2017-18 Academic Catalog

This course provides a general introduction to Islam, as a textual and lived tradition. Students will read from the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, engaging them both as historical resources and as dynamic and contested objects that have informed Muslim life in diverse ways throughout the centuries. Through following a thread from scripture, through the interpretive sciences (chiefly law and theology), and into an analysis of Muslim life in the contemporary world, students will explore answers Muslim thinkers have given to major questions of our shared existence, with both fidelity to the texts and flexibility to present demands. Though the focus of this course is not on Islam's role in current events, through attaining a solid introduction to the tradition--its sociology, its history, and its modes of reasoning--students will attain the knowledge necessary to begin to engage those events with a critical and informed mind.