DR. ARNOLD LEDER
Political Science 4313

View Image Of: The Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Mosque)/Istanbul, Turkey
For a discussion of the architecture, art, elements of diverse origin, distinctiveness, and spiritual significance of Islamic mosques see: Bernard Lewis, An Islamic Mosque (Chapter 1, pp. 15-17.) in Bernard Lewis, From Babel To Dragomans: Interpreting The Middle East (Oxford University Press 2004).
Images of the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey discussed in this essay by Bernard Lewis:
A view of the Sulemaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
The interior_of the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul,Turkey

Web Resources For Islam
Internet Sources On Islam/Fordham University

Note On Course & Syllabus Materials: Students may find books, articles, links, websites, and other materials provided in this syllabus useful and of interest. Their listing in this syllabus, including those which are required and recommended, does not necessarily indicate endorsement of or agreement with any views or positions on any issues found in these materials, websites, or on other sites to which they may provide links.

PURPOSE OF COURSE
The purpose of this course is to acquire some understanding of Islam as a religious tradition, way of life, and attendant perspectives for political thought and behavior, and Islamic responses to modernity, including the emergence of radical Islam.

Note On Group Distribution Requirements For Political Science Majors:
This course may be used to satisfy the Group IV category - Comparative Government - or- the Group I category - Political Theory and Methodology - of the Group Distribution of Courses requirement for Political Science majors.  For a list of undergraduate courses in Political Science by group, see: http://www.polisci.txstate.edu/courses/undergrad-courses.html.

GRADES: Student grades for the course will be based on two or more exams which will consist of essay questions and identification and explanation of important concepts and issues.  No make-up exams will be given.

Reza Aslan, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House 2005)
Reza Aslan/No god But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House 2005)

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Course Title: Islam

I. The Middle East: Culture & History
1. An overview of Middle Eastern Culture
2. The Pre-Islamic Period/Jahiliyyah
3. The Early Islamic Period
Internet Sources On Islam/Fordham University(Comprehensive Site With Links For Many Aspects Of The Islamic Experience)
Middle East Maps UT Library Online/Perry-Castaneda Map Collection/Middle East Maps
Map Of Geographic Distribution Of Religions/MiddleEast

Video: Islam: Empire of Faith

For a critical review of this PBS film, see: Martin Kramer, Islam for Viewers Like You/The Middle East Quarterly/Winter 2002 Vol. IX: No. 1.

Readings: Rahman, Chapters 1, 2; Aslan, Chapter 2;
Arberry, The Holy Koran Interpreted, all, including Arberry's preface.
Khaleel Mohammed/Assessing English Translations of the Qur'an/The Middle East Quarterly/Spring 2005 Vol. XII No. 2.
Neil MacFarquhar/New Translation Prompts Debate on Islamic Verse/NYT March 25, 2007

Edward Rothstein/Abraham's Progeny, and Their Texts (w/images & links)/NYT Arts Section October 23, 2010
“Three Faiths,” a new exhibition at the New York Public Library, examines the braid of belief that binds Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
See image of: "Muhammad Leading the Other Prophets," from a 16th-century Turkish manuscript @ http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/10/23/JUMP-FAITHS-1.html.

Video: Islam

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Abdellah Hammoudi’s narrative, A Season in Mecca, offers one response. It is as much a subtle, complex meditation as it is an example of the ‘art of reportage’ (for which it won a Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin in 2005). It is a commentary on one Arab intellectual’s modern dilemmas as well as on the haj as he experienced it in 1999 and as he continues to apprehend it in his writing. Perhaps it would be better to say, as he struggles to apprehend it, because this sense of struggle gives the writing much of its deep interest."

Hassan M. Fattah/The Price of Progress: Transforming Islam's Holiest Site (Mecca Journal)/NYT March 08, 2007
Thanassis Cambanis/Celebration Marks End of Ramadan in Lebanon/NYT/October 13, 2007

Nicolai Ouroussoff/New Look for Mecca: Gargantuan and Gaudy (w/photos & links)/NYT December 30, 2010
The Saudi government is being criticized for construction projects in the historic core of Mecca that many find appalling.

