The course aims to provide students with foundational knowledge and an understanding of the relationship between Islam, political power, sharīʿa, ethics, and bodies in the contemporary Islamic world. Through a historical, Islamic studies, anthropological, and socio-political approach, the course seeks to enable students to understand how classical Islamic law, historically grounded in a plurality of actors, schools, institutions, and interpretive practices, has been profoundly reshaped by processes of modernization, codification, state formation, and nationalization.
By the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze the ways in which the sharīʿa is currently invoked, reduced, administered, or symbolically displayed within the modern state; to identify the forms through which norms, religious discourses, and political mechanisms regulate bodies, everyday practices, gender, sexuality, family life, public morality, and communal affiliations; to apply the knowledge acquired to the analysis of concrete case studies drawn from different contexts across the Islamic world; to formulate independent and well-reasoned judgments; and to communicate clearly and accurately issues, concepts, and interpretations concerning the relationship between religion, politics, law, and processes of subject formation.