Course Directory

ʿAqāʾid is the name of the discipline which is concerned with the fundamentals of faith in Islam. Knowledge of ʿaqāʾid is necessary to conduct one’s life as a Muslim. The issues addressed in this discipline, such as the oneness of God, the institution of prophethood, and belief in the afterlife, form the core of Islam.

In this seminar, the goal is to teach the students the fundamental subjects and debates in the discipline of kalām (rational theology) and to guide them in analyzing the effects of these debates on the Islamic intellectual tradition.

Fiqh as a field is concerned with the practical aspects of religion. As emphasized by Ibn Khaldūn, who remarked that “fiqh is the carrier of civilization,” fiqh is a discipline that anybody who is interested in the Islamic civilization needs to know. At the same time, everybody who wishes to live their lives in accordance with Islam needs to learn the science of fiqh.

The objective of this seminar is to introduce students to classical fiqh texts, to improve their ability to read, understand, and interpret these texts, and to help them approach fiqh issues in a systematic way. The seminars will be supplemented by contemporary texts on occasion. The fiqh seminar aims to give the students the ability to understand fiqh problems that emerge on the individual and collective levels, to interpret them correctly, and to produce solutions using an appropriate methodology.

The discipline of uṣūl al-fiqh examines the sources of fiqh (law) and the method of deriving rulings from these sources. Even though this definition mentions the sources of law, the actual function of uṣūl al-fiqh is to equip a Muslim with a sound perspective on events, i.e. to teach how to think like a Muslim.

In this seminar, the student will be expected to comparatively analyze the opinions of Ḥanafī scholars with reference to a classical uṣūl al-fiqh text, to discuss issues from a perspective that is aware of the historical, social, and theological background on which uṣūl al-fiqh debates are based, and to form an authentic and correct understanding and perception of uṣūl al-fiqh.

Uṣūl al-ḥadīth is a discipline which examines the status of the narrator and the narrative and arrives at a qualitative judgment regarding their admissibility. The ability to distinguish between authentic and weak ḥadīth, as well as a sound understanding of ḥadīth based on strong foundations, can only be gained by studying this discipline.

This seminar aims to establish a healthy relationship between prophetic traditions and the student. One of the significant objectives of the seminar will be achieved if the student gains the ability to critically evaluate the meaning and content of the criticisms directed at the discipline of uṣūl al-ḥadīth, which is one of the most frequently attacked Islamic disciplines in modern times. In this way, instead of adopting a position of wholesale denial or unthinking acceptance, they will develop a more scholarly and sound approach.

Exegesis as a discipline aims to explain and interpret Quranic verses. This seminar seeks to read exegetical works with the aim of understanding the Quran correctly. This process will also be aided by employing the rules and nuances that the student had learned in the instrumental linguistic disciplines. In addition, the seminar will touch on different subjects regarding Quranic Sciences and the history of exegesis. After students reach a certain level of mastery, they will also be instructed on how to understand the Quran from the perspective of rhetoric, law, creed, and other such disciplines.

Belief in something often comes with a desire to establish it on rational terms as well. In the classical Islamic scholarly tradition, the discipline of kalām has not only served this function, but also produced rational answers to the suspicions directed against Islam. Building on the foundations laid by the seminar on ʿaqāʾid, this seminar will address similar subjects in more detail and depth. It aims to demonstrate how these foundations of faith are to be formulated and grounded on a rational level and how this process of rationalization should be conducted. The seminar will also analyze the various approaches stemming from different schools of kalām, falsafah (philosophy), and taṣawwuf (Sufism) from a comparative perspective.

This course is an introduction to the scholarly tradition of the Islamic Civilization. It will discuss historical development as well as key concepts and questions of main Islamic disciplines such as fiqh, kalām, ḥadīth, and tafsīr. The aim of the course is to provide the students with a general intellectual map of the classical scholarly world. Within this framework, the course will also discuss subjects such as the hierarchy of the disciplines, the connections between various sub-fields, and the contemporary value of Islamic disciplines.

Classical Arabic is one of the most fundamental prerequisites for understanding and interpreting religious texts. Since the language of the Quran and the ḥadīth is a highly refined and sophisticated Arabic, the student should receive this linguistic training in depth and with the utmost care and discipline. Seminars in classical Arabic provide the student with a comprehensive knowledge of Arabic grammar using the dual framework of the two sub-disciplines: ṣarf (morphology) and naḥw (syntax). The former deals with declinations and the structure of the individual word, while the latter concerns rules of syntax, sentence structure, and syntactical declination (iʿrāb).

