The Teaching of Political Islam
in UK Higher Education Institutions
Upping the Ante
A Report Produced for the Higher Education Academy’s Islamic Studies Network
Naveed S. Sheikh
RC4SPIRE
Keele University
United Kingdom
July 2012
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Contents:
1. Executive Summary
2. Background and Overview
2.1
Research Background
2.2
Research Objectives
2.3
Methodology
3. Findings
3.1
Quantity and Distribution of Taught Modules across UK
Institutions of Higher Education
3.2
Disciplinary Spread
3.3
Self-Description and Positioning
4. Content Analysis
4.1
Thematic Foci
4.2
Geographic Foci
4.3
Organizational Foci
4.4
Ideational Foci
5. Epistemological Perspectives
5.1
The Dirty Dozen: Potential hazards in the Teaching of Political Islam
5.1.1 “Orientalism” x 2: Intellectual Matrix and Political Paradigm
5.1.2 Burying Buzzwords: Seeking Terminological Congruence
5.1.3 Antecedents and Relations: Intellectual History
5.1.4 Expanding Explanatory Efficacy: Incorporating Political Science
5.1.5 Doing Violence to Balance: Excluding Pacific Forms
5.1.6 “Islamic” or “Islamicate”? Abstraction vs. Interpellation
5.1.7 “Glocalizing” Islam: Inculcating Diversity in Geography
5.1.8 Balancing Macro-level Explanation with Micro-Level Representation
5.1.9 Giving Voice to Silenced Perspectives: Gender and Other Subalterns
5.1.10 Theology vs. Ideology: Explicating Theo-Politics
5.1.11 Primary Texts vs. Secondary Sources: Striking the Balance
5.1.12 Retaining Relevance for Britain and Its Citizens
6. Conclusion
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Tables
Table 1: Institutional Offering of Modules in Islamic Politics
Table 2: Host Disciplines for Islamic Politics Modules
Table 3: Terms in Module Titles
Table 4: Frequency in Coverage: Thematics
Table 5: Frequency in Coverage: Geographies
Table 6: Frequency in Coverage: Organizations
Table 7: Frequency in Coverage: Thinkers
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1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Scholarship and pedagogy within the contested, and at times controversial, subject-area of Political
Islam is fraught with challenges that derive both from intramural considerations and extramural
context. On the one hand, the field itself suffers from multiple methodological fissures, which to a
large, but not complete, extent mimic the meso- and meta-theoretical debates within the larger
disciplinary confines of social science and humanities. On the other hand, the field has immediate
relevance to, and repercussions for both policy knowledge and political praxis exogenous to the
purely academic context, a relationship that is dialectic rather than determinatory. The
methodologically and syllabically self-conscious teacher of Islamic politics is therefore required to
consider and respond to challenges that go substantially beyond those of mere material selection:
ultimately, the question goes to the root of Western civilization’s engagement with other
civilizations (including also the liberal engagement with the potentially illiberal) and the teacher’s
agency as a promoter of critical learning.
The current project has attempted a preliminary survey of the state of the field within the taught
provision of Political Islam, at undergraduate as well as graduate levels, in UK higher education. Its
findings include the following:
1. The teaching of Islamic Politics is concentrated in a relatively small number of Institutions
of Higher Education, namely 24. Hereof 21 are pre-1992 Institutions, two are post-1992
institutions and a single an accredited Muslim institution.
2. Although a large amount of teaching related to Islamic politics takes place in relation to
broader taught courses on, for instance, Terrorism, Political Ideology, Middle East Studies
and Religious Studies, Islamic politics is taught as a distinct field in 40 modules. Of these, 27
are taught at the postgraduate level, whereas 13 are taught at the undergraduate level (11
of these at the final year of the undergraduate degree).
3. Given its interdisciplinary nature, the field of Islamic politics is divided among different
faculties and departments, which provide diverse institutional contexts, and demands, for
the teaching. For the dataset in the present report, these academic departments were
identified as the following: Politics and International Relations (18), Religious Studies (11),
Area Studies (9), History (4), and Social Anthropology (1).
4. Apart from key conceptual contestability, there is no consensus of how to title the field. Only
a minority of the modules in the data set used “Political Islam” (9) to self-describe, and still
fewer (7) used either “Islamism” or “Islamist.” Two module designers used “Islamic
Politics,” one used “Muslim Politics,” and three preferred the construction “Islam and
Politics.” The remainder paired Islam with other concepts from the religious or political
studies lexicon.
5. The content analysis of the taught modules revealed five clear tiers in terms of frequency of
occurrence within the themes, thinkers, geographies, and organizations studied. Under
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thematic engagement, the first and second tier included only “democracy” and
“contemporary militancy and terrorism,” followed by “Islamist political ideology” and
“Islam and the West: Relations.” Under thinkers, Sayyid Qutb alone preoccupied the first
tier, followed by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Osama bin Laden in second tier. In terms of the
geographies covered, Iran was foremost, followed by Egypt and Palestine in the second
order. Finally, in terms of organizations covered, Al-Qa’ida was alone in the first tier, ahead
of Hamas and Hezbollah in the second.
6. Regardless of the frequency with which radical and militant expressions of Islam reoccur in
UK Higher Education syllabi, great diversity remains in topic selection, suggested literature,
and approach.
7. The report highlights twelve challenges for the conscientious teacher of Political Islam.
These are as follows: (1) creating awareness of the intellectual and political dangers of
cultural stereotyping, (2) making terminology congruent and meaningful, (3) situating
political developments in intellectual history, (4) creating awareness of both ideological and
theological ideas, and the distinction between them, (5) using political science models of
explanation, (6) incorporating non-radical forms of Political Islam, (7) reconciling norms
and practices in the study of Political Islam, (8) balancing macro-level analysis with microlevel idiographic representation, (9) adopting a ‘glocal’ approach with diverse geographies,
(10) including gendered perspectives, (11) balancing primary and secondary sources, (12)
maintaining a relevance for the individual.
8. Overall the report finds that current teaching of Islamic politics within UK Higher Education,
while diverse, is sensitive to the difficulties in approaching Islamicate politics, is empirically
but not always theoretically rigorous, and makes great use of the available literature (much
of which is produced by UK-based scholars). The remaining gaps in the current teaching
provision are primarily a function of gaps in the existing scholarship and published research
on Islamic politics; and secondarily of pragmatic limits on the amount of material that can
appropriately be included within a single module.
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2. BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW
2.1 Research Background
The world of Islam has been taught within the context of UK Higher Education since Oxford
established a chair in Arabic in the year 1640. The teaching of Islamic politics, however, is a more
recent phenomenon, incrementally making its way into educational syllabi within linguistics,
Oriental Studies, and History, then Area Studies, Sociology and Anthropology and only since the
Iranian revolution within the context of dedicated study of Islamic politics within Departments of
Politics and International Studies (later, International Relations).
