Since September 11, in seeking to ensure that the American public did not blame Islam for the violence, many commentators and scholars alike sought to argue that Islam is a peaceful religion and that violent Muslims are not “real” Muslims. This same argument is made by/for other religions.
It is based, though, in several problematic assumptions.
First, it assumes that there is such a thing as “real religion” that exists independent of its cultural expressions such that we can talk about the “true” nature of a religion in comparison to “perversions” of it;
Second it assumes that elites in the mainstream are the only ones who can say what a religion “really” is; and in a parallel, way privileges arguments constructed from snippets of sacred text as though the text is the essence of the religion.
Third it assumes that “real” religion is “good.”
This course will seek to problematize those assumptions (about Islam, but about other religions as well), and the very category “terrorism.” As an exercise in “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” this course will require that you seek to understand these cases through frameworks that are not your own.
We will look at studies of several different groups (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Buddhist) that claim religious justifications for violence, attempt to understand why those examples make sense to the people involved, and then explore some theoretical perspectives aimed at explaining the underlying relationship between religion and violence.
Click here for a sample syllabus
It is based, though, in several problematic assumptions.
First, it assumes that there is such a thing as “real religion” that exists independent of its cultural expressions such that we can talk about the “true” nature of a religion in comparison to “perversions” of it;
Second it assumes that elites in the mainstream are the only ones who can say what a religion “really” is; and in a parallel, way privileges arguments constructed from snippets of sacred text as though the text is the essence of the religion.
Third it assumes that “real” religion is “good.”
This course will seek to problematize those assumptions (about Islam, but about other religions as well), and the very category “terrorism.” As an exercise in “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” this course will require that you seek to understand these cases through frameworks that are not your own.
We will look at studies of several different groups (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Buddhist) that claim religious justifications for violence, attempt to understand why those examples make sense to the people involved, and then explore some theoretical perspectives aimed at explaining the underlying relationship between religion and violence.
Click here for a sample syllabus
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