In classical Arabic seminars, instructors will use texts that were highly regarded in the classical Ottoman educational establishment, as well as more recent sources. In order to supplement theory with application and practice, regular text readings according to the level of the students will be held. The expected outcome of these seminars is linguistic mastery sufficient to read fundamental Islamic texts.

Incorporated within the ranks of classical Islamic disciplines by al-Ghazālī, the discipline of logic attained a vital status in the tradition of Islamic thought, becoming one of the most indispensable instrumental sciences. So much so that the saying “The knowledge of the one who does not know logic cannot be trusted” came to be axiomatic. The goal of the seminars on logic is to increase the ability of discernment, protect the mind from falsehoods, and teach systematic thought.

The logic seminars will be based on Isāghūjī, which is the fundamental text of classical logic in the Islamic intellectual tradition. The themes will be studied further in depth through commentaries on the Isāghūjī, as well as more recent sources. It is expected that by the end of these seminars, students will have gained mastery of the fundamental objectives of logic and will be able to understand the argumentation process in classical texts.

A correct understanding and interpretation of classical Arabic texts depends on sufficient knowledge of linguistic disciplines, which scrutinize the language in which these texts have been penned. The discipline of waḍʿ (philosophy of language) treats Arabic wording and expressions from the lens of the concept of waḍʿ, which entails giving names to entities and attributing meaning to words and expressions. In regards to its content and function, waḍʿ is equivalent to philosophy of language.

The seminars on waḍʿ will rely heavily on epistles that were highly regarded within Ottoman scholarly circles, as well as some contemporary texts. This seminar aims to give the student mastery over the language of the texts in the field of waḍʿ and to impart an understanding of how waḍʿ relates to other Islamic disciplines. The student will also gain familiarity with the main contested issues in philosophy of language and be acquainted with the leading texts of the field.

The discipline of balāghah emerged as a comprehensive field in the wake of an in-depth scrutiny of the Arabic language, which aimed at a correct understanding of the Quran. It is closely connected to Arabic language and literature, Quranic Studies, tafsīr (exegesis), waḍʿ (philosophy of language), munāẓarah (disputation), uṣūl al-fiqh (jurisprudence), and kalām (rational theology). The discipline of balāghah examines how/when an expression is correct (fasīḥ) and eloquent (balīgh). The discipline is divided into the three sub-disciplines of bayān, maʿānī, and badīʾ.

Relying on notable works of balāghah from the Islamic scholarly tradition, these seminars aim to equip the students with the skill to identify and analyze semantic and literary figures in the Arabic language and the fundamental classical texts. The student will also master the methodology of interpreting classical texts and build the necessary substructure to understand the arguments in jurisprudence and kalām.

The science of argumentation has held an important place within the edifice of classical Islamic intellectual tradition. This discipline has attracted the attention of knowledge-seekers because it has a strong practical aspect in addition to its theoretical component. It has also come to the fore thanks to leading scholars, who addressed controversies and disagreements with other scholars using the methodology of munāẓarah. This discipline aims to set detailed rules and guidelines regarding the foundation on which an academic argument rests. The process of disputation, on the other hand, aims to uncover the truth through the clash and reconciliation of ideas.

These seminars will be based on texts that were traditionally used by the Ottoman educational establishment. The goal of the seminars is to give the students the ability to defend a thesis properly, criticize an opinion in an appropriate and scholarly manner, protect themselves from error in the process of argumentation, and at the same time understand the disputations in classical texts correctly.

These Year 1 courses provide a chronological overview and exploration of key core principles and themes in the development of intellectual, cultural, socio-political and economic dimensions in the history of Islamic Civilization, including the birth of the Islamic Disciplines (ʿUlūm). They will start with the birth of Islam until the period just before the Ottoman tanẓīmāt reforms.

One important focus will be the degree to which contemporary Islamic thought will be able to develop a contemporary Islamic worldview that brings together pre-modern and contemporary perspectives in a way that allows us to reach a deeper meaning of what it means to be a “world/universal/open civilization” today. As such, the course will explore the idea of an “Islamic civilization” itself, seeing how it can be rooted in the efforts of pre-modern Muslim intellectual figures but not confined to it.