The brave new age of transnational terror, the post-9/11 world, has effectuated a greater saliency
of the field for reasons that pertain to public consciousness as well as political discourses from the
early post-Cold War “End of History” triumphalism to the cautionary note of “Clash of Civilizations”
till its worst-scenario geopolitical form as embodied in the global “War on Terror.” Still, the nature,
modalities, scope and content of the teaching of political Islam remains unresolved and contested.
In determining intellectual approach alone, the academic is confronted with compounded
complexity, insofar as the complexity of political phenomena and political science explanation is
compounded by the complexity of the multiple empirical dimensions of the study of the social
world together with still more opaque theological dimensions of the study of religion. Conveying
these complexities within teaching philosophies and learning practices requires careful
consideration by academic staff, even as the subject area is under incessant media scrutiny.
The present project grew from a realisation that the state of the field in terms of teaching provision
within UK Institutions of Higher Education requires both stocktaking (which is to say a
quantification) and a critical evaluation (in other words, a qualitative assessment of teaching
content, strategies and sources).
2.2 Research Objectives
The present report catalogues and discusses the findings of the project “The Teaching of Political
Islam in UK Higher Education Institutions: Upping the Ante.”
The project pursued two objectives:
1. It sought to identify current curricular practices within those UK higher education
institutions which offer undergraduate or postgraduate taught modules Islamic politics. By
curricular practices is meant module content, key themes covered and the literature relied
upon.
2. On the basis of an extensive literature survey, the project proceeded to develop a sample
syllabus which comprehensively covers political Islam from multiple perspectives,
including theology, political theory, history (intellectual as well as political), sociology, and
political science. The aim of this syllabus was to provide inspiration rather than a template
for future developments of modules within Islamic Politics at the advanced undergraduate
or postgraduate levels.
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2.3 Methodology
The research was conducted in two parallel streams, referred to below as respectively Stream A
and Stream B.
Stream A pertained to Objective 1, viz. providing a comprehensive survey of the extent to which
Islamic politics is taught within the 165 Higher Education Institutions of the United Kingdom.
Stream B pertained to the collation of literature, sources and material, suitable for inclusion in a
sample syllabus which takes into account some of the challenges that pertain to the teaching of the
field of Islamic politics within a Higher Education context. Each Stream, in turn was, researched in
discrete steps as outlined below:
Phase A-1: Collection of Dataset: Identifying Modules
Based initially on the data collected in and disseminated by the Islamic Studies Provision Report by
Lisa Bernasek and Gary Bunt (2010)1, the present project sought to identify those specific taught
modules which centre around Islamicate politics in ways that are integral rather than incidental. In
other words, the politics of Islam had to be either the sole preoccupation of the module or the
majority component thereof.
To identify these modules, keyword searches were used, beginning with searching the terms
“Islamism” (leading a mere 2 hits), “Islamic politics” (n<5) and “Political Islam” (n<10). The search
was then expanded to use the combination “Islam and Politics”, and “Islam and International”
(leading to more hits, though not all useable, due to the adopted exclusion criteria). Finally, the
search was expanded to use two single keywords, namely “political” and, separately, “politics”,
leading to a bulk of entries (n>200), which were individually examined for repetition and
redundancy on the basis of certain criteria of inclusion/exclusion.
The inclusion criteria included the requirement that the module was not restricted to the study of a
specific country, that it did not exclusively cover single political concepts or practice, were current
(defined as having been taught within the last three academic sessions, in or after 2009-10), and
that, in cases of survey or comparative modules, it dealt with the religious politics of (parts of) the
Muslim world in at least half of its material. On the basis of these criteria, over half of the full
dataset was identified. Additional modules were identified with online searches, using identical
search terms as with the Bernasek-Bunt dataset, searching in module catalogues at individual
academic institutions, surveying profiles of known UK-based scholars within the field, and via
direct approaches to institutions. In this way, the total dataset (n=40) was identified.
Phase A-2: Collection of Dataset: Obtaining Module Guides
The next stage in the research pertains to collecting the detailed module guides/reading lists, either
by downloading it from an online location or via correspondence with the individual module
coordinators, tutors or departmental administration staff. Most approached institutions were
helpful in this regard. A commitment to anonymity, in the form of non-identification of module as
well as module coordinator was given. Hence in what follows in the present approach I shall
identify only numbers in relation to institutions, and where the content analysis is conducted I shall
deal with the pool of material as a whole rather than critique content or teaching practices in
individual modules.
Phase A-3: Critically Examining the Content Module Guides
1
Data available at http://is.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/ (accessed 6 August 2012).
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Once the module guides were collected, they were critically examined for recurrent patterns in
content, organization, and underlying assumptions. Of particular interest was cataloguing (a) the
key thematics explored in the modules, (b) key geographies covered, (c) recurrent thinkers
explored in the teaching, and (d) the central organizations or movements covered. The result of this
comparative evaluation is found in Section 4 of the present report, together with discussions of the
import of the identified focal points.
Phase A-4: Meditating on the Navigation of Epistemological Challenges
Finally, the syllabi were collectively examined in the light of how they navigate certain intellectual
challenges and questions, including but not limited to:

whether methodological and epistemological awareness is emphasised in studying religiouslybased politics

whether theological and religious-studies precepts are sufficiently integrated in the syllabi

whether historical awareness is displayed in the syllabi

whether economical and social models of explanation are employed

whether the coverage of radical expressions of political Islam allow space for engaging nonradical forms of faith-based politics

whether religious resources for peace-building were investigated

whether gender aspects were adequately covered

whether students were asked to read and think comparatively and transregionally.
Phase B-1: Literature Review and Collection: Books and Monographs
The second stream in the project involved the systematic review of classic and current scholarship
on Islamic politics, as it has been expressed in easily accessible published works in the English
language. The source material for this included monographs, edited volumes, peer reviewed journal
articles, and to a lesser extent online material. In total, over 600 items were identified, though this
number was deemed excessive for a single module and the final number cut to the vicinity of 400
items.
Phase B-2: Development of Module Guide
On the basis of the awareness of the strengths and potential weaknesses in the current teaching of
political Islam, derived from the research in stream A of this project, as well as the collection of
material and references in stage B-1 of stream B of this project, a sample module guide was
developed, intended to work as an inspiration for the development of future modules in Islamic
politics at the advanced undergraduate or post-graduate levels. The module included 14 sessions to
correspond with an average semester in the UK, and readings were divided into two sections,
differentiating primary readings from supplementary material. Finally, keywords were added to
guide the reading, and discussion questions formulated for in-class discussions or written
assignments.
