Sex Powr in the Islamic Trad

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Whether involving the headscarf or kidnapped schoolgirls, discourse over Islam and Muslims is very often tied to questions of the treatment of women and women’s rights. It is thus also a discourse about power. In part, this is because any discussion of ‘Islam and women’ is politicized in the context of globalization and the tensions between perceptions of the globalization of Western norms on the one hand and perceptions of cultural authenticity on the other. In part, this inevitable political dimension exists because gender and sexuality in human society have always been categories and terms developed and wielded in the context of power, whether concerning the distribution of resources, rights to autonomy and movement, or power to define a community’s identity and history. This course will explore the intersection of power and sexuality in the Islamic tradition, examining case studies in law, literature, society and politics from the early Islamic period to the present day.