The course will provide alternative insights to conventional Western social science methods by highlighting the potential power of the well-established Islamic schools of thought to respond to present questions of social sciences. In this regard, the methods of falsafa, kalām, taṣawwuf, and fiqh will be presented along with a social science and humanities perspective. The course offers multiplexity as an alternative approach to the study of the structure of Islamic sciences. This is because these disciplines, when hierarchically classified, form a cohesive system for a holistic understanding of a multiplex reality. The course aims to cultivate students’ abilities to choose in an informed way from a toolbox that provides, side by side, modern Western and Islamic methodologies to analyze, understand, and engage questions of human social existence.

The purpose of all social sciences is to answer a fundamental question: what is a human being and why do they do what they are doing in society? This question requires to be systematically answered, hence we need a firm understanding of methodology. The purpose of this course is to uncover the conceptual roots and ontological and epistemological assumptions of major methodological schools in social sciences. While surveying the basic assumptions of major schools, the course will uphold a genetic approach, that is, it will comparatively discuss the origins and theoretical foundations of each school.

Rather than preferring one approach over others, the course aims to illustrate the existence of the wide array of methodological approaches in social sciences. Various approaches emanating from different worldviews and ideologies may sometimes appear in tension with one another. The course aims to bring them in dialogue in a comparative perspective by highlighting their strengths and potentials as well as drawbacks and limitations.

As a core curriculum course it will briefly cover particular major methods and their applications. The detailed examination will be offered by each department in line with their own field-specific priorities. The objective of the course is to create an awareness about the intimate link between fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions of schools of thought and their methodological preferences, and it will encourage students to recognize and reflect upon variations of these links.

The course will provide alternative insights to conventional Western social science methods by highlighting the potential power of the well-established Islamic schools of thought to respond to present questions of social sciences. In this regard, the methods of falsafa, kalām, taṣawwuf and fiqh will be presented along with with a social science and humanities perspective. They will be presented as paradigms, theories and methods that attempt to answer the core question mentioned above.

In short, the course aims to cultivate student’s abilities to choose in an informed way from a toolbox that provides, side by side, modern Western and Islamic methodologies to analyze, understand and engage questions of human social existence.

This course examines broad Islamic perspectives on the ethical, political, and economic domains of society — corresponding to the intellectual, protective and appetitive faculties of the self — and thereby sets forth a comprehensive framework that can shed light on modern ideology in comparative and historical terms.

Part I of the course identifies, from a comparative Islamic perspective, the three most fundamental ideological orientations of self and society: principle, arbitrarism and immanentism. In the ethical domain, this perspective situates the various modern ethical philosophies – alongside their ancient Epicurean, Stoic and Platonic precursors – in relation to an account of the multiplex degrees of the Good in Islamic ethics. In the political domain, it offers a resolution, in Islam’s “principial liberality,” to the modern bipolarity between arbitrarist liberalism and immanentist authoritarianism. In the economic domain, in contradistinction to the injustices intrinsic to the modern economics of arbitrarist wants, economic life in Islam is an eminently moral domain of earning and spending – where earning actualizes dīn in relation to the Creator and spending actualizes akhlāq in relation to creation.

Part II of the course examines the determining phases of the socio-intellectual history of the emergence of modernity, from medieval Christendom, to the age of Absolutism, to Modernity. The transitions in this dynamic are understood as steps in the total inversion of the ethical, political and economic order of society. The immanentist ideology that came to dominate Christendom in the late Middle Ages created fault lines of conflict between priests and princes from which emerged the age of Absolutism, supported by the idea of a “divine right of kings” and the more radical idea of “reason of state.” With Church authority subsumed by political power, forces were released through which the economic domain came to dominate political power and rise to the apex of the social order, thus completing the modern hierarchical inversion. Central to the expansion of this new order around the world was a triad which was first actualized in Britain following the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688: the economic dominance of politics, a debt-based monetary and financial system, and military and economic supremacy.

This Year 2 course gives students a broad overview of the development of the modern world from the Western Middle Ages when the West was still traditional through the radical transformations of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment until the early 21th century. The students will gradually become acquainted with the cognitive shifts and philosophical, social, cultural, political, and economic transformations that gave birth to the modern world.

We will look at key figures and currents that brought an end to the traditional worldview and gave birth to the modern worldview. Chronologically, the course will overlap with the last few centuries covered in a previous course on Islamic Civilization but within the Western timeline. Towards the end of the Western timeline, the course will shift back to cover the post-traditional or early modernization period in the Islamic world in the early to mid-19th century.

