Islam, Nonviolence, and Peacebuilding

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

‘Islam and Violence’, ‘Islam and Conflict’, ‘Islam and Peace’, and ‘Islam and Justice’ are familiar topics that have become increasingly popular in the media in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. These topics were spawned by events such as the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the attacks on the United States of America in September 2001, the Bush administration’s subsequent ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring which began in North Africa in 2011, followed in 2014 by the grotesque violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In contradistinction, to the plethora of courses focusing on Islam and Terrorist Violence, this course seeks to critically examine the Islamic theologies of nonviolence and peacebuilding articulated and embodied by a number of Muslim scholars. In order to develop a complex set of insights into these and other current conflicts in which Muslims are implicated, it is important to have a greater understanding of the Islamic view of peace and justice. This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the Islamic view of justice and peacebuilding by examining the major theories and principles of Islamic ethics of Peacebuilding and applying it to analyze contemporary Muslim perspectives on justice and peacebuilding. Furthermore, this course is grounded in the nascent academic sub-discipline of religion, violence, and the practices of peace (RVP). The intention is to introduce students into this sub-discipline and help them expand their theoretical and analytical lenses. Finally, students are not expected to emerge from this course as experts on the Islamic Ethics of Peacebuilding, but will be exposed to major authors and arguments and be provided with a number of conceptual lenses that can be applied to their analysis of the diverse ways in which Islam is implicated in conflict, violence and peacebuilding on both a global and local level.