Courses Archives - Kadivar.com English

Islam and Modernism

Why is the experience of Muslims about modernization and modernity different from Western modernization and modernity? Why do we have modernities (plural), not modernity (singular)? 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.

Religion and Politics In Post-Revolutionary Iran

This course will narrate a fair and balanced critical and historical analysis, and is organized into five thematic sections: a brief overview of the relationship between religion and politics in Iran, an intellectual history of the Islamic Republic, examining the concept of the “sacred as secular” and exploring the dynamics of secularization within a theocratic system, the governance in the name of Islam, focusing on theology and theocratic rule in the Islamic Republic, and the revolt against theocracy: the Mahsa Movement and the feminist uprising against theocracy in Iran.

Comparative Religious Studies

The main goal of the seminar is a better understanding of the key concepts of Abrahamic traditions through comparative religious studies methodology. The seminar discusses theological subjects in the philosophical realm, descriptive not prescriptive, as a historian or an outsider of these traditions, not as an insider or believer. The discussions are purely neutral, critical analysis, historical, and based on modern scholarship of religious studies. Is the scripture infallible? Are Jews, Christians, and Muslims worshiping the same God? What is the initial capacity for violent interpretation in each tradition?

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of religion is a critical examination of metaphysics and rational justification for religious claims, as well as philosophical exploration of faith, religious experience, and the distinctive features of religious discourse. The course explores the nature of God’s attributes; arguments for God’s existence; the problem of evil; religious epistemology; religious language; God, science, and naturalism; faith and revelation; morality and religion; death and afterlife; miracles; and religious diversity. We compare the advantages and disadvantages of four methods of practicing the philosophy of religion: analytic, Wittgensteinian, continental, and feminist.

Ibn Arabi’s Sufism: Islamic Theoretical Mysticism

Ibn Arabi, one of the world’s great spiritual teachers, was a prominent mystic and visionary who enriched the Sufi tradition of Islam with his numerous and profound spiritual writings. This course explores Ibn ‘Arabi’s methodology (divine speech, deiformity, and names & relations), ontology (wahdat al-wujud, non-delimitation, imagination, and the barzakh), things and realities (fixed entities, the reality of realities, and entification [ta‘ayyun]), the return (the circle of existence, stages of ascent, and the two commands), and human perfection (the station of no station, perfect man, and divine presences).

Islam (Introduction)

Islam is simultaneously one of the most frequently discussed and least understood of the world’s major religious traditions. This introductory course includes the foundational scripture (the Qur’an), the life of the Prophet (Muhammad), and major dimensions of Islamic thought and practice ranging from ethics/law and theology to mysticism and philosophy. This course will also include a unit on contemporary debates in Islam, by examining the legacy of American Muslims. It is designed for any student who wants to learn about Islam, its essential teachings, and its foundational sources.

Philosophy of Shah Wali Allah

Shah Waliullah Dehlavi (1703-1762) was an Indian theologian, Sufi of the Naqshbandi order, and promulgator of modern Islamic thought who first attempted to reassess Islamic theology in the light of modern changes. This course explores his philosophy, including the philosophy of religion, theology, and mysticism. We focus on a critical analysis of three of his masterworks that were translated into English and discuss his major principles and key terms in theoretical mysticism: Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha (The Conclusive Argument from God), and The Lamaḥāt (Flashes/Glimpses of Philosophy), and The Sataʿat (Illuminations).

Understanding the Qur’an

The Spring 2024 course explores the history of revelation or words of God in Islam; the formation of the Qur’an as a book; its interpretation from medieval to modern times; its major themes; how the Qur’an introduces itself: the book of guidance, and virtues; the question of translatability; teaching the Qur’an as religious literature from a neutral viewpoint that could be understood from a secular/non-theological perspective; the lessons one might apply from literary criticism, biblical studies, and historical methodology; and its message for human beings in the contemporary world.

The Problem of Evil

The 2024 course explores the key concepts and major issues of the problem of evil and its three types of responses. ‘The problem of evil’ as the challenge of reconciling the existence of a perfect being (Omnipotent, Omniscient, and omnibenevolent God) with the existence of evil, suffering, and sin has been one of the greatest intellectual problems. The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.

Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism (Sufi’s Approach to Philosophy)

This course focuses on Sufi’s approach to philosophy, especially on the Philosophy of Illumination of Suhrawardi and The Transcendent Philosophy of Mulla Sadra. The course starts with an introduction to the philosophy of Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra as well as the mystical works of Avicenna, al-Gazali, and Ibn Tufail. The main body of the course is studying and analyzing symbolic and mystical recitals of Avicenna, Suhrawardi, Gazali, Ibn Tufail, and others. We try to examine the key themes of philosophy, Sufism, and philosophical Sufism through these symbolic and mystical recitals.

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