CLWR 5330 - Islam

Introduces Islam as a religious and cultural system. Topics include pre-Islamic Arabia, the Prophet Muhammad and the first Muslims, the Qur’an and shari’a, basic ritual practices, mysticism, theology and philosophy, Shi’ism, the visual and musical arts, women, modernism, fundamentalism, and Islam in the USA. Draws on historical, sociological, anthropological, and literary-critical approaches and utilizes a range of primary and secondary material to examine the development of Islamic religious practices and ideals as they interact with larger social and cultural processes. While we will be concerned to understand how practitioners of Islam interpret their beliefs and actions, we will also place ‘insider’ perspectives in a broader social and historical context. Religion is a segment of culture, and thus we undertake our inquiry into Islam in the spirit of the Quranic injunction that ‘humanity consider from what it is created’.

Requisites

Credit Hours: 4.0
Repeat/Retake Information: May not be retaken.

Lecture/Lab Hours: 4.0 lecture

Eligible grades: A-F,PR,WP,WF,FN,FS,AU,I