The conceptual key to this course will be the important distinction between ‘spiritual authority’ and ‘temporal power.’ These terms will be explained and developed into a framework through which students can then understand and analyse the relationship between moral (religious/spiritual) authority and worldly human institutions that are necessary for the realisation of a moral order on earth. Students will take a journey through Islamic history and select texts, looking at how the relation between spiritual authority and temporal power was negotiated starting with the exemplary model of the Prophet ﷺ, through the paradigmatic four rightly guided caliphs to the Umayyad, Abbassid, and finally the Ottoman example.

The course will then look at how the modern nation-state was introduced into the Muslim world and the consequences it has had on Muslims societies and forms of governance. It will take a close look at what it means for a community to organize itself within a nation-state, the political, moral, and ethical implications for agency and subjectivity. The course will end with an exploration of ways in which pre-modern Islam can address and heal some of the intractable ethical and moral problems created by the modern nation-state and whether or not some pre-modern Islamic forms of governance and moral order are retrievable today.

This course provides a survey of the Islamic intellectual heritage as it pertains to the subject matter of psychology. The focus of the course will be to provide a familiarity with the classical Islamic scholarly literature drawing directly from its primary sources. This will allow students to have an unfiltered exposure to the style of writings found across different Islamic scholarly disciplines and to become well acquainted with the Islamic scholarly tradition through the words of its authorities directly. The primary sources discussed in this course will largely be drawn from the following classical fields: Ṭibb, Falsafah, Taṣawwuf, Kalām and Fiqh. The style of the course will be one that combines both lecture and reading directly from the original text with the instructor’s commentary.

Additionally, classroom discussions and critical thinking exercises will be included. During the course of the classroom readings, there will be a continuous comparative analysis between these classical Islamic texts and modern psychology. A focus on how rich Islamic scholarly tradition can enhance and enrich modern discourses of psychology is explored. The instructor’s commentary and classroom discussions will pivot around the convergence and divergence between them as well as encouraging critical thinking for how to potentially synthesize or sift through the various parts of these disparate bodies of knowledge.

The conceptual key of this course involves a contrast between two different notions of reason. The course lessons will show, in a comparative context, the broader scope of intellect (ʿaql) and the reductionist nature of rationalism and positivism. It will start by showing the complex nature of reality as a hierarchy of levels (traditional metaphysics), then move on to a detailed discussion of how materialism’s reduction of the levels of reality to just the physical-material plane is illogical and irrational (modern naturalism). It will also show how positivism or empirical reasoning is an inadequate tool for appreciating levels of reality beyond the physical and modes of knowledge beyond the purely rational.

The course will then introduce students to a pre-modern notion of ʿaql that is a lot more expansive. Several lessons will also introduce students to the contemporary debates in the philosophy of science.

This course’s conceptual key focuses on the distinction between objective beauty and subjective beauty. It develops the argument that most cultures in human history distinguished between two types of beauty: objective and subjective. The former represented by the objective beauty of nature, which held to be universally true while the latter refers to a type of beauty determined by cultural preferences, social distinctions, and personal idiosyncrasies. Through detailed arguments and visual examples (from Christian, Islamic, and World Art), it shows how most cultures saw the emulation of nature as the ideal for art given that nature was fashioned or created by the Supreme Being Who perfected it and so nature alone was worthy of emulation for human art. This explains why so much of traditional art is universally recognized as beautiful.

However, from the European Renaissance onwards, a shift occurred away from objective beauty towards an increasing reliance on subjective criteria for beauty until Romanticism and the 19th century when subjective experiences of what is true and beautiful dominated shifting European aesthetics away from what is objectively true and beautiful to what is subjectively true and beautiful. This gave birth to the artist as ‘genius,’ i.e. as someone possessed of a unique in-born talent who did not conform to the socially acceptable standards of truth and beauty but rather explored the darker realms of one’s interiority or subconscious. This birth of subjectivity has had grave consequences for epistemology, philosophy, ethics, truth, and art.

With colonialism and globalization this has become a universal phenomenon. Its impact on traditional Islamic art, architecture, and urbanism has been catastrophic. This will be explored giving examples from the Islamic world. We will also explore contemporary postmodern art in light of traditional principles of sacred art showing how postmodern art can only produce ugliness because it is no longer anchored in the transcendent dimension of the spirit but rather in the very personal dimension of subjective experience and expression.