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3. FINDINGS
3.1 Quantity and Distribution of Taught Modules across UK Institutions of Higher Education
The research for the present report sought to systematically identify taught modules within UK
Higher Education institutions, either by relying on the Bunt and Bernasek dataset, by means of
online catalogue searches, or by approaching individual institutions. The total of the modules
identified and their distribution across UK Higher Education Institutions is displayed in Table 1,
below.
Table 1:
Institutional Offering of Modules in Islamic Politics
Higher Education Institution
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Aberystwyth University
Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education**
Birkbeck College
City University London
Durham University
King’s College London
Lancaster University
London School of Economics and Political Science
Queen’s University Belfast
Queen Mary, University of London
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of Aberdeen
University of Birmingham
University of Edinburgh
University of Central Lancashire*
University of Exeter
University of Leeds
University of Manchester
University of Oxford
University of Salford
University of St. Andrews
University of Stirling
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
University of Westminster*
TOTAL (24)
Pre-1992 (21)
*Post-1992 (2)
**Muslim Institutions (1)
No of Modules
UG
PG
3
1
1
1
3
3
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
2
1
4
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
3
2
−
−
−
2
−
1
−
1
−
−
1
−
−
1
2
−
1
−
1
1
−
−
−
1
1
1
1
1
3
−
1
−
1
2
1
1
2
−
2
2
−
1
−
1
1
1
3
40
35
4
1
13
12
1
−
27
23
3
1
The sum concentration of the teaching of Islamic Politics within UK Higher Education is distributed
across only 24 Institutions out of the total of 165 Higher Education Institutions within the UK. This
amounts to a 14.5% institutional coverage for the entire Higher Education Sector and an 18.3%
coverage for the University sector (115 UK universities, thereof two federal). We can therefore
conclude that despite the growth and increased saliency that Islamic politics has attained over the
last decade, it remains as a niche area for the purposes of dedicated Higher Education teaching.
Looking closer at the identified 24 Institutions, they are characterized by being regionally diverse,
and as such all areas of the UK—England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—are represented
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in the dataset. Of the 24 Institutions that offer modules in Islamic Politics, 21 remain pre-1992
institutions, two are post-1992 and only a single Muslim Institution covers Islamic politics as a field.
It is not difficult to speculate why Muslim institutions would largely have sought to avoid a
controversial field, with explanatory hypotheses ranging from funding links in areas where the
subject could bring unease, to genuine disagreement about the value of the field for denominational
education, to a desire to avoid being associated with a controversial field, and to a keenness not to
recruit students whose main interest is political affairs.
3.2 Disciplinary Spread
Exploring the question of which disciplines and subject-areas provide for the teaching in Islamic
Politics, the dataset was catalogued along departmental lines within the Institutions of Higher
Education. The distribution of departments is displayed in Table 2, below:
Table 2:
Host Disciplines for Islamic Politics Modules
Department
Area Studies (incl. Middle East)
History
Politics/International Relations
Religious Studies
Social Anthropology
Frequency
9
4
18
11
1
Within the current provision of taught modules on Islamic Politics, Schools and Departments
covering the subject area of Politics/International Relations offered the most modules (18),
followed by Religious Studies (12), Area Studies (9), History (5) and Social Anthropology (1).
Where departments were composites of two or more subject areas, the module was counted
towards the aggregate of each (necessitating that the sum is higher than the data set). The Muslim
Institution was not used for this analysis, due to the absence of departmental organization.
3.3 Self-Description and Positioning
Owing, in part, to its nature as a ferociously contested field, the study of Islam’s engagement with
the political suffers from conceptual unclarities as well as terminological contestatation to the
extent that the field itself has no agreed upon semantic. This includes also the very labeling of the
field. I explored this problematic in relation to the individual titling of the current dataset by
analysing the usage of particular descriptors or epithets in the titles of the individual modules and
tabulated their frequency. The results are displayed in Table 3 below:
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Table 3:
Terms used in Module Titles
Descriptor
Used “Political Islam”:
Used “Islamism” or “Islamist”:
Specified the Middle East region:
Used “Islam and [concept]”:
Used “Islam and politics”:
Used “Islamic Politics”:
Used “Muslim politics”:
Used “Jihad”
Used “Jihadism”
Used “Political thought”:
Used social science concept:
Frequency
9
7
5
4
3
2
1
2
1
1
8
Among the current data set of 40 modules, only a minority (9) were happy to use the title “Political
Islam” for the module. Still fewer course providers used “Islamism” or “Islamist” (7). An equal
number used the construction “Islam and,” pairing Islam with either “politics”, “the state” or
government.” Only 2 modules used the construction “Islamic politics” and, presumably to avoid
opacity, all shied away from using the somewhat forced construction “Islamicate politics” which
otherwise functions to bypass the normative connotations of “Islamic Politics.” Only a single
module used “Muslim politics,” thus indicating a focus on praxiology over normative frames (the
exploration of which nonetheless remains central to the field).
A total of 8 modules limited the content to a particular problematic by invoking Islam in relation to
a single social-science concept (such as globalization, modernity, society, etc.), which could
simultaneously be understood as a way of bypassing the vexing problem of whether at all a distinct
“Islamicate politics” field exists. Two modules referred directly to “Jihad” in their title and one used
the more recent neology “Jihadism” to signify a concern with contemporary vigilante militancy and
political violence. Five modules explicitly delineated their content to the particular region of the
Middle East.
Although it can, in principle, be argued that this range of titular expressions of the field allow for
subversion of imposed definitions (and hierarchies) while allowing for heterogeneity, it is also
symptomatic of the difficulty in establishing a norm, much less canon, for what the field entails, how
it is to be approached and what delineates it from adjacent areas of study, such as religious studies,
ideology studies or simply the study of religion as a social phenomenon. The question also remains
whether these choices remain deliberate or whether they are residual in response to practical or
pragmatic considerations, such as situatedness within the Faculty/Department in which the module
is offered (pulling the field in a particular direction), the expertise of the teaching staff, and most
importantly the limited number of contact hours in the UK Higher Education model.
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4. Content Analysis
4.1 Thematic Foci
In an attempt to catalogue the contents of the existing pool of modules on Islamic politics, the
present project, first identified key recurrent themes which were explored in the teaching. The
frequency with which each thematic occurred was then charted.
The frequency was divided into five ranges, with “very low” being defined as a frequency below 5,
“low” a frequency between 5 and 9, “medium” covering the range from 10 to and including 14,
“high” from 15 to 19, and “very high” from 20 and above. In effect, this sought to illustrate which
thematics are deemed of paramount importance and which are, when the pool of modules are taken
as a whole, less frequent and therefore of lesser saliency.
The results are displayed in Table 4 below.
