Postgraduate Module Descriptor

ARAM250: The Sovereign, the Good, and Society in Islamic Thought

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Aims

The aim of the module is to introduce students to a range of historical and normative arguments and discourses about the nature of political thought, of the good, of the ethical and of the just, starting from the early reception of Platonic ethics and politics all the way through to contemporary Islamic debates in the aftermath of the ‘Arab spring’ and the uprisings since 2011. Alongside the study of texts, we will also consider different modalities of discourse in material culture, the sonosphere, and the arts of the articulation of ideas on sovereignty, justice, and the good in Muslim societies. We will also draw upon the perspectives of practitioners. By the end of the module, the students will have a good grasp of normative and theoretical elements of the tradition as well as their historical manifestations and some empirical grasp of attitudes and debates in the contemporary world.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here - you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of some of the most important methodological and interpretive models in relevant areas of Islamic political thought
2. drawing upon some of the major texts and seminal thinkers (in translation) demonstrate knowledge and understanding in at least two key areas of Islamic political thought
Discipline-Specific Skills3. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of fundamental issues, approaches and challenges in several related historical areas of Islamic thought and a general understanding of their underlying historical and social contexts
4. demonstrate the ability to relate the study of Islamic political thought to wider debates in the study of (comparative) political thought
Personal and Key Skills5. demonstrate writing and oral presentation skills, group work and ability to synthesize large areas of unfamiliar reading, subjects and a selection of interpretive and methodological approaches

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

  • Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998
  • Husain Agrama, Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012
  • Mehrdad Boroujerdi (ed), Mirror for the Muslim Prince, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013
  • Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005
  • Patricia Crone and Gerhard Böwering (eds), Princeton Encyclopaedia of Islamic Political Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013
  • Yoav Di-Capua, No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre & Decolonization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018
  • Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012
  • Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019
  • Murad Idris, ‘Islam, Rawls, and the Limits of Late Twentieth Century Liberal Philosophy’, Modern Intellectual History 18 (2020): 1–14
  • Humeira Iqtidar, ‘Redefining “tradition” in political thought’, European Journal of Political Theory 15.4 (2016): 424–44
  • Nelly Lahoud, Political Thought in Islam, London: Routledge, 2013
  • Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, London: Duckworth, 1981
  • Saba Mahmood, The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005
  • Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016
  • Andrew March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011
  • Andrew March, The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019
  • Dominic O’Meara, Platonopolis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
  • Noah Salomon, For the Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016