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RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Course Syllabus

Course #: 032:168:001

Department of Religious Studies 314 Gilmore Hall 319.335.2164 http://www.uiowa.edu/~religion/

Instructor: A. SOUAIAIA

Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:30-4:30 pm and by appointment

Office: 409 Gilmore Hall

Email: ahmed-souaiaia@uiowa.edu

Websites: http://www.uiowa.edu/~c032030/

                 http://courses.uiowa.edu 

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 daily articles related to the topic at hand. 15% (you participation grade is embedded in this section)

Instructor of this course will evaluate each student's work fairly and without bias and will assign grades based on valid academic criteria. Fairness to students also implies reasonably consistent grading among courses of the same level, other things being equal. For this course, the grades distribution—based on the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences historical data—will be roughly as follows:

Students final grade will reflect the plus/minus grading. You can follow your progress by checking your grades on webCT: grades will update after each test/quiz.

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.

Other Rules:

For each semester hour credit in this course, students are expected to spend 2 hours per week preparing for class sessions (e.g., three-credit-hour course requires 6 hours per week for preparation.

A tentative schedule will be made available online, but changes may occur; so students must check regularly for updates that will be reflected in the online version.

Please contact me during my office hours if you are one who has a disability which may require some modification of seating, testing, or other class requirements so that appropriate arrangements may be made.

Please be advised of the university policy on plagiarism and cheating, as any such act will be dealt with as outlined therein.

Students who wish to complain about the course, the Teaching Assistants, and/or the Instructor may follow the College’s policy as summarized below:

• The student should to resolve the matter with the person of concern first.
• If the complaint is not resolved to the student's satisfaction, the student should discuss the matter further with the course supervisor (A. Souaiaia), the departmental executive officer, another faculty member designated to receive complaints if available.
• If the matter remains unresolved, the student may submit a written complaint to the Associate Dean for Academic Programs, 120 Schaeffer Hall (335-2633). (Graduate students should be directed to the offices of the Graduate College , 205 Gilmore Hall, 335-2137.)

Copyright ©  SOUAIAIA. All rights reserved.