"It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam’s architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.
...
That mentality is dividing the holy city of Mecca — and the pilgrimage experience — along highly visible class lines, with the rich sealed inside exclusive air-conditioned high-rises encircling the Grand Mosque and the poor pushed increasingly to the periphery. (boldface added)
...
But the Vegas-like aura of these projects can deflect attention from the real crime: the way the developments are deforming what by all accounts was a fairly diverse and unstratified city. The Mecca Clock Tower will be surrounded by a half-dozen luxury high-rises, each designed in a similar Westminster-meets-Wall Street style and sitting on a mall that is meant to evoke traditional souks. Built at various heights at the edge of the Grand Mosque’s courtyard, and fronted by big arched portes-cocheres, they form a postmodern pastiche that means to evoke the differences of a real city but will do little to mask the project’s mind-numbing homogeneity.

Like the luxury boxes that encircle most sports stadiums, the apartments will allow the wealthy to peer directly down at the main event from the comfort of their suites without having to mix with the ordinary rabble below. (boldface added)

At the same time, the scale of development has pushed middle-class and poor residents further and further from the city center. 'I don’t know where they go,' Mr. Angawi said. 'To the outskirts of Mecca, or they come to Jidda. Mecca is being cleansed of Meccans.'

The changes are likely to have as much of an effect on the spiritual character of the Grand Mosque as on Mecca’s urban fabric. Many people told me that the intensity of the experience of standing in the mosque’s courtyard has a lot to do with its relationship to the surrounding mountains. Most of these represent sacred sites in their own right and their looming presence imbues the space with a powerful sense of intimacy.
...
The issue is not just run-of-the-mill class conflict. The city’s makeover also reflects a split between those who champion turbocharged capitalism and those who think it should stop at the gates of Mecca, which they see as the embodiment of an Islamic ideal of egalitarianism."

Readings: Rahman, Chapters 3, 4, 6; Aslan, Chapters 3, 5, 6.
Michael Slackman/A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life: Eygpt's Muslims Seek Fatwas on Issues Great and Small/NYT June 12, 2007
Photo: Consultation in the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo (from Slackman article above)
Lydia Polgreen/In Nigeria, the Quest for a 'Humane Shariah' (photos)/NYT December 1, 2007
Elaine Sciolino/Britain Grapples With Role for Islamic Justice (w/photos)/NYT November 19, 2008

IV. The Major Divisions in Islam
1. Sunni & Shi'a Islam
For a description of the diversity of population groups in Shi'a dominated Iran, see:
Philip Carl Salzman/Persians and Others: Iran's Minority Politics (with maps)/blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/April 14, 2009
"There is a natural tendency to reify countries and think of them as unitary entities, often indicated by calling countries “nations” and presuming a homogeneity and uniformity among the population. But this reification and assumption of homogeneity are almost always inaccurate and misleading. In the case of Iran, it would be a great error to think of the population as being homogeneous, for the people of Iran are in fact quite diverse. There are ethnic, linguistic, organizational, and religious differences among Iranians."

2. Different Spiritual Climates & Different Islamic Conceptions of Life
Readings: Clifford Geertz/Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Yale University Press 1968/Hardcover & University of Chicago Press 1971/Paper) (revisited)
Publisher's Comment (University of Chicago Press):
"Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality."
Clifford Geertz:
"I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan." (page ix of the author's Preface)

"Religious faith, even when it is fed from a commmon source, is as much a particularizing force as a generalizing one, and indeed whatever universality a given religious tradition manages to attain arises from its ability to engage a widening set of individual, even idiosyncratic, conceptions of life and yet somehow sustain and elaborate them all." (page 14)

For some evidence of the more recent appearance of a less tolerant version of Islam in Indonesia, see: Calvin Sims/Indonesia: Gambling That Tolerance Will Trump Fear/NYT April 15, 2007.

Readings: Rahman, Chapter 10; Aslan, Chapters 5 (revisited), 7.
Michael Slackman/For Iran's Shiites, a Celebration of Faith and Waiting/NYT August 30, 2007

Readings: Rahman, Chapters 8, 9; Aslan, Chapter 8.
For a detailed description of the origins of Sufism, important Sufis figures, and excerpts from Sufi poems, see: Reynold A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 227-235-accessible beginning on page 227 and pp. 383-404-accessible beginning on page 383.