This seminar aims to provide an Islamic perspective on contemporary bio-ethical problems within a fiqh-based worldview, and to give an accurate methodology and interpretative skills in approaching bio-ethical issues. This course will bridge the field of medicine and fiqh, to produce solutions for contemporary problems from within an Islamic framework. The seminar will first introduce students to bio-ethics, its theoretical background, and practical problems, such as organ transplantation, abortion, genetic intervention, euthanasia, and stem cell research. In addition, students will have the knowledge to conduct interdisciplinary research, study and compare the literature on bio-ethics from Islamic and contemporary scientific perspectives.

This course provides an introductory exploration of educational philosophies, pedagogies and practices arising from the Islamic intellectual heritage. Through reference to classical texts from both traditions, this course will enable students to critically evaluate and develop a nuanced understanding of the differences and similarities between ‘western’ and Islamic philosophies of education. The work of key contemporary Islamic educational theorists will also be employed to engage in comparative deliberations.

This course will build on the ‘Comparative Psychology’ and ‘Comparative History and Philosophy of Science’ courses to consider Islamic conceptualizations of human development and how these relate to the Islamic concepts of tarbiyah, taʿlīm, taʾdīb and tazkiyah. Conceptualisations of education rooted in these terms will be used to engage in critical evaluation of contemporary Muslim educational practice. Illustrative case studies of contemporary Muslim educational institutions, community projects and innovative models will help students appreciate the practical implications of Islamic educational theory.

Sīrah is a discipline that systematically studies the early period of Islam and the phases in the emergence and application of religious knowledge and practice by focusing on the life and excellent example of the Prophet ﷺ. Spiritual values like compassion, self-sacrifice, dedication, and generosity can only be intimately known through the guidance of the Prophet ﷺ. A close knowledge of his life is also crucial in order to have a grasp of issues like the relationship between revelation, Sunnah, and exegesis, the nature of religious rulings, and the wisdom behind these rulings. In this course, the life and character of the Prophet ﷺ will be studied to understand the birth of the religion and ethical values embodied by the Prophet ﷺ.

This course, following the well accepted and well commentated selection of ḥadīth compiled by Nawawī, will build on the Sīrah course of the first term to provide students with a guiding compass. These 40 easily memorizable ḥadīth and their clear explanations will serve as anchors to ground students in the Prophetic paradigm.

The aim of this course is to provide students with a strong moral compass regarding fundamental moral issues. al-Nawawī’s Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn, consists of uncontroversial and most often clear hadiths, allowing students to emerge from this class with a clearer understanding of Islamic morals rooted in practical examples from the Prophet’s life, peace and blessings be upon him.

These are second year Foundations Program courses that run over two terms. They are meant to be an exploration of the spirit of Imām al-Ghazālī’s great and influential work. Students will spend almost three months reading the primary text with expert scholars on Ghazzālī in Arabic alongside important secondary texts in Arabic and English. While the Iḥyāʾ takes a life-time to cover and fully understand, these two courses are meant to take the student on a deep dive into the core themes of this classic work. While the exact chapters of the Iḥyāʾ explored change from year to year depending on scholars, the courses are designed to always deliver both a comprehensive overview of the entire text and an in-depth exploration of key themes and chapters.

An important aspect of these courses is developing the important ways in which the Iḥyāʾ and its metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, legal, and spiritual perspectives are still relevant in the contemporary world.

These third year Core Studies courses focus on the Kitāb al-Ḥikam, a masterpiece of Islamic spiritual literature by the renowned walī and sage of the 13th century CE, Aḥmad ibn ʿAṭāʾillāh al-Iskandarī (d. 1309). Students will read selected aphorisms of the primary text in Arabic with reference to commentaries in Arabic and English guided by an expert on the text. An important element of these courses is the self-observational or self-reflective component. Students are encouraged to keep a personal journal as they reflect upon their relationship to Allah and to others.

This course, which covers selections from Birgiwī Mehmed Efendi’s al-Ṭarīqah al-Muḥammadiyyah wa al-Sīrah al-Aḥmadiyyah, provides valuable insights into what a balanced approach to tazkiyah entails. The author draws from authentic sources of the Ḥanafī/Māturīdī tradition as well as famous Sufis such as Bāyazīd al-Basṭāmī, Dhunnūn al-Miṣrī, and Junayd al-Baghdādī to demonstrate the meaning of taqwā. As such, the aim of the course is to provide students with the teachings of mainstream Islamic thought regarding tazkiyah, as well as connecting this with contemporary debates regarding the issues raised by Birgiwī.