Term: Winter/Spring 2019
Semester Dates: January 14, 2019 to May 10, 2019
Course Number: REL 481/SAME 481 (Illinois) | 01:840:393 (Rutgers) | MIDEAST 490 (Michigan)
Times: Tuesday 3:00-5:30 Central, 4:00-6:30 Eastern
Instructor: Valerie Hoffman | vhoffman@illinois.edu
Many Westerners are highly critical of Muslims and allege that they embrace values that are contrary to Western liberalism; some promote fear of Islam itself. Are Muslims necessarily tied to a tradition that alienates them from today’s global society? How are Muslims incorporating, changing, and analyzing their tradition and their place in the contemporary world? This course explores the ideas and writings of contemporary, often revisionist, Muslim scholars on a broad range of ethical issues that face societies today, such as human rights, gender and sexuality, religious pluralism, just war, and bioethics.
About the Instructor: Professor of Islamic studies and Head of the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Valerie Hoffman has 32 years of teaching courses on all aspects of Islamic thought and practice. She spent two years among Sufis in Egypt, becoming a quasi-disciple to a mystical teacher and traveling with him and his disciples around the country. This resulted in a book, Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt(University of South Carolina Press, 1995); a documentary film, “Celebrating the Prophet in the Remembrance of God: Sufi Dhikr in Egypt”; and several articles. She is also the author of The Essentials of Ibadi Islam (Syracuse University Press, 2012) and articles on Islamic gender ideology, Ibadi Islam, Islam in Oman and Zanzibar, human rights, and contemporary Islamic movements.
Hosting University: University of Illinois
Participating University: Rutgers University, University of Michigan
Academic Calendar: Unless specified by the course instructor, the course will follow the University of Illinois Spring 2019 academic calendar.