Admission requirements
Introduction to the Study of Islam (prerequisite).
Students without the above prerequisite may enrol with the written permission of the lecturer.
Description
Political Islam is well known today as the label for organisations that base their ideology on Islamic principles with aims to create an ‘Islamic state’, and for militant groups that justify their actions via the precedent of jihad. The present-day activities of these movements are intensively studied and they are usually at the forefront of media coverage of Middle East politics. The debates are often polemical, invoking problematic dichotomies of “East vs. West”, Islam’s “compatabiity” with the values of the liberal nation state, and the extent to which political Islam movements represent an “authentic” Islam.
This course seeks to analyse political Islam from a different angle – studying today’s movements from the perspective of the Middle East’s varied cultural and historical traditions. Islamist groups today almost invariably claim their legitimacy from the fact that they follow deep-rooted Islamic traditions, and our questions will ask how deep rooted these traditions are, what are the historical and legal precedents for political Islamist doctrine today, and how did groups with similar platforms operate in the Middle East in the past? These past groups provide crucial background – almost entirely unknown and unstudied in present-day Western engagement with political Islam – and studying the historic groups in tandem with the moderl gives deeper perspective on how the modern groups use (and misuse) the past for their own legitimacy, how Middle Eastern peoples have responded to the platforms of political Islam through history, where, when, and how these groups met with success, and it allows us to better understand the evolution of the concepts of jihad, sectarianism, and Islamic states in Muslim societies.
Course objectives
Political Islam is well known today as the label for organisations that base their ideology on Islamic principles with aims to create an ‘Islamic state’, and for militant groups that justify their actions via the precedent of jihad. The present-day activities of these movements are intensively studied and they are usually at the forefront of media coverage of Middle East politics. The debates are often polemical, invoking problematic dichotomies of “East vs. West”, Islam’s “compatabiity” with the values of the liberal nation state, and the extent to which political Islam movements represent an “authentic” Islam.
This course seeks to analyse political Islam from a different angle – studying today’s movements from the perspective of the Middle East’s varied cultural and historical traditions. Islamist groups today almost invariably claim their legitimacy from the fact that they follow deep-rooted Islamic traditions, and our questions will ask how deep rooted these traditions are, what are the historical and legal precedents for political Islamist doctrine today, and how did groups with similar platforms operate in the Middle East in the past? These past groups provide crucial background – almost entirely unknown and unstudied in present-day Western engagement with political Islam – and studying the historic groups in tandem with the moderl gives deeper perspective on how the modern groups use (and misuse) the past for their own legitimacy, how Middle Eastern peoples have responded to the platforms of political Islam through history, where, when, and how these groups met with success, and it allows us to better understand the evolution of the concepts of jihad, sectarianism, and Islamic states in Muslim societies.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Lecture.
Assessment method
Assessment
The final mark for the course is established by determining the weighted average of the following:
Assignment (2) = 20%
Mid-term Critical Reading Report = 25%
Final Paper = 55%
Resit
Students will only be able to re-sit the Final Paper (55%).
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Routledge Handbook of Political Islam, ed. Shahram Akbarzadeh (2011)
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power (In Translation: Modern Muslim Thinkers), Ali Abdel Razek (2013)
Milestones, Sayyid Qutb (various translations)
The Almoravid and Almohad Empires, A. Bennison (2016)
Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu,Michael A. Gomez (1993)
Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions, Paul Lovejoy (2016).
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the information bar on the right.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office Herta Mohr.
Remarks
Please note that the additional course information is an integral part of this course description.