MEAS8120 Islam, Faith and Community

Offered By	Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies
Academic Career	Graduate Coursework
Course Subject	Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies
Offered in	First Semester, 2009
Unit Value	6 units
Course Description	This course would serve as one of the two core courses in the proposed new post-graduate degrees, a Master of Islam in the Modern World and a Diploma in Islam in the Modern World. The course would have two purposes: 1. It would give students an overview of the main tenets, historical development, and principal institutions of Islam over the centuries. It would seem imperative in a general degree scheme on ‘Islam in the Modern World' to offer a compulsory course on what ‘Islam' itself has meant, and means, to believers and non-believers. While this course would not be driven by chronology, it would assess the relative importance of thematic factors as they emerged in specific time periods. Such factors would include the place of doctrine, the ‘invention' of tradition, the establishment of and challenges to legal and political order, and the nature of religious authority. The course would not duplicate topics that would be covered in other courses, such as the impact of colonialism on the Muslim world or the rise of revivalist and radical movements. 2. It would complement the other core course, Approaches to the Study of Modern Muslim Societies, by acquainting students with the relevant scholarly literature, but would do so by concentrating specifically on the literature on Islam as a corpus of norms and code of conduct. It would thus provide an introduction to the controversies and schools of thought in the general field, consider the interaction between doctrine and history, and encourage students both to question conventional assumptions and to recognise the diversity of Muslim thought and experience.
Learning Outcomes	In this course students would develop or extend their knowledge and understanding of: some of the key issues concerning the development of Islam and its emergence as a world religious and social force the ways in which Muslims themselves have viewed their own faith and history over time critical debates about ostensibly doctrinally defined conduct, such as jihad, pilgrimage, and the application of the shari‘a the relationship between sectarianism and Muslim calls to solidarity normative and de facto Islamic rule
Indicative Assessment	1 x 4,000 - 5,000 word essay 50% 1 x in-class presentation 10% 1 x 3 Hr exam at end of semester 40%
Workload	The course will be delivered on campus by way of one two-hour seminar per week for 13 weeks. WebCT will also be extensively used for additional materials, supplementary readings and lecture notes.
Preliminary Reading	Ernst, C.W. Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Lapidus, I.M. A History of Islamic Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn., 2002. Ruthven, M. Islam in the World. London; Penguin, 2nd edn., 2000.
Academic Contact	James Piscatori

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