RELIGION 663
Islam and Modernism
Mohsen Kadivar, PhD
Fall 2025
W, 4:40-7:10 pm; Venue: Social Science 107
Course Description:
How did Muslim scholars and intellectuals encounter modernism? How did they distinguish between colonialism and modernism? Compared with modernization, how did they confront Westernization? How did they distinguish between modernization, modernism, and modernity? What can Muslims learn from the Christian and Jewish experiences of modernity? Why is the experience of Muslims about modernization and modernity different from Western modernization and modernity? What do modern Muslim figures think about secularism, democracy, human rights, natural and social sciences, humanities, and technology?
Exploring the different experiences of Arab, Iranian, Turk, Indian peninsula, Eastern South Asian, African, and Western Muslims, how can we classify the relationship between Islam and modernism? Why do we have modernities (plural), not modernity (singular)? What was the effect of modernity on understanding Islam and the interpretation of the Scripture and Prophetic Tradition, jurisprudence (fiqh), and theology (kalam)? How did modernity divide Muslims into conservative or traditionalists, fundamentalists or revolutionaries, quasi-conservatives, reformists, and revisionists? How does each of these five camps introduce Islam?
This course tries to respond to such questions, as the key questions of Islam and modernism. We focus on the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries’ main debates, tensions, responses, and adaptations, and cover the major classics of this period. The course aims to provide students with a multidimensional conceptual, theoretical, and practical understanding of the study of Islam and modernism. The course materials include diverse approaches to the subject.