Table 4:
Frequency of Coverage: Thematics
Very High
Thematic
Classical Political Theory: Caliphate etc.
Democracy
Definitions/Typologies of Islamism
Education/Socialization
Gender
State practices: Foreign Policy
State practices: Domestic Policy
Islam and the West: Relationship etc.
Islam in the West: Citizenship etc.
Islamist political ideology
Media politics (incl. Cyberspace)
Minorities
Modernity
Religious Authority
Religion as a concept
Salafism/Wahhabism
Shi’ism
Sufism
Jihad: Classical Theory
Jihad: Contemporary Militancy and Terrorism
Orientalism
Social Science explanations of Islamic Politics
(n>20)
High
(20>n>15)
Medium
(15>n>10)
Low
(10>n>5)
Very Low
(n>5)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
The above table illustrates that the themes and topics that are explored in taught modules in UK
Higher Education divide into five tiers. Tier 1 includes only two topics, namely “Democracy” and
“Contemporary Militancy and Terrorism.” Given the prevalence of media and public discourses
about these two exact themes, this preponderance is unsurprising. Tier 2 also includes only two
themes, namely Islam-West relations and Islamist political ideology. Again, these appear to mirror
the public consciousness and media attention. Tier 3 becomes more diversified with five entries,
notably gender issues, media politics (which includes the internet and social networking), the
question of modernity, the particularities of the Shi’i political tradition, and Orientalism as a
discourse.
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With Tier 4 themes, the diversity and originality of modules become increasingly clear. These
themes include classical political theory, typologies or taxonomies of Islamism, domestic state
practices in relation to religion, Islamdom in the West, the question of minorities in relation to
Islam, the concept of religion, the Salafi/Wahhabi movement, the classical theory of Jihad and social
science approaches to Islamic politics. While individual interest and expertise no doubt influences
choices of thematics that are incorporated in the syllabi, it is nonetheless interesting to note that
while Jihad qua contemporary militancy and terrorism is a Tier 1 theme, Jihad qua the classical
theories pertaining to political violence is a Tier 4 theme, i.e. much lesser in saliency. Likewise,
whereas Islamist political ideology is found as a high-frequency Tier 2 theme, its antecedents in the
form of classical Islamic theories of statecraft is relegated to a Tier 4 subject. What this points to is
the disconnect between current teaching (and scholarship) on the historical evolution of key ideas
within the Islamicate world.
Tier 5 themes are “very-low” frequency topics, which could justifiably be viewed as rare or even
anomalous in UK Higher Education taught provision. For the present dataset, the Tier 5 themes
included the question of religious authority, the question of education/socialization, Islam and
foreign policy, and finally Sufi involvement in politics. These subjects could rightly be thought to be
the subject of a relative neglect, though this neglect mirrors the relative paucity of literature on
these exact themes. This, however, should not distract us from the unbalanced nature of the current
provision in which, for instance, Sufism (which outnumbers both Shi’ism and Salafism) is not wellrepresented, in which the highest level of politics (foreign policy) is neglected, in which educational
practices and processes of (exo)socialization are relatively neglected, and in which religious politics
is taught in isolation from religious estates (the clergymen).
4.2 Geographic Foci
In seeking to highlight the geographies that are covered in the current taught provision in UK
Higher Education modules on Islamic politics, the project identified the countries that were studied
in-depth either as the subject of an entire session or with a substantial focus across a number of
sessions.
The classification of frequencies into “very high,” “high,” “medium,” “low,” and “very low” were
retained and the number of hits required per category retained as above.
Table 5, below, displays the findings.
Table 5:
Frequency of Coverage: Geographies
Country/Area
Afghanistan
Algeria
Chechnya
Egypt
Indonesia
Iran
Jordan
Lebanon
Malaysia
Very High
(n>20)
High
(20>n>15)
Medium
Low
Very Low
(15>n>10)
(10>n>5)
(n>5)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
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Mauritania
Morocco
Libya
Pakistan
Palestine
Philippines
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
Tajikistan
Tunisia
Turkey
United Kingdom
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
The results indicate a clear Middle East focus of the current provision, which is neither surprising
nor unjustifiable in light of recent history and geopolitics. Iran is the single most studied state actor
in modules on Islamic politics and the only one to occupy a position in Tier 1. Within Tier 2, Egypt
and Palestine are found, again pointing to links with histories of conflict and Western geopolitical
interest. In Tier 3 (medium frequency), we find Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all of
whom are paradigmatic (for one reason or another) as geographies of distinct forms of political
Islam.
Depending on anticipations, one may find surprises in Tier 4. For instance, Afghanistan is found
here, though one could have expected the history of the Taliban to be more prominent. Yet, with the
rapid development of world history in the course of the last decade, it appears that the Afghanistan
case is no longer deemed highly important. Conversely, one could be forgiven for being surprised at
finding Jordan in Tier 4, rather than Tier 5, but this may be explained in reference to the large
amount of scholarship that has been produced on this relatively small player. This too could explain
why Syria is not included at all, for nearly all of the literature on Political Islam in Syria is
substantially dated.
Going further to Tier 5, one would expect to find uncommon cases, and indeed here we find Libya,
Mauritania, and Tajikistan. Yet, in other cases, we find indications of a relative neglect. For instance,
Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country, is found in Tier 5, even as Jordan and the
smaller neighbor Malaysia is ranked higher. Although Morocco, the Sudan and the Philippines too
could be more integrated in existing syllabi, their location in Tier 5 must stem from a pragmatic
decision not to overwhelm with cases. Indeed, only occasionally are territories studied in their own
right and often they are analysed in juxtaposition with a thematic engagement, even if that may
simplify local dynamics. Overall, though, the critique that the study of the Muslim world has
historically been primarily focused on the greater Middle East, to the exclusion of more populous
Muslim geographies, can be sustained in the current findings.
4.3 Organizational Foci
With a view to uncover the most studied organizational actors in the current taught provision on
Islamic politics within UK Higher Education, the Islamist or other religio-political organizations
were listed and the frequency of their coverage noted. As previously, a given range corresponded to
a given frequency, with the spectrum going from “very low” to “low” to “medium” to “high” to “very
high.”
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The result of this charting is illustrated in Table 6, below.
Table 6:
Frequency of Coverage: Organizations
Organizations
Front Islamique du Salut (Algeria)
Hamas (Palestine)
Hizbollah (Lebanon)
Jamaat-e Islami (Pakistan)
Jemaah Islamiyyah (Indonesia)
Al-Qa’ida (global)
Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt)
Al-Nahda (Tunisia)
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Philippines)
Hizb al-Tahrir (global)
Tablighi Jama’at (global)
Taliban (Afghanistan-Pakistan)
Very High
High
(n>20)
(20>n>15)
Medium
(15>n>10)
Low
(10>n>5)
Very Low
(n>5)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
The results indicated in Table 6 reinforce previous findings. In Tier 1, we find only the al-Qa’ida
organization. In Tier 2, two militant organizations well-known to the casual observer are found,
namely Hamas and Hizbollah. Uniquely, Tier 3 has only one entry, namely the Muslim Brotherhood.
