When Karen Ruffle tackled the subject of Islam in her ninth-grade World History class, her project was supposed to be five pages long. Instead, her paper on the Five Pillars of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad ran nearly 20 pages. Fascinated by the logic and the cultural expressions of Islamic architecture, paintings, and food, Ruffle recalls, “I remember being at the kitchen table, looking up at my mother, saying, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

Ruffle, assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, is the first University of Miami faculty member to specialize in Islamic studies. Religious studies, she cautions, is not theology. While “religion orients peoples’ lives in significant ways,” she explains, “we have to understand what our humanity does to religion. I want students to see the complexity of lived religion.

“The way in which a man or woman chooses to be a Muslim occupies a spectrum,” she observes. “It takes on 1.6 billion different expressions.”

Ruffle, who grew up in Middlebury, Vermont, among a family of nurses and teachers, learned Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, and Telugu to pursue her research, which focuses on Shi’i Islam in South Asia. As a graduate student at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Ruffle explored how gender and local culture shaped ideas of sainthood in Shi’i Islam in South India.

Ruffle delights in crisscrossing those national and cultural boundaries. While in Iran, she donned hijab, the traditional Muslim woman’s head scarf, and voluntarily continued the practice while in Syria. “It became a ‘second skin’ for me,” she explains. Elsewhere, she is assumed to be from India because of her flower-shaped gold nose piercing. Identity is not fixed, she asserts: what may seem to be contradictory may also be complementary. “Shi’i women in Hyderabad wear saris,” she explains. “It’s a way of saying ‘I’m Shi’i and I’m Indian.’”

She grabs any spare time to dash off to Hyderabad, India, where her fiancé lives and where she conducts much of her research. “I am very much living two lives,” she says. “It makes me a better teacher. I can give many examples of how Islam is real, diverse, and rich.’”

One thing Ruffle has imported from her second home in Hyderabad is her habit of throwing large dinner parties, featuring Irani and Indian specialties (she is perplexed by Miamians’ reliance on take-out food). “It’s very much a part of what we do in India. We enjoy having frequent dinner guests.” Hyderabad, located in the south-central part of the subcontinent and steeped in Iranian history and traditions, reflects the sometimes magical fusion of Hindu and Muslim culture—and food traditions—that ignites this professor’s passion for her work.

“It’s what’s in between the poles—that’s where life is,” she observes. “You can’t develop an understanding or curiosity until those bridges are crossed.”

—Leslie Sternlieb