I still remember that day when a healthy discussion over some issue was going on in my economics class at university, when my professor, a PhD, uttered the words ‘Alhamdulillah, I am a sunni, I am a muslim.’ These words took me and many other likeminded students in my class by surprise. I could not get the bizarre logic of uttering these unnecessary words in the midst of a socio economic discussion, especially when the class, although in minority, comprised of students from diverse religious backgrounds. Even if she considered it essential to make a reference to the Islamic economic system, she could have easily done that in a mild tone without boasting about her own religious and sectarian affiliations wrapped in an ‘Alhamdulillah’. Moreover, the way this sentence was uttered, and the order in which her sectarian view followed by her religious affiliation was mentioned, it gave an impression as if her views are divinely superior to others. At that point of time, none of the students present, including me, dared to cut her off in the middle and question, protest or confront her on the statement that she made.
