Introduction to Islam: in the Context of Comparative Relgion

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This is not a current syllabus, it is a generic one to give students an idea about the course; for up-to-date syllabus and schedule, please logon webCT

About the Course:

This is an introduction to Islam. The course is designed for students with a general interest in the Islamic world, in religion, or in History. We will examine the theology, history, and main social and legal institutions of Islam. Islam, as a major system of belief in the world, arguably affects Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Consequently, besides studying the basic tenets and texts of the religion, this course will focus on the variety of ways in which Muslims and non-Muslims have understood and interpreted Islam. We will review the discussions surrounding the life of the prophet of Islam, Islamic pre-modern and modern history, the Islamic concept of God and society, the role of women, and Islamic government and movements.

A major aim of this course is to give voice to Islamic texts and provide a window into how Muslims, in varying socio-historical contexts, view themselves and equally important, how they view others as we will see while addressing specific topics such as Islamic doctrines and law, philosophy, Sufi mysticism, Islamic science and technology, gender issues, politics, the ongoing debate between secularism and traditionalism in contemporary Islamic societies, and Islam in America. The course is ultimately an attempt to understand Islam as an idea and as a process, never as a static and crystallized snapshot of the world through the eyes of any specific group inside or outside the Muslim community.

Required texts:

*

Islam, by John L. Esposito
*

Reader

· Other articles to be made available in class and online

Supplemental materials:

*

Brannon M. Wheeler, Prophets of the Quran
*

Profiling the Islamic Civilization
Author: A. W. Khallaf
*

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
*

Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Author: Annemarie Schimmel
* Islam : A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)
Author: KAREN ARMSTRONG
* Islam
Author: Neal Robinson
* Islam : Religion, History, and Civilization
Author: Seyyed Hossein Nasr
* Islam
Author: Huston Smith
* Islam
Author: Seyyed Hossein Nasr
* An Introduction to Islam
Author: Frederick Mathewson Denny
* Thomas Cleary (Translator), The Qur'an: A New Translation (Starlatch Press, 2004).
* THOMAS CLEARY (Translator), The Wisdom of the Prophet: The Sayings of Muhammad (Shambhala, 2001).
* al-Nawawi's Forty hadith: An Anthology of the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, translated by Ezzeddin Ibrahim and Denys Johnson-Davies, (Cambridge, UK: Islamic Texts Society, 1997).
* Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1994).
* Michael Sells, Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1999).
* Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’an.
* Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam

Other reading materials:

· More reading materials will be posted on the ICON portion of the course

· Reading from the Qur’an online

Requirements:
Students’ final assessment is neither based solely on the assigned readings nor exclusively on the in class lectures and quiz sections with Teaching Assistants; 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 and quiz sections.

Evaluations:

Students’ final grades will be based on the accumulative grades in quizzes, tests, reactions to reading materials, and Tests, and other projects to be specified in the syllabus.