While its location in Tier 3 (medium frequency) may surprise, this modest ranking relates to it not
necessarily being centerpiece when studying the evolution of the more well-known (read, more
radical) expressions of Islamism. The ideologically radical organization Hizb al-Tahrir is also alone
in Tier 4 (“low frequency”). Surprisingly, the numerically largest organizations are either not
covered (such at Nahdatul Ulama or Muhammadiyya in Indonesia) or are relegated to Tier 5 (such
as Pakistan’s Jamaat-e Islami). The numerically still larger Tablighi Jama’at is also in Tier 5, but
given its nature as an apolitical missionary movement, this is justifiable. More surprising is that the
Taliban (Afghanistan) and the Tehreek-e Taliban (Pakistan) are not well-represented in the
curricula, which may point to a combination of short historical memory or indeed paucity of
Western scholarship (as opposed to South Asian literature). Finally, the complex (but therefore also
revealing) case of Jemaah Islamiyyah of Indonesia also is relatively neglected. Taken as a whole, the
findings here reinforce the dominance of the Middle East in UK Higher Education provision in the
teaching of Islamic politics.
4.4 Ideational Foci
In order to explore the ideational diversity presented in the teaching material of taught modules in
UK Higher Education, the project proceeded to identify the frequency with which distinct thinkers
are covered in the dataset. In line with the analysis above, the frequency was divided into five
ranges which in were classed “very high,” “high,” “medium,” “low” and “very low.” As above this
would allow us to conceive of the coverage in distinct tiers of saliency.
Table 7, below, tabulates the frequency with which distinct thinkers are covered in UK modules.
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Table 7:
Frequency of Coverage: Thinkers
Thinkers
Ali Abd al-Raziq
Muhammad Abduh
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
Hassan al-Banna
Osama bin Laden
Sayyid Ahmad Khan
Ibn Abdal Wahhab
Ibn Taimiyya
Muhammad Iqbal
Ayatollah Khomeini
Abul A’la Mawdudi
Said Nursi
Sayyid Qutb
Rashid Rida
Ali Shariati
Abdolkarim Soroush
Very High
(n>20)
High
(20>n>15)
Medium
(15>n>10)
Low
(10>n>5)
Very Low
(n>5)
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
The results indicated in Table 7 illustrate, in line with previous findings, that Middle Eastern
Islamism and particularly radical Middle Eastern Islamism is centre stage. In Tier 1, we find only
Sayyid Qutb, popularly referred to the founding ideologue of Muslim radicalism. In Tier 2, Jamal alDin al-Afghani, the anti-colonial pan-Islamist and generator of ideas that matured in Egyptian
Islamism, is found, together with Osama bin Laden, the very epitome of Muslim militancy. Ayatollah
Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood, and Abul A’la Mawdudi, the former of the Pakistani equivalent, are all found in Tier 3.
Interestingly, this corresponds to the position of the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization in Tier
3 within Table 6, signifying that the ideological development is taught at par with the
institutionalization of ideas. That modules are typically not taught purely as intellectual history is
illustrated in the relegation to Tier 4 of key intellectual links, such as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid
Rida and Ali Shariati. It could surprise observers that Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the South Asian
modernist theologian, is found in Tier 4, when a lower rank could be expected, but this can be
explained with the relatively high premium the theme of “modernity” has in UK teaching of Islamic
politics (cf. Table 4, where “Modernity” is found as a Tier 3 theme).
Counter-Islamist thinkers are found in the “very-low” frequency rubric, and thus we find in Tier 5 a
collection of sundry subaltern voices, such as Abdolkarim Soroush, Said Nursi, Mohammad Iqbal,
and Ali Abd al-Raziq (respectively, an Iranian, a Turk, a South Asian and a North African), all of
which are not frequently used for teaching purposes. Conversely, it also true that the 14th century
Ibn Taimiyya and the 18th century Ibn Abdal Wahhab are found in Tier 5, although genealogical
readings of Islamist radicalism are often read back through these individuals. This would indicate,
as previously, that although “Islamist political ideology” figures high on the agenda (Tier 2, Table 4),
the ideological development is taught separately from theological schools, ideas and axioms.
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5. EPISTEMOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
5.1
The Dirty Dozen: Potential Hazards in the Teaching of Political Islam
In what follows, I discuss some of the potential pitfalls in the teaching of Political Islam with a view
to outline what are the substantive, methodological and theoretical problems that teaching staff
would need to relate to and potentially resolve. I also discuss how these pitfalls have been
navigated in existing syllabi within the UK Higher Education context.
In total, I identify twelve epistemological hazards which characterize the field:
5.1.1
“Orientalism” x 2: Intellectual Matrix and Political Paradigm
Ever since Edward Said’s epochal work on the epistemological constraints and (geo)political
ramifications of the Occident’s study of the Orient, “Orientalism” has become a signifier of the
propensity of Western scholarship on the non-Western Other to suffer from dual biases that are
simultaneously culturally constructed and politically consequential. The question is not only one of
stereotyping, of imposing artificial homogeneities and portraying the Other as inferior (via a
repeated iteration of binary oppositions to the Self), but rather also one of allowing the subject to
speak autonomously and taking seriously the self-schemata of the subject.
The scholar as well as the teacher within the highly politicized field of Political Islam have needed
to be doubly mindful of the dual dangers of Orientalism within a post-9/11 context in which major
Western powers had declared a global campaign against militant Islamism, a campaign that was
simultaneously predicated on cultural constructions of the Islamist and on geostrategic solutions to
the problem posed by him. To be certain, the intellectual peril in this academic-political context is to
begin with an assumption that Islam’s expression of the political is a ‘problem’ (viz. for a liberal
world order), and moreover a problem that has to be understood instrumentally (i.e. for reasons of
intellectual and strategic countering).
Ultimately, Saidian anti-Orientalism cannot of course be sustained with Orientalism in the reverse
(in either a litany of the depravity of Western cultural mores or a deterministic argument of
Western imperial excesses), but what is required is instead a commitment to avoiding grand
generalizations, taking autonomy and agency seriously, and contextualizing both intellectual and
political dynamics.
How has the present provision of teaching sought to mitigate this danger? One may be heartened to
know that a minority of syllabi within the teaching of Islamic politics actively include material on
Orientalism and the dangers of cultural stereotyping. More make more subtle reference to these
problems when discussing either Islam’s relation with the West or media portrayals (both liberalWestern and, in the reverse, illiberal-Islamist). Having the luxury of blaming the United States for
both “misunderstanding” and “messing up,” UK curricular practice however can make a lazy
shortcut that does not adequately answer the epistemological question of how to understand the
Other.