For a discussion of Sufi art, with a slide show, see:
Holland Cotter/The Many Voices of Enlightenment (Art Review | 'Light of the Sufis' - w/slide show)/NYT June 12, 2009
Many voices is what you find in an exquisite show called “Light of the Sufis” in the newly reinstalled Islamic galleries at the Brooklyn Museum.

"'What’s in your head — throw it away! What’s in your hand — give it up! Whatever happens — don’t turn away from it.' That’s how a 10th-century Persian spiritual master — Abu Said ibn Abil-Khair was his name — defined the Islamic devotional practice known as Sufism. Countless other definitions have been proposed since, almost as many as for Islam itself.

Religions and spiritual movements are complicated things, and accurate descriptions of them are bound to be contradictory. Sufism, like Islam, is both mystical and practical, embracing and exclusionary, pacific and assertive, ascetic and sensual, free form and discipline bound. Such oppositions aren’t a problem. They generate the unifying friction that makes culture tick."

Images of Sufi Art:
“Portrait of a Sufi,”Deccan India, 17th century.
Layli Visits Majnun in the grove, a page from an 17th-century Indian manuscript.
Spiritual yearning is often expressed in terms of erotic attraction. One of the grand romances of popular Arabic literature was the Romeo-and-Juliet tale of Majnun and Layla, who fell in love.

In many iterations of the tale, Majnun is a prototype of the Sufi who has become, in the words of the poet Farid al-Din Attar, “a dead body, a nonexistent heart and a soul scorched away,” an ego reduced by love to an ash on the arm of God.

“A Princely Figure and a Dervish,” by Isfahan.
While global politics has made Islam part of our consciousness, we hear little about Sufism and its long history. The term “sufi” probably derives from an Arabic word for wool. Certain followers of Sufism were called “dervishes,” a term related to a Persian word for poor.

For a report on Sufis at war with extremist Muslims in Somalia, see:
Jeffrey Gettleman/For Somalia, Chaos Breeds Religious War (w/slide show & photos)/NYT May 24, 2009
The Sufi scholars are part of a broad, moderate Islamist movement that Western nations are counting on to repel Somalia’s increasingly powerful Islamist extremists.
Photo: Islamist Versus Islamist @ http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/05/24/world/24somalia_CA3.ready.html.
Moderate Sufi scholars recently did what so many others have chosen to do in anarchic Somalia: They picked up guns and entered the killing business, in this case to fight back against ... one of the most fearsome extremist Muslim groups in Africa.

Sabrina Tavernise/Mystical Form of Islam Suits Sufis in Pakistan/NYT February 26, 2010
In modern times, Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, has been challenged in Pakistan by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia.

Recommended Reading:
J. Spencer Trimingham/The Sufi Orders in Islam (1971 & 1998)

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VI. Issues in Contemporary Islam: Islamism/Radical Islam; Democracy
1. Islam & Modernity
2. Islam & National Identity
3. Democracy, Religious Coexistence & Secularism
4. Jihad & Radical Islam

David Cook/Understanding Jihad (University of California Press 2005).
David Cook is highly critical of scholars such as John Esposito, a widely read author on Islam, who, in Cook's view, "promote the irenic interpretation of jihad." (Cook, p. 43)
"...Esposito apparently deliberately spirtualizes what is an unambiguously concrete and militant doctrine (jihad), without a shred of evidence from the Qur'an or any of the classical sources, in which the jihad and fighting is against real human enemies, and not the devil ..." (Cook, p. 42)
See, for example: John Esposito/Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Reality (Oxford University Press 2002), pp. 27-28.
Speaking of John Esposito and other Western scholars, David Cook states in the Afterword of his book Understanding Jihad:
"It is no longer acceptable for Western scholars or Mulsim apologists writing in non-Muslim languages to make flat, unsupported statements concerning the prevalence - either from a historical point of view or within contemporary Islam - of the spiritual jihad.  Thus far these writers have offered no evidence as to whether the spiritual jihad was actually the primary expression of jihad.  It is incumbent upon them, therefore, first to prove that this doctrine had some type of reality outside of the Sufi textbooks and second to demonstrate that either a substantial minority or a majority of Muslims historically believed and acted upon it or that the spiritual jihad actually superseded the militant jihad.  Thus far no scholar has accomplished this." (Cook, p. 166)

