Comparative Islamic and Middle Eastern Law: Contemporary Issues

Catalog description

This course addresses students to key issues in Middle East legal systems and politics today. It introduces the current Middle East by drawing upon cutting-edge scholarships written from a diversity of disciplinary views. These include history, law, political science, as well as studies of religion, gender, mass media, sexuality, human rights, and urban life. It will emphasize the main tendencies and movements in modern Arabian World history. It will analyze both groundwork (basics) in Middle Eastern research and a common sense of modern directions and tracks in the field. It examines the people, traditions, society and politics of the area and the role that religion, gender, culture have played in designing and influencing contemporary issues. It discusses the fundamental internal and external performers in the region; peace and conflict (Israel/Palestine); the geo-strategic significance of the region; political economy matters; political transformation and development; the problem of identities in the Middle East and legal philosophies around this; family law issues (inheritance); the politics of religion (appearance of political Islam); Arab constitutionalism, September 11 and the fall-out in the region from the US-led war on terrorism, the Arab Spring, and the unfolding uprisings in the Arab World. Also, this course will introduce the field of Islamic law.