Spring 2026

CMCU 3397 – Muslim Women & the West

Taught by Dr. Shenila Khoja-Moolji
Muslim women often appear in Western imagination as oppressed, silent, and victimized. This course offers an alternate account of Muslim women by centering texts and aesthetics produced by them, along with ethnographic studies that give us a glimpse into their lives in the West. We encounter Muslim women through non-normative frames of agency, joy, community-building, and care. We observe the myriad ways in which they construct preferred futures against racist, capitalist, and heteronormative logics. A major thrust of the course is studying the lifeworlds of Shia Muslim women (a minority interpretive community within Islam).

CMCU 4001 – Global Div Israel & Palestine

Taught by Dr. 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.

CMCU 4130 – U.S. Relations w/ Muslim World

Taught by Dr. William Lawrence
U.S. relations with the Muslim world have been pivotal to its development from the dawn of the republic and central to both American and Muslim nations’ emergence in the 20th and 21st century as global powers. It has been marked by highly significant security and trade relationships and marred by serious obstacles and challenges related to freedoms, human rights, poverty, dignity, and extremism. While security issues have always dominated the relationships, the U.S. has also intermittently focused on political and social progress, economic development and trade, educational and cultural exchange, climate change and environmental stewardship, and peacemaking and human security. While U.S. political forces and public opinion have been increasingly negative towards Muslims since 9/11, most American leaders and citizens also realize the importance of national and personal relationships with Muslim Americans and with the fifty Muslim majority and Muslim plurality countries around the world—representing a quarter of humanity—and understand that this must trump their fear and perception of Muslim threats. The tension between the positive use of America’s power and its desire to engage with the world and influence it for the good and the negative use of its power and its impulse to securitize its relationships and retreat behind a vision of Fortress America is one of the main questions posited by this course. This analytical framework for this course draws on history, comparative politics, economics, and international relations. Every week, the course will focus and students should explore ways in which religious phenomena intersect with the issues being discussed, when and where relevant, and with analytical rigor. 

CMCU 4190 – Majoritarianism and Minority Rights in South Asia

Taught by Dr. Badar Khan-Suri
The course aims to provide an Asian response to the debate over the rise of ethno-nationalism, majoritarianism, and the challenges to minority rights. The case of India sheds light on specific reasons behind the decay of democracies. Moreover, the course will investigate how and why ethnoreligious majorities have been weaponizing their discourse against minorities. At the center of this discourse is the Hindutva ideology. The course will examine whether it represents an exclusionary vision. Moreover, the course will investigate whether such an ideology perceives minorities as a threat. Finally, the course will explore how democracy interacts with these dynamics—whether it mitigates or amplifies tensions arising from ethno-nationalism.

CMCU/ARAB 4417 – Shariah Law & its Discontents

Taught by Dr. Jonathan Brown
There are few topics as controversial globally and in the United States as poorly understood as ‘The Shariah’. This course will explore the actual nature and history of the Islamic legal tradition, with special focus on how it is understood, implemented and contested today. We will investigate how the Sunni Shariah tradition developed, its main characteristics, various areas of the law, from family law to criminal law, and explore legal theory as well.

CMCU/ARAB 4650 – War on Terror at Home

Taught by Dr. Jonathan Brown
The quarter century since 9/11 and dawn of the ‘War on Terror’ has seen the surfacing of tensions and crises, some long simmering, some new, as American foreign policy and domestic life have repeatedly collided. The notion of the rule of law and civil liberties has collided with anxieties over support for terrorism, ‘extremism’ and the exigencies of national security. The conception of America as a pluralistic and liberal nation has collided with claims of cultural, religious and even racial parochialism. Muslims in the US and shibboleths associated with them, from the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ (2010) to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s hijab and campus protests over Gaza, have been the meeting point of all these tensions and crises. This course will explore how ‘The War on Terror,’ its domestic manifestation, Islam/Muslims and debates over what America should be have shaped the US in recent decades.