Today, a few voices are calling for just this kind of renewal of Islamic political theology. Some, like Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, challenge the authority of today’s puritans, who make categorical judgments based on a literal reading of scattered Koranic verses. In Abou El Fadl’s view, traditional Islamic law can still be applied to present-day situations because it brings a subtle interpretation of the whole text to bear on particular problems in varied circumstances. Others, like the Swiss-born cleric and professor Tariq Ramadan, are public figures whose writings show Western Muslims that their political theology, properly interpreted, offers guidance for living with confidence in their faith and gaining acceptance in what he calls an alien 'abode.' To read their works is to be reminded what a risky venture renewal is. It can invite believers to participate more fully and wisely in the political present, as the Protestant Reformation eventually did; it can also foster dreams of returning to a more primitive faith, through violence if necessary, as happened in the Wars of Religion.

Perhaps for this reason, Abou El Fadl and especially Ramadan have become objects of intense and sometimes harsh scrutiny by Western intellectuals. We prefer speaking with the Islamic liberalizers because they share our language: they accept the intellectual presuppositions of the Great Separation and simply want maximum room given for religious and cultural expression. They do not practice political theology. But the prospects of enduring political change through renewal are probably much greater than through liberalization. By speaking from within the community of the faithful, renovators give believers compelling theological reasons for accepting new ways as authentic reinterpretations of the faith. Figures like Abou El Fadl and Ramadan speak a strange tongue, even when promoting changes we find worthy; their reasons are not our reasons. ...

... We have little reason to expect societies in the grip of a powerful political theology to follow our unusual path, which was opened up by a unique crisis within Christian civilization. This does not mean that those societies necessarily lack the wherewithal to create a decent and workable political order; it does mean that they will have to find the theological resources within their own traditions to make it happen."

The Safavids forcibly converted Iran’s Sunni Muslims to Shia Islam and introduced the concept of 'ritual pollution,' which further segregated minorities from their neighbors. Because nonbelievers were deemed spiritually and physically contagious, Jews were barred from leaving their houses when it rained, for fear the water would transmit their impurities. A Jew who entered a Muslim home had to sit on a special rug and could not be offered tea, food or a water pipe, since any object touched by a Jew could no longer be used by a Muslim. (boldface added)

Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on National Public Radio (NPR)/May 9, 2006-Includes Backgrounder on Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Christopher Hitchins/The Caged Virgin: Holland's shameful treatment of  Ayaan Hirsi Ali/slate.com/May 8, 2006
An Interview with Ayan-Hirsi-Ali-video clip @ http://hotair.com/archives/the-blog/2006/05/10/audio-ayaan-hirsi-ali-at-harvard/
Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Islam's Silent Moderates/NYT December 7, 2007
Barry Gewen/Muslim Rebel Sisters: At Odds With Islam and Each Other/NYT Week In Review Sunday, April 27, 2008
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji are two of the most prominent and outspoken critics of what they and others see as “mainstream Islam,” but their approaches couldn’t be more different.

Rebecca Hillauer/On Fadela Amara & young Muslim women in the working class suburbs of France/signandsight.com/features/288.html/March 8, 2005
Neil MacFarquhar/To Muslim Girls, Scouts Offer a Chance to Fit In/International Herald Tribune/November 28, 2007

The Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun, Syria’s highest-ranking Islamic teacher, has condemned honor killing and Article 548 in unequivocal terms. Earlier this year, when we met for a rare interview in his spacious office on the 10th floor of Syria’s ministry of religious endowments, he told me, “It happens sometimes that a misogynistic religious scholar will argue that women are the source of all kinds of evil.” In fact, he said, the Koran does not differentiate between women and men in its moral laws, requiring sexual chastity of both, for example. The commonly held view that Article 548 is derived from Islamic law, he said, is false.

