Much noise has been made about “Political Islam” in the academy, media and society at large but very little has been studied and written about “Islamic Political Thought.” This course will cover the correlation between Islam and politics. We are honoured and privileged to have one of the world’s leading Muslim academic scholars of Islamic intellectual thought, Professor Ovamir Anjum to deliver a one-day intensive course on this critical and relevant topic.
In this one day course we will explore:
- Islamic political thought and philosophy
- The Past: History and Normative Tradition
- Caliphate,– Theory & practice: From Ummayad, Abbasid, Mamluk, Ottoman, Safavids & Mughals
- The emergence and nature of the modern nation-state and its secular theology
- The Present: The Failing States
- Theoretical works of classical scholars such as al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Khaldun, al-Mawardi and others
- Looking Ahead
- Extensive Q and A sessions
About the Instructor:
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Professor Ovamir Anjum Professor Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work focuses on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western Thought. His interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology or views of intellect/reason in various domains of Islamic thought, ranging from politics (siyasa), law (fiqh), theology (kalam), falsafa (Islamic philosophy) and spirituality (Sufism, mysticism, and asceticism). He brings this historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements and is currently researching developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. While trained as an historian, his work is essentially interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of classical Islamic studies, political philosophy, and cultural anthropology.
He obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Intellectual history in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012). His current projects include one forthcoming edited volume on Islam after the 2011 Arab Uprisings and a monograph on the foundations of modern Islamic political thought. He is also near-completing a decade-long project to translate a popular Islamic spiritual and theological classic, Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351), which, upon completion, would be the largest single-author English translation of a classical Islamic text. Dr. Ovamir is a Co-Editor of the American Journal of Islam and Society and a Senior Fellow and Editor in Chief at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. |