RELI 30663 Modern Islam
Prerequisites: RELI 10023, or RELI 10033, or RELI 30543, or permission of the Instructor. This course provides an overview of the major trends, developments, and issues in modern Islamic thought and the global Muslim world. This course begins in the nineteenth century with the transformations caused by the rise of European power, European colonialism, modern science and technology, the printing press, mass education, and the nation state. Muslims around the world responded to these transformations through several strategies including modernism, fundamentalism, secularism, and neo-traditionalism. We will examine these and other trends, as well as Muslim perspectives on a range of pressing contemporary global issues such as politics, violence, gender, economics, the environment, and interfaith dialog. The course concludes with a look at possible futures of the global Muslim world.