Islam and Revolution

Catalog description

Islamic history is typically told as a history of continuity. A range of otherwise sharply divergent Muslim communities shape themselves in terms of an unbroken tradition stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad. In this course we will adopt a different approach, reading Islamic history in terms of rupture. A basic premise of this course is that directing our focus in the study of Islam to models and moments of radical political change will necessarily reorient our understanding of Islam in the present. In particular, we will focus on messianism and the figure of the Mahdi in an effort to understand how this figure was deployed differently in three broad periods of Islamic history: the formative period beginning with Muhammad’s initial revolution in seventh-century Arabia through the Mongols’ destruction of the caliphate in 1258, the millennial period of post-Mongol Sufism through the colonial era, and the postcolonial period through today. While we will address famous cases such as Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, a key aim of the course will be to think about revolution beyond the framework of the state and its overthrow, and Islam beyond its currently most visible forms of scripture-mediated piety. How do Islamic ritual practices prefigure and create political change, broadly construed? How do revolutions and their aftermaths negotiate and articulate difference within Islam? How have Muslim rulers and revolutionaries approached the problem of violence; what have they considered legitimate violence and on what terms? We will ask these and related questions in conversation with a variety of historical, anthropological, and theological texts.