5.1.2
Burying Buzzwords: Seeking Terminological Congruence
Teaching a field that is saturated with media and political discourses often leads to having to either
incorporate or diffuse buzz-words, popular/populistic articulations of complex relationships and
simplified/reductionist etiologies. This in turn requires, first, being mindful of and, second,
attempting to unpack both categories of essential contestability as well as the clarification of
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taxonomical principles. In other words, terms and concepts call for careful analysis and the
insistence on distinctions that are themselves muddled in the literature, much of which has been
produced not by subject experts but by journalists or activists. A plethora of questions become
urgent in the teaching context: “What distinguishes a ‘radical’ from an ‘extremist’?”, “Who is a
‘fundamentalist’?”, “Is Islamism the same as Political Islam?”. Having clarity over terms will enable
both a more critical understanding of differences and linkages and a more critical attitude to the
literature.
A second dimension in relation to the use of appropriate terminology goes back to one of the key
manifestations of traditional Oriental Studies, viz. linguistics. One cannot insist that those tasked
with the teaching of Political Islam must necessarily have language competency (though having
some avoids embarrassing mistakes made by even senior scholars), but that key concepts are use
advisedly. In all cases, the translatability problem must be properly problematized (consider e.g.
the term ‘clergy’ for ‘ulama’: what does the former insinuate and how does that point the student in
a wrong direction?). In other words, words have contexts and by insisting that the right
terminology is invoked, the student learn not only operative concepts but also ideational milieus
(e.g. not only the meaning but implications of umma, dawla, khilafa, Shari’a, jahiliyya etc). Providing
a presumed one-word equivalent misses and misdirects, as the implications are lost. Although
much of this is class-room based, rather than textual, there is little evidence in existing syllabi that
this problem greatly influences teaching practices.
5.1.3
Antecedents and Relations: Intellectual History
Findings in Section 4 of the present report indicate that often Political Islam is taught as sui generis,
without linking adequately to either parallel movements in non-Islamic contexts or indeed without
situating Political Islam in relation to Islam’s own intellectual history. In extremis, this could become
an argument for the erasure of the field of Islamic politics as a self-contained field, but a more
moderate reaction would entail a grander view of the history of ideas, a view that does not
compartmentalize and overspecify. Following this line of thought, syllabi would incorporate notions
of anti-colonialism in the teaching of early Islamism, of revolution in later phases, and of anarchism
in late-Islamism. With minor exemptions, however, the literature is not yet developed in terms of
comparative ideology studies.
More problematic is the absence of clear linkage to theological ideas. To the extent that Islam’s
politics relates to its theology, it is quintessential that key theological ideas and movements be
covered to fully understand the development and doctrinal purview of the phenomena. Within the
context of UK Higher Education provision, few syllabi make linkages back in older forms of
schismatics or puritanical movements (from the Khawarij to the Wahhabi movement, which after
all gave key ideas and axioms to the later development of Egyptian Salafism). It could be argued
that this level of detail is unnecessary for taught programmes, but the question is in part
epistemological: Where is the religion in religious politics?
Practically, the integration of the teaching of Islamic Politics within the wider area of Islamic
Studies is marred by the disciplinary boundaries and subject specialization. As the present report
has found, much of the teaching of Political Islam occurs within departmental confines of Politics or
International Studies. It may be rare that faculty tasked with teaching political Islam are conversant
with, or even cognizant of, the theological baggage of contemporary debates in the Muslim world,
and in terms of the post-9/11 exponential growth of policy literature regarding Political Islam, the
field itself has been deliberately severed from a longue durée perspective and increasingly
reminiscent of high-quality journalism. In this sense, the perpetual updating of reading lists in
response to new contemporary details must be balanced with a firm grasp of the antecedents and
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evolutionary patterns, both within the Islamic tradition(s) and comparatively between Islam and
non-Islam.
5.1.4
Expanding Explanatory Efficacy: Incorporating Political Science
Predicated on a notion of ‘Islamic exceptionalism’, much scholarship has operated on the
assumption that Western social science theories are ‘inapplicable’ to the study of Islamic politics, an
assumption which in turn related to an ‘essentialist conception of Islam’ (Kazemzadeh, 1998). As a
consequence, the teaching of Islamic politics has reverted to a crude descriptivist position, that
does not seek to actively apply or deduce explanatory frameworks in the tradition of positivist
Political Science. Hence, the teaching of political Islam is largely devoid of operationalization of an
analytical prism which in other contexts would be standard (i.e. “What is entailed in a class-based
understanding of Islamism?”, “Does Islamic revivalism grow out of the post-colonial condition?”
“What effect does the rentier economy have on the evolution of Islamist conceptions?”).
While the literature on political Islam is geographically varied, it does remain the case that the
American scholarship quantitatively outnumbers the production elsewhere, by mere force of
institutional numbers and mass of expertise. As far as the sociology of the discipline goes, one can
speculate therefore that although the development of Political Islam has rightly been understood in
political terms, the field has been dominated by Area Studies, because of the prevalence of training
within Area Studies in the American educational context. UK trained scholars therefore have a
double challenge in both seeking to inject political science norms, and indeed “normalcy”, into the
teaching of Political Islam and secondly to increasingly contribute with more rigorous social
science literature to the field. A literature survey (conducted under the auspices of the present
project) does illustrate that UK-based scholars have in the last decade contributed
disproportionately to the closing of this lacuna, which is a credit to a relatively small pool of talent.
It may take some time to filter through to teaching practices, however. Nor is it clear that such
“disciplining” of the field will not either be resisted or ignored by teaching staff outside the social
sciences.
5.1.5
Doing Violence to Balance: Excluding Pacific Forms
Given the great impact on public consciousness and political discourse of the 9/11 attacks and their
geopolitical aftermath, including 7/7 and the bombings in Madrid, Bali, Istanbul etc, an emphasis on
radical formations of Political Islam can be expected. Not only will such an emphasis correspond to
the wider lifeworlds and discursive repertoires of the students (as citizens) but it will also conform
to the expectations of students in respect to what aspects of political Islam they are (intellectually!)
drawn to. The second consideration is important for a field of study that is not core or compulsory
for any existing degree programme, but remains a choice or elective module, which the student can
freely opt to take. In this sense, the “electability” of modules are enhanced by upping the adrenalinsoaked, blood-stained and gory aspects of Islamic political activism, which in turn socializes a
future generation of researchers and educators in a particular stream of knowledge.
