring 1999 semester at Connecticut College.
Both of us were interested in the topic of Islamic millennialism because we knew very little about it. Since both of us were raised in the United States and do not personally know any Muslims, the only source of information about the Islamic faith has come from the media, or other courses' readings. We believe that the media depicts a very grim picture about the religion of Islam in general. Think about it, what we hear on the news is totally subjective to our Judeo-Christian culture, the Muslims are too often seen either as Middle Eastern terrorists or as Kosovar refugees. The coming millennium is based on the Christian calendar, and we were interested in finding out whether or not Muslims believed the millennium (theirs) would hold any significance.
Through this study we learned about Islamic religious beliefs and the connection to political movements. We both believe that this project has been rewarding in that it broadened our knowledge and understanding of the way in which religion can drive political movements. It just proves that in order to understand the events of our time we need to understand the mind set of the people whom we are studying.
We hope by looking at this web-site, you too have gained a better understanding of this one aspect of history and culture that makes our world what it is today.