This document discusses the impact of religion on civilizations in Africa, India, and the Americas through several newspaper articles and historical texts. In Africa, documents discuss how Timbuktu was once a major intellectual center under Islam with many scholars and libraries. They also discuss how some religious leaders have convinced others that female circumcision is not mandated by Islam. In India, the document discusses the ongoing discrimination and violence faced by Dalits, or "untouchables", despite laws against it, showing the impact of the Hindu caste system. It provides statistics on crimes against Dalits. In the Americas, no documents were included in this packet.

1. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Document Packet and Outlines for Final Essay
Final Essay is due in hard copy (printedout before class tobe handed in during
class) and on google drive on Monday June 3.
The first partof thispacketincludes documentsto choosefromfortheparagraph on Africa,India and
Americas.
Before youlookthroughthese documents,write downyourPEGShere:______________________
Rememberyouare tryingto answerthe question: Howdidreligionsimpact civilizationspolitically,
economically,sociallyor geographically?
Write down the thesisstatements for the paragraphs you have already written.
ChristianityimpactedMedieval Europe _________________ (politically,economically,sociallyor
geographically) because…
Islamimpacted___________________ (name of civilization)
_________________ (politically,economically,sociallyorgeographically) because…
What do these twothesisstatementshave incommon?Whatisthe THEME?
As you lookthrough thesedocuments,try to find evidencethatconnectswith this sametheme,so that
yourfinal essay will havea common themethroughout alltheparagraphs.
**You only have to choose 1 document for this paragraph.

2. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Africa Documents
Title of newspaper article: When Timbuktu Was the Paris of Islamic Intellectuals in Africa
By LILA AZAM ZANGANEH
Published: April 24, 2004 in the New York Times
In Timbuktu, in Mali, West Africa, thousands of medieval manuscripts (documents) that include
poetry by women, legal reflections and innovative scientific writings have been discovered,
changing ideas about African and Islamic civilizations.
''The manuscripts reveal that black Africa had literacy (ability to read and write) and
intellectualism -- thus going beyond the idea that Africa is a continent of 'song and dance,' ''
John O. Hunwick, a scholar who has uncovered some of the writings, said in a recent interview.
Although this rich intellectual heritage is familiar to numerous Africans, many Westerners still
believe that Africa had only an oral, nonliterate (not able to read or write) culture. In reality,
Timbuktu was once a haven (special place) of high literacy. These manuscripts, some dating to
the 14th century(1300s) and written mostly in Arabic, show that medieval Timbuktu was a
religious and cultural hub (center) as well as a commercial (trading) crossroads on the trans-
Saharan caravan route.
Title of newspaper article: Mutilating Africa's Daughters: Laws Unenforced,
Practices Unchanged
By TINA ROSENBERG
Published: July 5, 2004 in New York Times
One strategy that has proved effective in stopping female circumcision* in Africa is persuading
religious leaders to stop the widespread, and false belief that Islam calls for circumcision. Ms.
Shuriye (a woman who performed circumcisions in a Somali community in northern Kenya in
East Africa) finally laid down her knife after Womankind(a woman’s organization) brought
liberal Islamic leaders to see her, who convinced her that the practice was nowhere in the
Koran. They also told her to apologize to her victims and offer them camels as compensation.
Ms. Shuriye has no camels to give but has been begging forgiveness from the women she cut. "I
now feel like I've committed a sin against God," she says. In Mali, where local groups are very
active, one of them, Sini Sanuman, just convinced one of the country's most important
Islamic leaders to begin speaking out against female circumcision — a huge victory.
* female circumcision: cutting out parts of girls’ genitals(clitoris and labia) in order to purify
them for marriage and prevent them from engaging in sex before marriage

3. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Title of newspaper article: Rising Muslim Power in Africa Causes Unrest in
Nigeria and Elsewhere
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: November 1, 2001 in The New York Times
But it is in Nigeria, Africa's most populated country, that the rise of Islam as a political
force has been most explosive and violent. It began shortly after the country came out of
nearly 16 years of ruinous (destructive) military rule. The 120 million inhabitants(people)
were living in a society where almost everything had collapsed. The leaders of a small
northern state called Zamfara introduced Islamic law, or Shariah, in late 1999. This
decision was very popular.
In Nigeria, crime has reportedly dropped in some of the states with Shariah (Muslim
religious law), with all of them banning alcohol and prostitution. Women are forced to
cover their hair; girls are separated from boys at school, if they are schooled at all.
Cow thieves have had their hands cut off. A teenage girl was given 100 cane strokes for
premarital sex; another woman has just been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Title of newspaper article: Next Question for Tunisia: The Role of Islam in Politics
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: February 20, 2011 in the New York Times
In Tunisia, in North Africa, about 98 percent of the population of 10 million is Muslim,
but Tunisia’s liberal social policies and Western lifestyle break stereotypes that many
people have about the Arab world. Abortion is legal,polygamy is banned and women
commonly wear bikinis on the country’s Mediterranean beaches. Wine is openly sold in
supermarkets and purchased at bars across the country.
Women’s groups say they are concerned that after the revolution conservative (religious)
forces could make the country more religious and take the country away from its liberal
traditions.
“Nothing is irreversible,” said Khadija Cherif, a former head of the Tunisian Association
of Democratic Women, a feminist organization. “We don’t want to let down our guard.”

4. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Ms. Cherif was one of thousands of Tunisians who marched through Tunis, the capital,
on Saturday demanding the separation of mosque and state in one of the largest
demonstrations since the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali.
Protesters held up signs saying, “Politics ruins religion and religion ruins politics.”
Queen Amina’s Reign (from textbook page 418)
In the 1500s, Queen Amina, the leader of the Hausa city-state of Zazzau, in what is today
Northern Nigeria (in West Africa), was very dedicated to being a Muslim. She invited Muslim
scholars, judges and religious leaders to come to her city, Zazzau, a Hausa city-state. Queen
Amina was known for her military victories.
Statistics Show Women Fare Badly in Muslim Countries, but U.N. Official Says Critics Are
‘Stereotyping’ Islam
October 22, 2010 on cnsnews.com
By Patrick Goodenough
The World Economic Forum last week distributed its annual Global Gender Gap Report, a review of how
134 countries have succeeded in achieving equality between women and men in four areas – economic
participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival.
While some non-Muslim countries do poorly, the vast majority of the worst-scoring (least equality)
countries are Islamic, most of them Arab states (and many of these are in Africa).
Seventeen of the 20 countries at the bottom of the gender equality scale (that means they have some of
the worst inequalities between men and women) are Islamic (the ones that are bolded are in Africa) –
Lebanon (placed at 116), Qatar (117), Nigeria (118), Algeria (119), Jordan (120), Oman (122), Iran (123),
Syria (124), Egypt (125), Turkey (126), Morocco (127), Benin (128), Saudi Arabia (129), Mali (131),
Pakistan (132), Chad (133) and Yemen (134).
The three non-Muslim countries in the bottom 20 are Nepal at 115, Ethiopia at 121 and Cote d’Ivoire at
130.

5. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
India document
Title: India: ‘Hidden Apartheid’ ofDiscrimination Against Dalits
By Human Rights Watch
Written: FEBRUARY 14, 2007
On December 27, 2006 Manmohan Singh became the first sitting Indian prime minister to openly
acknowledge the parallel between the practice of “untouchability” and the crime of apartheid (segregation
of whites and blacks).
Dalits (the “untouchables”) suffer through segregation in housing, schools, and access to public services.
They are denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and frequently abused at the
hands of the police and upper-caste community members who enjoy the government’s protection.
Historical and current discrimination violates Dalits’ rights to education, health, housing, property,
freedom of religion, free choice of employment, and equal treatment before the law. Dalits also suffer
routine violations of their right to life and security of person through state-sponsored or –approved acts of
violence, including torture.
Caste-motivated killings, rapes,and other abuses are a daily occurrence in India. Between 2001 and 2002
close to 58,000 cases were registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act – legislation that criminalizes particularly horrible abuses against Dalits and tribal
community members. A 2005 government report states that a crime is committed against a Dalit every 20
minutes. Though staggering, these figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits
do not register cases for fear of retaliation (revenge) by the police and upper-caste individuals.
Attempts by Dalits to defy the caste order,to demand their rights, or to lay claim to land that is legally
theirs are consistently met with economic boycotts or retaliatory violence (violence to get back at them
for trying to fight for their rights). For example, in Punjab on January 5, 2006 Dalit laborer and activist
Bant Singh, seeking the prosecution of the people who gang-raped his daughter, was beaten so severely
that both arms and one leg had to be amputated. On September 26, 2006 in Kherlanji village, Maharashtra,
a Dalit family was killed by an upper-caste mob, after the mother and daughter were stripped, beaten and
paraded through the village and the two brothers were brutally beaten. They were attacked because they
refused to let upper-caste farmers take their land. After widespread protests at the police’s failure to arrest
the perpetrators,some of those accused in the killing were finally arrested and police and medical officers
who had failed to do their jobs were suspended from duty.
Exploitation of labor is at the very heart of the caste system. Dalits are forced to perform tasks that are
seen as too “polluting” or degrading for non-Dalits to carry out. According to unofficial estimates, more
than 1.3 million Dalits – mostly women – are employed as manual scavengers to clear human waste from
dry pit latrines (outhouses). In severalcities, Dalits are lowered into manholes without protection to clear
sewage blockages, resulting in more than 100 deaths each year from inhalation of toxic gases or from
drowning in excrement (human waste). Dalits comprise the majority of agricultural, bonded, and child
laborers in the country. Many survive on less than US$1 per day.

6. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Americas Documents
Title of section:AztecSacrificesfor the Sun God
Booktitle:WorldHistory: Patterns of Interaction
By RogerBeck etal.
page 456
The mostimportantritualsinvolvedasungod,Huitzilopochtli.AccordingtoAztecbelief,thisgodmade
the sun rise everyday.Inorderto have the strengthto make the sun rise everyday,Huitzilopochtli
neededhumanblood.Withouthumanblood,he wouldbe tooweaktomake the sunrise and the world
wouldbe plungedintodarknessandeverythingandeveryonewoulddie.Forthisreason,Aztecpriests
practicedhumansacrifice ona massive scale.Thousandsof victimswere killedeveryyearbypriestswho
carvedout theirhearts.
Maya Art
Many piecesof Maya art are spiritual innature,designedtoappease orcurry the favorof the gods…
Most Maya art depictsgods,greatrulers,legendaryheroes,religiousscenes,andoccasionally,daily
life…The dominance of the Maya religioncanbe seen throughall of these artforms;most objectshave
a spiritual orreligiouspurpose.
You areallowed to use textualevidencefromother sourcesincluding the textbook.You may find the
following chaptersin the textbookuseful.
Chapter3 especiallypages 61-71 (HinduismandIndia)
Chapter7 especially189-199 (India’scivilizations)
Chapter8 AfricanCivilizations
Chapter9 Americas
Chapter15 SocietiesandEmpiresof Africa

7. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Paragraph Outline for Africa, India OR Americas paragraph
Transition
Show either the similarities
or differences between
what you wrote about
Islamicempires and what
you are about to write for
this paragraph.
Thesis
Related to one document
focused on one of the
followingregions:
 Africa
 India OR
 Americas
____________________ (name of religion) impacted______________________
(name of civilization)
__________________ (politically,economically,socially,geographically)
because …
Background:
Write at leasttwo
sentences explainingthe
religion and civilization you
will bediscussingin this
paragraph.
Evidence including
proper introduction of
source and citation
(Author Page).
 Make sure your
evidence connects to
your thesis and ties
back to your PEGS.
 Make sure your quote
directly relates to
religion in your
civilization
Accordingto the document __________________________,
“( ).
Analysis of evidence
 Show how your
evidence directly
connects and proves
your thesis.
 Must show how your
evidence relates to
religion and to your
selected PEGS.

8. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Restate your thesis
with different wording

9. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Introductory Paragraph – youwill needall three paragraphsandyournotes/textbooktowrite this
Hook that relatesto
religionandyour
selectedPEGS
Historical background
aboutthree civilizations
-Medieval Europe
-IslamicEmpire
-Africa/India/Americas
(use your
notes/textbook)
Background abouteach
religion
-Christianity
-Islam
-Hinduism/polytheismin
Americas
(use your
notes/textbook)
ThesisStatement:
Presentsthe theme you
foundthroughthe three
civilizations/paragraphs
What do the thesis
statementsforyour
three paragraphshave
incommon?
Road Map of the three
bodyparagraphs
What will youdiscussin
each paragraph?

10. Name: _____________________ Date: ________________ Section:_______
Global History
Conclusion
Shouldinclude
 a restatementof yourthesisfromthe introduction
 a summaryof the mainpointsyoumade in youressay
 whatis the most importantthing(s) youlearned
The final organization of your essay
1. Intro
2. Medieval Europe
3. IslamicEmpire
4. Africa/India/Americas
5. Conclusion
6. Works Cited/Referencespage usingMLA format – mustinclude atleast5 sources(2 from
Medieval Europe,2fromIslamicEmpire,and1 from Africa/India/Americas)
Final Essay is due in hard copy (printedout before class tobe handed in during
class) and on google drive on Monday June 3.