Contestations Within Political Islam

9/11 catapulted figures such as Osama bin Laden as the face of Political Islam. But there is a longer, complex history behind the relationship between Islam, modern politics, and violence. Examining thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb, Hassan Al-Bana, Zaynab Al-Ghazali, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Shariati, Murtaza Mutahhari, and Abul Ala Maududi, this seminar will explore the diversity of intellectual and political positions within Political Islam. We will discuss how such figures employed conceptions of state, nationalism, secularism, democracy, law, gender, and minority rights to articulate multiple futures for national and global Muslim communities and influenced a variety of popular struggles as well as armed movements. As such, we will think through their intellectual, political, and hermeneutical departures from more traditionalist understandings as a critique of the modern condition and examine the strengths as well as limitations of their ideas and receptions.