Fall 2025

CMCU 4354: Health, Law, and Islam

Taught by Ghida Aljuburi
The Muslim view is that the origins of Islamic legal code are rooted in the Muslim holy text (the Quran) and Sunnah (the portion of Muslim law based on the prophet Mohammed’s words or acts), and it is this jurisprudence that gives Islamic religious practice its connection and sustainability in everything including health law and policy.This seminar provides an overview of where Islam as a rule of law and global health intersect through subject specific segments. The seminar will start by exploring Islamic law and the history of healthcare under Islamic law and move into segments that discuss food hygiene jurisprudence, prophetic medicine as Sunnah, bioethics and Islam, mental health and Islamic law, migrant health and Islamic law, and finally sexual, reproductive and human rights under Islamic law. It presupposes the Quran and Sunnah as the legal documents and where relevant, the seminar will discuss comparative aspects to western perspectives. This seminar supports the notion that global health law is part of a growing health diplomacy where it becomes vital to understand key aspects of how culture and religion can influence health, policy and the law locally and globally.

CMCU 3380: Saudi Arabia at a Crossroads

Taught by Taghreed Alsabeh
Saudi Arabia stands at a crossroads, balancing its traditional tribal structure, the influence of its ruling family, its immense wealth from oil reserves, its religious significance as the home of Islam’s two holiest sites, and its strategic alliance with the United States. This course explores Saudi Arabia’s unique characteristics and how they impact the country’s political landscape, particularly regarding the development of democracy. Students will analyze why Saudi Arabia’s political system differs from other Arab countries’ political regimes that were impacted by the democratization wave during the Arab Spring period, which led Saudi Arabia to survive the wave. The course will examine the challenges and prospects for democratic reform in the country.

HIST-1109: The Islamic World

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
From humble beginnings nearly 1500 years ago, to enormous power and prestige in the Middle Ages, to political decline and foreign occupation in the modern era, Islam has developed into a highly diverse, global tradition representing nearly one quarter of the world’s population. Yet it is most widely known through caricatures of terrorists and despots. This course examines that phenomenon. It focuses on the historical development of Muslim communities and their interactions with European and other powers. It emphasizes the impact of those interactions on Islam’s ideological and political developments. The interaction between religion and politics is a major sub-theme of the course.

INAF-1010-09: Prosem – Islam and the West

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
Academics, journalists and policy makers regularly refer to Islam, the West and the knotty question of Islam and the West. Stepping outside of ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, however, we see that neither is a concrete and unchanging reality. Both exist as ideas conceived by particular communities, internally disputed and perceived by others. This course will examine this conceptual knot through in-depth readings on how societies in the US (and Western Europe) understand ‘liberalism,’ ‘secularism’ and ‘Islam/Muslims as threat’ within the context of debates over the nature of Islam, the West and their proper relationship. We will also use travel literature as a way to explore how visitors from one of these civilizations experienced the other.

CMCU 3350: Syria Contemporary Religion and Politics

Taught by Daanish Faruqi
The fall of regime of longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 has left the world with countless questions. In particular, the Islamist orientation of the coalition that took down Assad, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, has led many analysts to probe whether an Islamist group can successfully transition Syria to proper stable governance. But questions like these can only be dealt with superficially unless one properly investigates the role of religion in Syrian politics and society. This course seeks to offer the necessary corrective, by offering a primer on the role of multiple religions in Syrian society from the 20th century to the present. It will briefly touch on antecedents from the late Ottoman period (19th century), but our focus will primarily be on the French colonial period, the formation of the Syrian Arab republic, and the eventual rise of Ba’athist Syria.

CMCU 4001: Global Div Israel & Palestine

Taught by Nader Hashemi
The Israel-Gaza War is a transformative moment in global politics. It has produced heated debate and political commentary that recalls other watershed moments in international affairs, such as the end of the Cold War, 9/11 and the subsequent US invasion of Iraq, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why does the Israel-Palestine conflict continue to generate intense polarization, bitterness, and acrimony on a global scale? This is the core question that will inform this course. Within Western societies, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza, have produced deep divisions in universities, medical and law schools, newsrooms, in Hollywood, among intellectuals, in the Democratic Party, and within the American Jewish community. Internationally, a chasm has emerged between the West and the global south over this issue as reflected in UN General Assembly and Security Council votes and the January 2024 International Court of Justice ruling on the question of genocide in Gaza. How can we objectively understand this ongoing global divide over the Israel/Palestine Conflict? What are its historical roots, how is it politically perpetuated and can this chasm be bridged? These are some of the questions that we will examine. 

INAF-1010-26: American Muslims 

Taught by Shenila Khoja-Moolji
There are about 1.8 billion Muslims globally. Yet, in America, they are defined through rather narrow tropes. This course introduces students to the heterogeneity and diversity of American Muslims through the case study of Shia Ismaili Muslims. We consider writings and media produced by Ismaili Muslims to contemplate larger questions around representation, anticoloniality, feminism, racism, and migrant and refugee resettlement. Accordingly, we discover how Muslims in America hope to dismantle exploitative hierarchies and the role that religious ethics play in this project.