With his tightly wound white turban and giant pearl ring, the grand mufti is one of Syria’s most recognizable public figures. He is a charismatic and generally popular sheik, but because he is appointed by the state, many Syrians believe that his views reflect those of the ruling party, and they may find his teachings suspect as a result. In downtown Damascus, one man I interviewed on the street declared that the grand mufti was not a “real Muslim” if he believed in canceling Article 548. “It’s an Islamic law to kill your relative if she errs,” said the man, who gave his name as Ahmed and said that he learned of Zahra’s story on Syrian television. “If the sheik tries to fight this, the people will rise up and slit his throat.”

There are religious figures who defend the status quo. At a conference on honor killing held this year at Damascus University, Mohammed Said Ramadan al-Bouti, one of Syria’s most esteemed clerics, maintained that the laws should not be changed, defending them on the principle in Shariah law that people who kill in defense of their property should be treated with lenience (he is believed to have moderated his stance since). When, at an earlier conference, the grand mufti announced that he didn’t believe protecting a woman’s virginity was the most important component of honor, many attendees were upset. In response, a group of about a dozen women, all dressed in the long black abayas that in Syria are usually worn by only very conservative women, walked out of the room".

Katherine Zoepf/Love on Girls' Side of the Saudi Divide (with photos)/NYT May 13, 2008
Robert F. Worth/Challenging Sex Taboos, With Help From the Koran (w/photo)/NYT June 6, 2009
"Wedad Lootah, a marital counselor in Dubai, is the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice.
...  in which she celebrates the female orgasm, confronts taboo topics like homosexuality and urges Arabs to transcend the backward traditions that limit their sexual happiness.
... In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.
... In a region where “honor killings” of women who have sex outside marriage remain fairly common, sex education is widely viewed as a portal to sin. Genital cutting of women still takes place in Egypt, though it is now illegal. Arab writers and artists have begun to tackle these subjects."

Laura Secor, "Stolen Kisses: Iran's Sexual Revolutions", Nation December 15, 2008, Vol. 287, Issue 20.
Texas State University permalink. A valid Texas State University User Name and password are required for access.

Video: Women & Islam

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Academic Honesty Statement
Learning and teaching take place best in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and openness. All members of the academic community are responsible for supporting freedom and openness through rigorous personal standards of honesty and fairness. Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty undermine the very purpose of the university and diminish the value of an education.
Academic Offenses
Students who have committed academic dishonesty, which includes cheating on an examination or other academic work to be submitted, plagiarism, collusion, or abuse of resource materials, are subject to disciplinary action.
a. Academic work means the preparation of an essay, thesis, report, problem assignments, or other projects which are to be submitted for purposes of grade determination.
b. Cheating means:
1. Copying from another student?s test paper, laboratory report, other report or computer files, data listing, and/or programs.
2. Using materials during a test unauthorized by person giving test.
3. Collaborating, without authorization, with another person during an examination or in preparing academic work.
4. Knowingly, and without authorization, using, buying, selling, stealing, transporting, soliciting, copying, or possessing, in whole or part, the content of an unaministered test.
5. Substituting for another student?or permitting another person to substitute for oneself in taking an exam or preparing academic work.
6. Bribing another person to obtain an unadministered test or information about an unadministered test.
c. Plagiarism means the appropriation of another's work and the unacknowledged incorporation of that work in one's own written work offered for credit. (Underline Added)
d. Collusion means the unauthorized collaboration with another person in preparing written work offered for credit.
e. Abuse of resource materials means the mutilation, destruction, concealment, theft or alteration of materials provided to assist students in the mastery of course materials.
Penalties for Academic Dishonesty
Students who have committeed academic dishonesty may be subject to:
a. Academic penalty including one or more of the following when not inconsistent:
1. A requirement to perform additional academic work not required of other students in the course;
2. Required to withdraw from the course with a grade of F. (Underline Added)
3. A reduction to any level grade in the course, or on the exam or other academic work affected by the academic dishonesty.
b. Disciplinary penalty including any penalty which may be imposed in a student disciplinary hearing pursuant to this Code of Conduct.

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