The problem with this emphasis on militancy and violent formations of Political Islam is not only
that the broadness of the religio-political nexus is obscured, as Political Islam becomes
synonymous with Islamism, in the process silencing or reading out alternative articulations of
Islamic ideals for political life and community. Specifically, this means that pacific or even social
forms of politics are left out for those formations that have immediate security implications for
West-centric order, both ontological and regional. The present survey found that Sufism is almost
unrepresented as a political stream, though the largest social movements are in fact traditionalist
larger than revivalist, including the Hizmet movement, the Minhaj-ul-Quran movement, the Ahbash
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and aspects of Southeast Asian Islam. Perhaps this requires a new trope of post-Islamism, but
because this literature is nascent (and terminologically confused), teachers must look beyond
established scholarly sources.
5.1.6
“Islamic” or “Islamicate”? Abstraction vs. Interpellation
The teaching of Islam has since Clifford Geertz’s (1971) early examination of Javanese Islam
increasingly moved from a sole focus on doctrines and rituals to an (increasingly empathetic)
engagement with meanings and practices. The assumption underlying this shift is the salience of
the lived experiences of the believer (qua sentient and social actor). Similarly, the teaching of
political Islam has wrestled with the question of detaching itself from connotations that actualized
experience of Islamic politics grows axiomatically and unproblematically from first principles or
doctrines. The problem is implied in oft-rehearsed constructions such as “Islamic radicalism” or
“Islamic fundamentalism” (as opposed to “Islamist radicalism” or “Muslim fundamentalism”), but
the problem is wider than simply terminological propriety. Often Islamic politics is taught as a
succession of ideological commitments, which in effect revolves around changing hostilities,
favourite aversions and eccentricities of key thinkers. Not only is this perspective thoroughly binary
(in reflecting the Other as a negative mirror image), but it is also elitist (in focusing on those who
present themselves as the articulators of ideas that belong to a whole community).
Opposed to this is a methodological concern with people’s practices, perceptions and rationalities
that work from the subject up, rather than from a construction down, thus eschewing the tautology
that is inherent in explaining behavior axiomatically in relation to a presumed attitude or doctrine.
Unfortunately, the field of Islamic politics is thoroughly “Othered” (even when not securitized),
disallowing an engagement with the social lifeworlds and lived realities of subjects, except in
limited anthropological representations. The challenge in the context of education is therefore to
bring in context and meaning and eschew easy reductionism, a challenge that is easier to tackle in
scholarship rather than the classroom.
5.1.7
‘Glocalizing’ Islam: Inculcating Diversity in Geography
In popular consciousness, Islam is often equated with the Middle East, even as Middle Eastern
Muslims account for a fraction of the worldwide Muslim population. This remains true also for the
Muslim sentiments, where Arabic is valorized and the Middle Eastern world seen, entirely
sentimentally, as the standard bearer of the Islamic faith. Yet, it is true that the most important
political streams have emerged outside of the Arab world. The South Asian Mawdudi significantly
influenced Sayyid Qutb and it was the Iranian Ayatollah who, as the only Islamist leader, won a
state. Outside the particular trajectory of radical Islamism, however, the incorporation of non-Arab
expressions of Islamic politics is still more acute.
Unfortunately, the present project has highlighted the sidelining of geographies outside the Middle
East. The task at hand is simultaneously to attain a genuinely global understanding of Islamic
political praxis, but also to locate this to local varieties, dynamics and cultural repertoires. The
neology “glocal” has been suggested for the simultaneous top-down and bottom-up processes
whereby a global consciousness is locally embedded and the local not only internalizes the global
but reconstitutes it. Such a perspective is currently lacking in the teaching of Political Islam within
UK Higher Education, but is a question not of lacking literature but the adoption of a comparative
episteme.
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5.1.8
Balancing Macro-level Explanation with Micro-level Representation
Since Windelband’s differentiation of the two distinct approaches to knowledge of the social world,
in the form of the nomothetic and idiographic approaches, social science has occupied a dual
position in seeking both generalizable universals and particularistic representations. In time, these
two streams have developed distinct methodologies (and also largely distinct ontologies), calling
for either causal explanatory frames of collectives or empathetic understanding and engagement
with the individual social actor. Eclectic approaches to teaching and scholarship, however, call for
either a combination of the two approaches or context dependent application of either epistemic
principle, Erklären or Verstehen. I have already implied that the macrolevel/structural theorizing
has been somewhat suspended in the case of Political Islam, which has instead been rudimentarily
descriptive in its approach (at times, but rarely, advancing “thick description”). Conversely, the
trend has not been one of engagement with the unit-level mindset, valuational premises or sentient
faculties of the subject either. In teaching Islamic politics, it would therefore behoove the teacher to
consider carefully ways in which the individual agency could be brought into the analysis, for
instance by a greater reliance on ethnographies, social-anthropological analyses and discourse
material drawn from interviews or journalism. The key question here is not, for instance, “What do
we make of political Islam?” but “What do they make of political Islam?”. Recent work on the
meaning construction and attitudinal context of the Muslim world, based on opinion surveys, is of
great help here, but must be complemented with individual-level discourse and representationalcum-behavioural analyses.
5.1.9
Giving Voice to Silenced Perspectives: Gender and Other Subalterns
Post-colonial narratives have explicated the extent to which Western treatment, intellectual and
political, of the non-West come to reify hierarchies and effectuate exclusions in the hinterlands. A
reflexive feminist operationalization of this insight would pose the question, “Where are the
women?”. The present inquiry into the taught educational provision on Islamic politics within UK
Higher Education has been heartened by the importance placed on exploring women within the
contexts of religious politics. This is matched by a, more surprising, reasonable coverage of
minorities in Islamicate contexts (“heterodox” communities and non-Muslims), which remains an
ambitious task in an already complex subject field, but one which nonetheless recognizes the
fundamental problem of giving voice to subaltern entities and bringing nuance and
problematization to grand narratives (such as the equation, which is particularly topical: Middle
East = Muslim = Islamist = violence + anti-liberalism = nuclearization = mortal challenge to the
West incl. Israel).
Regardless of the inclusion of “women” as agents, either independent or subverted, within Islamic
political activism, the feminist literature has not come full circle in exploring “men,” “manhood” and
masculinities in religious politics. While it will take time before this literature materializes, there is
little to prevent classroom practices in engaging with critical readings of Islamic politics from the
feminist perspective using texts from Islamist thinkers, organizational websites and press
interviews with activists.
5.1.10 Theology vs. Ideology: Explicating Theo-Politics
That Islamism is a political ideology in contradistinction to Islam which is a religion is an oftrehearsed assertion. Its truth value should not be distracted from by the further complexities which
arise from the religion concept itself (is religion a universal category of understanding lifeworlds
and social order or is it a Western construct?) and the further complexities of seeking to arrive at a
clear demarcation between the religious and the political (Is not all religion political in the sense
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that it makes hierarchies of meaning and power? Is not all political ideology religious in the sense
that it operates under the assumption of truth and even sacred truth? Is not the insistence on
making a neat differentiation itself an ideological exercise of a liberal mindset attempting to
discipline the unruly nature of social life?).
