Course Description:
Modernity and emancipation in the West put an end to the autonomy of minority groups. This meant that the application of Jewish and Islamic legal systems, pertaining to every aspect of daily life, was severely curtailed. Moreover, the majority made and still makes many demands for change. Although Jewish and Islamic law were always subject to change and development, the confrontation with modernity and the implications for the legal systems was unprecedented. Jewish and Muslim responses to modernity are manifold. For those who continue to adhere to Jewish and Islamic law, various strategies and justifications are sought for and against change, ranging from reformist to fundamentalist. In this course we will study the impact of modernity on these two legal systems and by way of case studies we will consider some of the strategies for change involved.
Course objectives:
By the end of the course, the students should be able to identify: – the major choices that Jews have made in modernity as well as the internal and external factors that have played a role in the making of these choices; – the various elements involved in the terms assimilation and integration; – some of the similarities (and differences) between the present-day situation of minorities in Europe and that of the Jews in 19th c. Europe.
Teaching methods:
The course will consist of several 6 introductory lectures on halachah (Jewish law) and sharia (Islamic law) in modernity, supplemented by 6 case studies, 3 from Jewish law and 3 from Islamic law.
Testing methods:
The student will be expected to: – give one or more talks on a specific topic and/or individual to be selected from a list of source material distributed by the lecturer at the beginning of the course – for an additional 5 ects the student will write a paper at the end of the course related to and embellishing upon the talk presented during the semester while making use of the required reading.
Time table
See time table Master Religious Studies
Seminar overview and assignments:
Weekly meetings (12 × 3 hours)
Weekly reading assignments (11 × 6 hours)
Presentations (2 × 30 hours)
Minimum number of participants 5 MA students
Required reading:
Capita selecta uit:
M. Meyer, Response to Modernity. A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, Oxford University Press 1988.
D. Ellenson, After Emancipation. Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity, Hebrew Union College Press 2004.
A. Gotzmann, Jüdisches Recht im kulturellen Prozess (Schriftenreihe wissenschaflitcher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 55), Mohr Siebeck 1997.
A. Gotzmann, Eigenheit und Einheit. Modernisierungsdiskurse den deutschen Judentums des Emanzipationszeit, Brill 2002.
Required reading – schedule:
Week 1-3: Jewish Law in the Age of Modernity
The first three weeks will focus on the implications for modernity and the separation of Church and State on Judaism in Europe. We will look at Jewish reactions to a rapidly changing world in which concessions were made in religious practice on the basis of both pragmatic and systematic rationalizations.
Week 2:
Capita selecta from:
M. Meyer, Response to Modernity. A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, Oxford University Press 1988.
A. Gotzmann, Jüdisches Recht im kulturellen Prozess (Schriftenreihe wissenschaflitcher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 55), Mohr Siebeck 1997.
A. Gotzmann, Eigenheit und Einheit. Modernisierungsdiskurse den deutschen Judentums des Emanzipationszeit, Brill 2002.
Week 3:
Capita selecta from:
A. Gotzmann, Jüdisches Recht im kulturellen Prozess (Schriftenreihe wissenschaflitcher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 55), Mohr Siebeck 1997.
A. Gotzmann, Eigenheit und Einheit. Modernisierungsdiskurse den deutschen Judentums des Emanzipationszeit, Brill 2002.
Week 4-6: Islamic Law in the Age of Modernity
During the three meetings we shall consider some of the processes and ideas of reform since the nineteenth century, and their impact on the development of Islamic law and its institutions. We examine the transformation of traditional Islamic legal culture, and the nature and functions of the law in the modern world. Lastly we study the emergence of the so-called Jurisprudence of Minorities, which is a significant source for Muslim minorities in answering their urgent legal and ethical questions in a non-Islamic environment.
Week 4:
W. B. Hallaq “Can the Shari’a be restored?”, in Y. Haddad and B.F. Stowasser (ed.), Islamic Law and the Challenge of Modernity, Altamira Press, 2004, pp. 21-54.
S. Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic World, I.B. Tauris 2003, chapter “The Age of Reform: The Etatization of Law”, pp. 121-157.
Week 5:
A Dallal, “Appropriating the Past: Twentieth-Century Reconstruction of Pre-Modern Islamic Thought”, Islamic Law and Society, vol. 7, 2000, pp. 325-358.
T. Ramdan, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation, Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 1-58
Week 6:
A.F. March, “Sources of Moral Obligation to non-Muslims in the Jurisprudence of Muslim Minorities (Fiqh al-Aqalliyat) Discourse”, Islamic Law and Society, vol. 16/1 (2009), pp. 34-94
Week 7-9: Various Case studies for the study of Judaism in modernity, a.o. on Women’s role in the synagogue, interreligious dialogue
Week 7-9: D. Ellenson, After Emancipation. Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity, Hebrew Union College Press 2004.
Week 10-12: Islamic Bioethics and the Modern Challenges for Sharî‘a
One of the modern challenges that scholars of Sharî‘a face is developing an “Islamic bioethics”. This challenge is composed of two main elements. First of all, bio-scientific information is produced in a non-Islamic context, namely the West, and thus available in languages which are not accessible for the contemporary traditional religious scholars of Islam. The second element is that ethical questions raised at the hand of the modern bio-scientific advances are usually unprecedented and thus have not been discussed in classical fiqh sources. This necessitates practicing a fresh Ijtihâd (independent reasoning) by the contemporary Muslim scholars. In response to this double-sided challenge, the concept of Ijtihâd Jamâ‘î (Ijtihâd practiced on a collective level) has been introduced in the field of Islamic bioethics in the last decades.
Week 10:
A.S. Daar and A. Al Khitamy, “Bioethics for Clinicians. 21. Islamic Bioethics”, Canadian Medical Association Journal 164 (1) (January 9, 2001) 60-63 (available as pdf).
D. Atighetchi, Islamic Bioethics: Problems and Perspectives, Chapter 2, “Features of Islamic Bioethics”, Springer 2007 (available as pdf)
Week 11:
M. Ghaly, “Human Cloning Through the Eyes of Muslim Scholars. The New Phenomenon of the Islamic International Religio-scientific Institutions”, forthcoming (available as pdf)
Week 12:
M. Ghaly, “Contemporary Discussions of Muslim Scholars on Milk Banks:
One Text in Two Contexts”, forthcoming (available as pdf)