ABSTRACT
Donald Holsinger’s keen sense of the importance of African history as global history is grounded in a two-year teaching assignment in Algeria with the MCC-Teachers Abroad Program (TAP), and research on the long-term survival of the Mizabi cluster of Berber Muslim (non-Shi’a, non-Sunni) oases in the Sahara Desert. Throughout his 40-year teaching career Holsinger developed strategies to guide students—especially Americans—to transcend their provincial “bubbles,” to experience historical eras and other cultures in a comparative and global perspective. In retirement reflections, he is able to see the similarities between his own Anabaptist/Mennonite story and that of the Mizabi of Algeria, and in a more inclusive perspective the commonality underlying the Abrahamic religions traditions despite their different historical trajectories.
