Over the past three academic years, I have twice been called upon to teach a class titled “The Academic Study of Islam.” This is an MA level course that is meant to introduce students to the graduate program as well as provide them some of the competencies needed to carry out their studies over the course of their degree. When I was first offered this course, I thought to myself, “Great! This is exactly the kind of introduction to the field of Islamic studies that I wish I had as a beginning graduate student!” We cover some of the perennial problems for scholars of Islam, such as which transliteration system to use (Library of Congress? IJMES? Encyclopaedia of Islam? EI2 or EI3?) and how to get it to work on your computer. The course introduces students to the primary scholarly reference works, and also covers problems related to…