141042 SE The Arab World: Contemporary Discussions (2024S)

This semester, the focus of the course will be present-day, and historical Salafism.

The aim of this course is to provide material for further analyses of theological, political, legal, and social systems in the MENA region that over time came to be known as Salafist. Primarily intended for MA students, the class will examine secondary material, mostly focused on the 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century emergence and proliferation of “puritan,” “radical,” and “fundamentalist” Islamic organizations. Some managed to establish widespread presence, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, others inspired countless debates on global terrorism, such as al-Qaeda, while some managed to maintain fully functional infrastructure and quasi-state institutions at certain points in time (like Daesh). Groups such as these served as focal points for the development of numerous highly important international diplomatic and geopolitical strategies, and debates around them pervade contemporary political and social discourses, and are often projected anachronistically, into the past. The course aims to study those aspects of Sunni Islam which made possible for Salafist leaders and theologians to construct arguments justifying their socio-political actions. To better understand such arguments, this course will furthermore take a historical route, and analyze secondary material available on certain figures of the Muslims’ past, which are today remembered as founding fathers of Salafism, such as Ibn Taymiyya.

Questions to be considered throughout the course: What characterizes the stream of Muslim political, ideological, and socio-anthropological thought labelled as “Salafism?” How is it possible for Salafism to co-exist with other Islamic streams of thought? Is all Salafism fundamental? What is the connection between Salafism and popular vigilantism (“enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong”)? How is it relevant for the West and the western discourse about Islam in general?