RELGST 1449 - ISLAM & CONFLICT IN GLOBAL CONTEXTS

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Created to be cross-listed with HIST 1749. This course will investigate political, social, and ideological conflict involving international political actors (both states and non-states) claiming motivation by, or inclusion within, the contemporary tradition of political Islam. Lecture topics within this course will take a global approach, analyzing political, social, and/or sectarian conflict in central and southern Europe (to include religious conflict and ethnic on the Balkan peninsula in the late twentieth century); southern and southeastern Asia (to include religious tension on the Indian subcontinent and on the island nation of Sri Lanka); East Africa (to include recent political violence centering around the self-declared caliphate "Boko Haram,"); and the middle east (to include ongoing international efforts to interdict against the expansion of the self-styled Islamic state in Iraq and Syria). Lectures in this course will aim to explore the means by which international conflict and violence involving these (and other) actors is bound by the tenets, institutions, or characteristics of Islam. These investigations will include inroads into a well-framed understanding of the recent increase in the presence and/or influence of Islamic political movements and the rising influence of international Islamic political parties in each of the aforementioned geographic locale. Course investigations will simultaneously explore the growing trend towards the transnational movement of goods, ideas, and peoples spurred on by or otherwise connected to the ideological tenets of contemporary Islam. The focus within these investigative pursuits will be on connective, global, and conceptual themes within seemingly disparate political movements and actors. Conceptual themes to be investigated include, but are not limited to the structures of global capitalism, economic inequality, gender inequality, minority rights, human rights, colonialism and imperialism, democracy and governance, modernity versus traditionalism, and secularism versus religiosity. Each of these themes is to be unraveled and explored in various contemporary global contexts focusing in particular on the polities and societies in the aforementioned conflict zones.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis

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