POL 322 - Modern Islamic Political Thought

This course is designed to introduce students to the history of modern Islamic political thought. The debates within modern Islamic political thought will be illustrated through specific examples of Muslim intellectuals and scholars and an accompanying theme such as democracy, sovereignty, gender equality and the secular state.

Previous summary: The course is divided into two parts: 1) Revival and Reform Period (1800-1930s), and 2) Post-Revival Period (1930s-1980s). In the first part, we will focus on 19th and early 20th century Muslim thinkers from different parts of the Muslim world, while in the second part, we will focus on Muslim thinkers from the second part of the 20th century. In both periods, we will try to understand how they perceived the social and political problems of the Muslim world, and what kind of solutions they have developed in response to these problems.

New summary: This course is divided according to different thinkers and intellectuals and an accompanying general intellectual theme. Each week will examine a Muslim thinker and a set of interrelated themes in their writings. We will focus on the impact of external and internal factors in the Muslim world on the continuous development of modern Islamic political thought. Since the rise of early Muslim reformism in the 19th and 20th centuries, Islamic political thought has wrestled with the problematics of colonialism, modernity, tradition, sovereignty, democracy, gender quality and secularism. We will examine the impact of external and internal factors on the debates among Muslim thinkers and the solutions they proposed in response to perceived and actual problems.