Islam and the World Today



Overview

Beginning with the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphs, and focusing in detail on the period since 1800, this course will examine the relationship between Islam and the West.

We will study the relationship between contemporary Islam, Western democracy, post-Enlightenment thinking and concepts of civil and human rights, and seek to identify democratic and human rights trends within Islam. For example, why does the influence of political Islam appear to be stronger than that of historical Sufi thinking? 

We will conclude by studying why things appear to have gone so badly wrong since The Arab Spring which started with so much hope in 2011. We look at the struggle for freedoms in Iran, the cost of President Assad's Russian-supported rule in a devastated Syria, the dilemma of the West over the Israel-Palestine impasse, the impact of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, and the significance of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Additionally we will ask if Algeria is to crash again after so much conflict and uncertainty. 

Programme details

Courses starts: 25 Sep 2023

Week 1: A snapshot of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and his relationship with Judaism and Christianity

Week 2: The implications of the Sunni-Shia divide, and the spread of Sufism

Week 3: The Ottoman Empire and the Millet system which protected minorities such as Jews, Christians, Druzes, Alawites and Yazidis

Week 4: The cultural and intellectual explosion caused by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and the opening to the West and liberal thinking by proteges of Muhammad Ali who filled the vacuum of the departing French

Week 5: Saudi Arabia, the 'Wahhabis' and Ibn Saud's complex relationship with Britain and the US

Week 6: Khomeini and his velayat-e faqih (The Custodianship of the Jurisconsult, essentially, Islamic dictatorship) challenge the Western-style democracy once favoured by Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh. Have the liberals failed to challenge Iran's hardliners? Was former President Trump's US to blame?

Week 7: When the army aborted the democratic process in Algeria in 1990-92 the West remained hypocritically silent and a black decade of terror developed. What next for Algeria under new leadership ?

Week 8: What is the impact of US policy under President Biden on the Arab-Israel conflict after Trump and Jared Kushner's controversial peace plan

Week 9: Will Islamic State return to Syria and Iraq and what future for The Kurds? How significant is Russia's support of Bashar al-Asad since its invasion of Ukraine ?

Week 10: How will Western relations with Afghanistan develop in light of the return to power of the Talban and the closing of girls' secondary schools 

Certification

Students who register for CATS points will receive a Record of CATS points on successful completion of their course assessment.

To earn credit (CATS points) you will need to register and pay an additional £10 fee per course. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online.

Coursework is an integral part of all weekly classes and everyone enrolled will be expected to do coursework in order to benefit fully from the course. Only those who have registered for credit will be awarded CATS points for completing work at the required standard.

Students who do not register for CATS points during the enrolment process can either register for CATS points prior to the start of their course or retrospectively from the January 1st after the current full academic year has been completed. If you are enrolled on the Certificate of Higher Education you need to indicate this on the enrolment form but there is no additional registration fee.

Fees

Description Costs
Course Fee £257.00
Take this course for CATS points £10.00

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, you are a full-time student in the UK or a student on a low income, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:

Concessionary fees for short courses

Tutor

Mr Trevor Mostyn

Trevor Mostyn read Arabic with Persian at Edinburgh University, spending a year at the American University in Cairo. Later he taught at Algiers University, then travelled throughout the Middle East as a publisher and then set up and ran the Med Media Programme (media projects between the then 12 EU countries and the 12 Mediterranean non-member countries) for the European Union. He has published 8 books on the region, lectured on ships and written for many newspapers. He teaches Islamic Studies at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education.

Course aims

At a time when hopes engendered by the Arab Spring have been dashed, Western-initiated experiments with democracy in Iraq and Libya have failed, incidents of militant Islamist terrorism have increased, immigration from Libya and Algeria may be set to expand massively and civil war has devastated Syria. The course will analyse to what extent the West is to blame for the failure to democratise in Iran, Egypt, Algeria and Iraq.

Course objectives:

  • To help students understand the increasing standoff between traditional Islamic and Western liberal values and why Western-style democracy has mostly failed in the Islamic world
  • To analyse why the failure to democratise is related to contemporary Islam or Western interference or both
  • To understand why genuine attempts to democratise in Iran (1952/53), Algeria (1991/2), Palestine (2006) and Egypt (2013) and in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been thwarted

Teaching methods

Methods of teaching will include simple notes, chronologies, maps and documents provided in advance of each class, presentations with PowerPoint slides by the tutor, controlled discussion among students, chaired by the tutor, and debates on selected topics. Students will be encouraged to ask questions at regular intervals set by the tutor. Each session will include the circulation of and presentation on screen of historical or political documents. Students will be offered the option of producing short, written exercises at home for oral presentation at the next class.

Teaching will include references to and circulation of primary and secondary sources. In advance of each class an advance handout of notes on the subject-matter of the class, notes on the previous class and an agenda with maps, newspaper cuttings and other documents for the next class as well as a calendar of relevant events at St Antony's College Middle East Centre and relevant debates at the Oxford Union will be circulated by the tutor.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will be expected to:

  • understand the extent to which Islam reflects the sort of democracy that lies at the heart of contemporary Western civilization.
  • study the influence that 19th-century reform movements had on the development of democratic thinking and civil and human rights in the Middle East.
  • assess the success or failure of recent democratic movements in Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Turkey and Afghanistan and how the outside world has responded to them.

Assessment methods

Tasks set will depend upon each class’s subject matter. Option A requires from each student four short pieces of written work of about 250 words or a total of 1,500 words. These must be based on documentary work carried out in class. These exercises will form a part of each week’s teaching programme. Option B includes the opportunity for the student to write one piece of work of about 1,000 words. Up to 1,500 words is allowed for both options. This will be an analysis of a historical or political figure discussed in class or a key event in modern Islamic history discussed in class.

The tutor will provide a list of possible subjects. Students will be strongly encouraged to read books on the reading lists provided in order to enhance their understanding of each new topic discussed. The tutor may set short reading tasks in order to clarify discussions taking place the following week. There will also be a number of short quizzes based on a previous class.

Students must submit a completed Declaration of Authorship form at the end of term when submitting your final piece of work. CATS points cannot be awarded without the aforementioned form - Declaration of Authorship form

Application

To earn credit (CATS points) for your course you will need to register and pay an additional £10 fee per course. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online.

Please use the 'Book' or 'Apply' button on this page. Alternatively, please complete an enrolment form (Word) or enrolment form (Pdf).

Level and demands

No previous knowledge of the subject is required, but students may find it helpful to have looked at a book such as Kim Ghattas's Black Wave, Malise Ruthven's lslam In the World, Eugene Rogan's The Arabs, Lesley Hazleton's After the Prophet, Andrew Hussey's The French Intifada, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace and Christopher Bellaigue's The Islamic Enlightenment prior to the course.

Most of the Department's weekly classes have 10 or 20 CATS points assigned to them. 10 CATS points at FHEQ Level 4 usually consist of ten 2-hour sessions. 20 CATS points at FHEQ Level 4 usually consist of twenty 2-hour sessions. It is expected that, for every 2 hours of tuition you are given, you will engage in eight hours of private study.

Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS)

Terms & conditions for applicants and students

Information on financial support