Modern Islamic Thought

Kamal Soleimani
Course Description

This course is designed to acquaint students with the major currents in contemporary Islamic
politico-religious thought and prominent Muslim figures from diverse political, social, and
educational backgrounds who voice Muslim concerns over the course of the past century. The
course is an attempt to make sense of thoughts, modes of rethinking, and reinterpretation
activities modern Muslims have engaged in as they have faced modern challenges in their anti-
colonial struggles or within the confines of their existing nation-states. The course works to
demonstrate that despite the common religious identity shared by these figures, neither their
concerns nor their response and solutions to the modern challenges are identical (or even
similar). The course surveys the history of Muslim intellectual concerns with the “modern
challenges” they have faced, and it will proceed by examining more thorough approaches to
modes of rethinking religious thought and their engagement with modern challenges.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, a student is expected to have acquired the following:
- Understanding modern approaches to Islam within and the impact of overall changes in modern
Muslim’s life on her/ his religious thought
- Understanding of how different modes of modern Islamic thought have been colored by their
disparate socio-political and cultural boundaries.
- Making sense of contemporary Islamic intellectual trends and their scopes and limits.
- Coming to grips with the idea that volatility of religious thought and interpretation exists as any
other human epistemological endeavor.

Requirements:
Response Papers: 30 %
Participation: 15 %
Take-home essay: 25 %
Final Essay: 30%

Response papers: Every other week, students will submit 400-500-word (1/5-2 page) papers
responding to a reading or set of readings from that week’s assignments. These papers should
not be summaries of the reading, but rather should provide the student with an opportunity to
engage critically with the readings. These papers will be due at the beginning of class. No late
papers accepted. In total, students are expected to write 7 (seven) response papers.
Attendance: Students are expected to attend all classes and actively participate in classroom
discussion. Bring the day’s texts to class. Ample time in each session will be provided for
questions and discussions. Class will begin on time, and late arrivals are not conducive to a
learning environment. Hence, arriving 15 minutes late and leaving 15 minutes early will count as
missing half of the class, which has a direct negative impact on your grade. You are allowed to
miss 2 classes. More than two absences will begin to hurt your grade. Note: Frequent
nonattendance may result in a failing grade in the course.
Take-home essay: Students will be given a take-home exam (5-7 papers) during the semester
(25 %). Students will be given a question/or set of questions to answer.

Required Readings (selections from the following):

1. Abu-Rabi, Ibrahim M, 2006, The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic

Thought, Blackwell: Oxford

2. Abu-Rabi, Ibrahim, M, 2004, Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967

Arab Intellectual History, Pluto Press: London

3. Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, 1998, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented
Triumph of Nativism, Ithaca: Syracuse University Press

4. Faisal Devji. Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 2013

5. Cooper, John; Mahmoud, Mohammad; and Nettler, Ronald (eds), 2000, Islam and
Modernity: Muslim Intellectual Respond, I.B. Tauris: London

6. Esposito, John L and Voll, John Obert, 2001, Makers of Contemporary Islam,
Oxford: Oxford University Press

7. Hourani, Albert, 1983 (2002), Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

8. Jahanbakhsh, Forough, 2001, Islam, Democracy, and Religious Modernism in

Iran (1953-2000), Leiden: Brill

9. Kamrava, Mehran (ed), 2007, The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and
Modernity, University of California Press

10. Kurzman, Charles (ed), 2002, Modernist Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook,

Oxford: Oxford University Press

11. Moaddel, Mansoor and Talattof, Kamran (eds), 2000, Modernist and
Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader, New York: Palgrave Macmillan

12. Nabavi, Negin (ed), 2003, Intellectual Trends in Twentieth Century Iran: A
Critical Survey, Gainesville: University of Florida Press

13. Rahnema, Ali, 2005, Pioneers of Islamic Revival, Zed Books: New York
 14. Safi, Omid, 2003, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism,
Oneworld Publications: London

15. Soelimani, Kamal Soleimani, 2016, Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the
Middle East, 1876-1926. Palgrave: New York

16. Taji-Farouki, Suha (ed), 2006, Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Quran,
Oxford: Oxford University Press

17. Taji-Farouki, Suha, and Nafi, Basheer M (eds), 2004, Islamic Thought in the
Twentieth Century, London: I.B Tauris

18. Vogt, Kari; Moe, Christian; and Larsen, Lena (eds), 2008, New Directions in
Islamic Thought, London: I.B Tauris

Course Schedule:
Introduction: Week 1: Islam as Totality
Devji. Chp. 6

Week 2: : Contemporary Islamic Thought?

Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi‘ 2006 (1-21) (required)
Cooper: introduction (required)
Taji-Farouki et al: ch.2 (recommended)

Week 3: The characteristic of Modern Islamic religion thought (The beginning: al-Afghani
and ‘Abduh )
Hourani: ch.5-7 (required)
Rahnema: ch.2-3 (required)
Kurzman: ch.3,11(recommended)
Moaddel:ch.1,4-5(recommended)

Week 4: Islamic political thought in form and movement: (Islamic Brotherhood, Hasan al-
Banna, and Sayyid Qutb)
Rahnema: ch.6-7(required)
Moaddel: ch.19, 21(required)

Week 5: Reconstruction of Islam I: (Muhammad Iqbal, Sayyid Hussein Nasr, Muhammad al-
Ghazali)
Abu-Rabi (2004): ch.10 (required)
Kurzman: ch.43 (required)
Boroujerdi: ch.5(required)

Week 6: Reconstruction of Islam in its Shi ‘i context II: (Ruhu Allah Khomeini, Murtada
Mutahhari, Muhammad Baqir Sadr)
Rahnema: ch.4, 10 (required)
Moaddel: ch.30 (required)
Jahanbakhsh: ch.4 (required)

Week 7: Islam and identity: (Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Ali Shariati, Hachim Djait, Daryush Shayegan)
Moaddel: ch.28, 32 (required)
Boroujerdi: ch.3, 5, 6 (required)
Nabavi: ch.1, 4 (recommended)

Week 8: Islam as an alternative economic system: (Mahmud Taliqani, Muhammad Baqir Sadr,
Nawab Naqvi)
Taji Farouki et al: ch.7 (required)
Jahanbakhsh: ch.4 (required)

Week 9: Is Islamic science possible? : (Ismail al-Faruqi, Naquib al-Attas, Mahdi Hairi Yazdi)
Esposito et al: ch.1 (required)

Week10 :The Islamic Left: (Abdullah Laroui, Hassan Hanafi)

Abu-Rabi (2004): ch.16(required)
Abu-Rabi ed (2006): ch.13 (required)
Kamrava: ch.12 (required)
Esposito et al: ch.4 ((required)

Week 11: Islam and feminism: (Fatimah Mernissi, Laila Ahmad, Ziba Mir-Husseini, Aminah
Wadud)
Safi: ch.6 (required)
Abu-Rabi ed (2006): ch. 34-35 (required)
Kamrava: ch.8-10 (required)
Vogt et al: ch. 5 (required)

Week 12: Later trends in reinterpreting Islam I: (Fazlur Rahman,

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd)
Taji-Farouki ed: ch.2,6 (required)
Kamrava: ch.7 (required)

Week 13: Later trends in reinterpreting Islam II: (Muhammad Abid al-Jabiri, Muhammad
Arkoun)
Cooper: ch.7 (required)
Abu-Rabi: ch.12-13 (required)
Taji-Farouki ed: ch.5 (required)
Kamrava: ch.1 (required)

Week 14: Turkey and Indonesia: (Bediuzzaman Said-i Nursi, Nurcholish Madjid)
Abu-Rabi ed: ch. 1-3(required)
Soleimani ch. 7 (required)
Kamrava: ch.3(required)

Week 15: Rethinking Islam in the shadow of a religious state: (Dynamics in Iran:
Abdulkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mujtahid Shabestari)
Cooper: ch.2 (required)
Taji-Farouki ed: ch.7 (required)
Kamrava: ch.13 (required)
Esposito et al: ch. 7 (required)
Vogt et al: ch.1 (required)

Week 16: Islam beyond the “Muslim World”:

Islam in the West: Khaled Abu al-Fadl, Tariq Ramadan, Abdullahi an-Naim
Taji-Farouki et al: ch.3, 9 (required)
Abu-Rabi ed: ch.16 (required)
Vogt et al: ch.9-11 (required)
Kamrava: ch.2 (recommended)