ISLAMS AND MUSLIMS
Welcome
Islam and Muslims in the Modern Era
This course explores Islam and Muslim societies in the modern era through a historical perspective, emphasising how major political and economic shifts since the eighteenth century have transformed Muslim thought, practice, and institutions worldwide. The core focus is on how encounters with colonialism, imperialism, global capitalism, and the rise of the modern nation-state have influenced intellectual, theological, social, and political responses to modernity. Instead of viewing Islam as a singular or unchanging tradition, the course underscores the diversity of Muslim experiences and the historically grounded debates that have developed within Muslim societies.
The course focuses on key regions such as South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Arabia, the Ottoman territories, and North Africa. It aims to investigate how local histories related to empire, colonial rule, reform, and resistance have influenced distinct yet interconnected Islamic movements and ideas. Students will explore questions like: How did colonial governance and legal reforms impact Islamic authority and law? In what ways did imperial power and economic changes drive movements of reform, revival, and resistance? How did the fall of empires and the rise of nation-states alter religious identity, sovereignty, and political theology? Additionally, how did global trade, education, and migration networks foster new forms of Islamic thought and activism?
A dedicated section of the course examines Islam in Europe and North America, placing Muslim communities in the “West” within broader histories of empire, migration, race, and citizenship. Instead of viewing Islam in the West as a recent or isolated phenomenon, the course investigates its deep links to colonial labour systems, postwar migration, and current debates over secularism, pluralism, and belonging. Emphasis is placed on how these historical legacies continue to influence Muslim religious life, public discourse, and political engagement today.
By combining regional case studies with comparative and thematic analysis, this course enables students to understand how modern Islamic theologies, movements, and identities have developed in dialogue with global power structures. Students will gain a historically informed perspective on Islam in the modern world and the analytical tools needed to critically engage with contemporary debates about religion, politics, and society.
Affect, Islam, and Sufism
This course explores the deep connections between affect, Islamic thought, and Sufism, emphasising how emotions, sensations, and embodied experiences shape religious practice, ethical growth, and spirituality. Rather than seeing Islam only as a set of beliefs or legal codes, the course emphasises affective elements such as love (maḥabba), fear (khawf), hope (rajāʾ), longing (shawq), joy, sorrow, and awe. It analyses how these feelings are cultivated, regulated, and interpreted within Islamic traditions.
Special attention is given to Sufism, the Islamic mystical tradition that explicitly emphasises affect and inner experiences in its pursuit of closeness to God. Using texts from the Qur’an, prophetic sayings, classical Sufi writings, poetry, and modern ethnographies, students will explore how emotional states are understood and expressed in rituals such as dhikr (remembrance), music and listening (samāʿ), pilgrimage, and daily ethical practices. The course also incorporates current and critical theories of affect to analyse how power, community, gender, and politics influence religious emotions in both historical and modern Muslim contexts.
By combining affect theory with Islamic studies and Sufi thought, the course prompts students to rethink binaries like reason and emotion, law and spirituality, and inner experience versus social life. Students will enhance their abilities in detailed textual analysis, comparative theory, and critical reflection, gaining a nuanced understanding of affect as a crucial force in Islamic intellectual, devotional, and lived traditions.
Poetical Islam: An Enviromental Theology
This course is built on my original work, which has culminated over a decade. It examines Islam through poetry as a living environmental theology. Drawing on Qur’anic imagery, classical and modern Islamic poetry, Sufi metaphysics, and devotional literature, Poetical Islam demonstrates how poetic language shapes Muslim conceptions of nature, creation, and ethical obligations toward the Earth. Rather than treating ecology as a recent addition to theology, the course highlights that attention to land, water, animals, seasons, and the cosmos has long been rooted in Islamic spiritual and aesthetic traditions.
Students will explore poetry as a way of knowing, one that connects revelation and experience, law and love, science and spirituality. We will read poets such as Rūmī, Ḥāfiẓ, Yunus Emre, and contemporary Muslim voices alongside Qur’anic passages that depict the natural world as āyāt (signs), encouraging contemplation, humility, and care. Themes include stewardship (khilāfah), trust (amānah), balance (mīzān), mercy (raḥmah), and the moral imagination needed to address ecological crises.
By situating environmental ethics within poetic expression, the course encourages students to rethink theology not merely as doctrine but as sensibility and action, one that listens to the Earth, honours interdependence, and fosters reverence. Poetical Islam ultimately explores how poetic perspectives can rejuvenate Islamic ecological thought and motivate more just and compassionate relationships with the more-than-human world.