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RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Course #:
032:168:001
About the Course:
Since the establishment of the first form of governance soon after
the demise of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims have laid and reaffirmed a
course for a journey for religious salvation as well as for political
guidance that is governed by Islamic ethos. The notion of the Caliphate is
the embodiment of this duality that was intended to create the ideal
citizen and the aspiring worshipper. For nearly 1500 years, Muslims
throughout the world would live to see their political influence expends
while their religious convictions take in from other cultures and other
ideologies allowing for multitudes of religious and cultural expressions
from the seemingly homogeneous yet monolithic religion.
Today, the Muslim world finds itself on a new course: attempting to
re-invent, reform, or recast itself in new political, economic, and social
realities. Regardless of the back-grounding of the modern political
movements that are attempting to lead the Muslim world and the Middle
East; Islam is either leading the way or receiving the blame for
leadership—or lack thereof—of the Muslim Ummah. The failure of
nationalistic movements, the stagnation of development in all Muslim
states, and the absence of viable political alternatives have made the
Islamic movements in the modern Middle East a powerful galvanizing force
in almost all arenas.
Through selection of various readings, this course is to attempt to
discover the history of Islamic institutions, the forces at work, role of
religion in Middle Eastern politics, and the rise of Islamic movements.
Special attention will be given to topics such as authority and power,
State and governance, law and society, gender and minority, secularism,
nationalism, fundamentalism, activism, reformism, renewalism, democracy,
guided democracy, Westernism, modernism, traditionalism, and the notion of
civilization.
This course requires no prerequisites from the Islamic studies tract.
Textbooks:
Required:
1. L. Carl Brown's Religion and State- The Muslim Approach to Politics
2. Francois Burgat's Face to Face With Political Islam
3. Other electronic documents (the Islamic Government, Women in Islam, and
other publications), available for download on course website as PDF files
Optional (selected chapters from the following may be used):
* Karen Armstrong's Battle for God- Fundamentalism in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam
* Edward Said's Covering Islam- How the Media and the Experts Determine
How We See the Rest of the World
* Geneive Abdo, Jonathan Lyons' Answering Only to God: The Struggle
Between Religion and Democracy in Post-Revolutionary Iran
* Quintan Wiktorowicz's The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the
Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan
* Olivier Roy's The Failure of Political Islam (Carol Volk, Translator)
* Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence : China, Europe, and the Making
of the Modern World Economy
Requirements:
Students’ final assessment is neither based solely on the assigned
readings nor exclusively on the in class lectures; rather, will be based
on all your activities associated with this course. The reading materials
are intended to provide an adequate background for the lectures whereby
one complements the other. Subsequently, quizzes and tests’ questions will
be more or less equally distributed between the reading assignments and
the lecture materials. It is imperative that students stay on schedule and
do the readings as scheduled and before attending lectures.
Evaluations:
Students’ final grades will be based on the accumulative grades in
quizzes, tests, news articles reactions, and Group Projects according to
the following distributions:
* Short identification and map quizzes, ~6 quizzes, 5% each
* Short answer quizzes of essential concepts, ~6 quizzes, 5% each
* Take-home tests, consisting of 3-5 pages long essays, 2 tests, 10% each
* Final group project, consisting of a research paper to be published on
the course’s website; each group will be assigned a specific topic and
they are expected to research it and discuss it together, then compose
their findings. Each student must work on at least one section of the
paper. The project must be finished by the last week of instruction. 15%
* Reading news media and writing a short reaction to articles related to
the topic at hand. 15%
There will be no make up quizzes offered unless with a valid reason for
one’s absence. However, students may miss or drop the lowest grades of 2
quizzes (from each of the two categories above), so use this option
wisely.
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