Introduction to the Study of Islam and Muslims

Date and time: Tuesday, July 14, 2020, 3:30 pm to Thursday, July 30, 2020, 5:30 pm British Summer Time (UTC+1)

Tickets here.

Part of AKU-ISMC’s Muslim Culture and Societies 2020 online short course series

Running on consecutive Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3:30-5:30 pm from July 14 to July 30, the course provides an introduction to the development of Islamic thought and institutions from the seventh century to the present day. It surveys basic sources and terminologies as well as providing an introduction to major trends in scholarship. It asks when, and on what basis, different actors seek to make generalizations about Muslims (and, by implication, non-Muslims), and whether such generalizations can ever be valid.

Class learning objectives:

• To understand the development and variety of Islamic thought
• To analyze why different actors have been able to define Islam successfully for Muslims
• To evaluate the agendas that underlie scholarship on Islam and Muslims

Professor Philip Wood is a historian of the Middle East. He has written on the histories of religious minorities in the caliphate and on the experience of Muslims as minorities in Britain. Together with Leif Stenberg, he is currently editing a volume on the Politics of Islamic Studies and he is also editing a second volume on Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities in the Abbasid caliphate. His third monograph, on the Abbasid-era intellectual Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press in January 2021.