Although presented as parenthetical questions in the paragraph above, these must be centre-stage
for any exploration of Islam’s engagement with the political: Where does theology end and ideology
begin? If, indeed, it is theology “all the way down,” as proffered by neo-Orientalist readings of the
“Muslim condition,” there needs to be a firmer grasp of which theological ideas have what social
effects, how and under which circumstances of explication. If the opposite assumption is made—viz.
that ideology borrows religious conceptions as a form of self-legitimization and a marketing
strategy—it must equally be investigated why this works. The exercise is not an easy one, but
requires no more than a dual reading of Islamist texts, both ideological and theological. The results
of such a reading (in one word, hybridity) would be unsensational research-wise, but instructive
from a learning perspective. The challenge in this pedagogical context is both the pace at which
teaching is delivered in the contemporary Higher Education contexts, disallowing careful dissection
of texts, and also the state of art of the literature which may teach the imposition of clear meanings
on the text rather than explore ambiguities and contradictions. In addition, the penchant to simplify
complexities in instructional settings, makes this particular challenge one of the genuinely most
difficult problems for the teaching community in Higher Education settings.
5.1.11 Primary Texts vs. Secondary Sources: Striking the Balance
Related to my concern above, is the concern with source texts in the representational practices in
the current learning and teaching of Islamic politics. A field which has seen explosive growth in
material, exponential perhaps from year to year, can only lend itself to much reliance on the latest
scholarship, even if it largely reproduces known ideas. The UK and International Higher Education
context, in which prolific writing is encouraged (typically by peers or administration that are not
well-grounded in the field of the individual colleagues) has led to large streams of material that is
difficult to quantify, much less digest. For the student, the consequence of this oversaturation is an
oversight of the very solution to this practical problem: remembering reverting to the primary
sources of thinkers, ideologues and activists. This is not only a practical solution, however, but also
an epistemological choice that allows independent readings and the formulation of self-directed
thought on the texts. There are now at least half a dozen collections of translations of seminal texts
in Islamic politology, some of which have been compiled by UK-based academics, which has greatly
aided this objective of incorporating primary material in the teaching. The developers of the UK
syllabi, on the whole, show good awareness of this material and selectively incorporate it in their
teaching, even if this engagement is not consistent.
5.1.12 Retaining Relevance for Britain and Its Citizens
Students are citizens who will, in time, need to make important individual and collective decisions
with effects for themselves and the nation as a whole. Higher Education must retain a
performativity which, while not geared to produce a particular kind of citizen, must nonetheless
equip the individual with valuable skills and knowledge to function in the capacity of a citizen of
Britain and the world. Students tend to be acutely aware of this in the oft-repeated refrain, even
when not articulated as such, “So what is in it for me?.” When finding themselves within a context of
learning about faraway geographies, students may for a while be seduced by the excitability of
terror, resistance and revolution, but will nonetheless at some point wish to make connections with
their own lives, individually and collectively. It is therefore important, in my estimation, to retain a
British/European dimension to the teaching of Islamic politics, not only to bring home the genuine
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‘glocal’ nature of the phenomenon, and not only to diversify (and humanize) the experiential basis
of teaching, but in the final calculation to enable greater understanding of the phenomena under
study and allowing students to develop an experiential social context of the teaching, predicated on
their own feelings, sentiments, aspirations and ideals. With much of the scholarship being either
American or America-centric, a localised and thoroughly situated sense of the problems and
prospects of Islamic politics is a fitting addendum in a curriculum. The frequency of this aspect in
the taught provision is currently “low” (see Table 4), but an awareness of the importance of
national and continental dimensions is clearly present that in due time could and should be
amplified.
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6. CONCLUSION
Although Islam as a faith tradition has a long pedigree within UK Higher Education, the teaching of
Political Islam is a relatively new field, spawned primarily by geopolitical developments from the
Iranian revolution onwards. Today, 24 Higher Education Institutions within the UK offer modular
teaching within the field of Islamic politics at the postgraduate or undergraduate levels, manifested
in a total of 40 modules.
Although diverse in approach and subject-specification, the modules clearly respond to the surge of
interest in militant forms of Islamism, radical Islamist ideology, and terrorist organization within a
generally securitized academic-political field. It is not at all clear that strategic funding into the field
of Islamic politics, on both sides of the Atlantic, has not narrowed its confines to questions of
immediate relevance to policy agendas, rather than expanding the purview of the field while
sharpening methodological rigour.
Nonetheless, the current provision has largely taken seriously the multiplicity of epistemological
challenges that derive from teaching an interdisciplinary field which inherits and compounds
complexities from each of the origin disciplines. Although weaknesses remain, they derive largely
from a considered selectivity in material and approach, rather than a studied indifference to
theoretical and empirical complexities. Still, a more explicit engagement with theoretical frames,
conceptual problems, definitional issues, questions of taxonomy and classification, and general
methodological awareness is to be encouraged as the field continues to revise its teaching practices
and taught provision.
As with all fields of intellectual inquiry, the teaching of Political Islam has remained hostage to the
state of the field in terms of published research and scholarship. Given that the surge in the public
and academic interest in the field is relatively recent, and moreover manifested itself as a
consequence of immediate political challenges, one can expect that the field will not mature in the
decade to come but that it will close some of the intellectual lacunae tentatively identified in this
report. From the teaching perspective, it would be anticipated that such maturity, in turn, will lead
to more choices in relation to teaching material, more critical approaches to the material and
revision of past practices.
Given the constraints of the current literature, teaching staff in UK higher education institutions
have done an admirable job in diversifying particularly empirical material, often drawing on
particular niche interests and research specialism. At the same time, gender and counterhegemonic perspectives have become increasingly popular, even if they are not applied consistently
as an intellectual strategy rather than a token example of non-traditional approaches. Yet, this can
easily be justified with reference to structural inhibitions deriving from the nature of modular
teaching, the (typically) three-year UK degree, and the time constraints relating to relatively short
teaching terms and relatively low contact hours in the UK Higher Education model.
Another structural particularity derives from the interdisciplinary nature of the field of Islamic
politics. Even as the teaching of political Islam is conducted by teaching staff with diverse
disciplinary backgrounds—from Area Studies, to History, to Anthropology, to Politics and
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International Relations, to Divinity and Religious Studies—within all of these areas, the teaching of
Political Islam is not a core requirement of the degree progamme. As the teaching of Islamic politics
thus falls on the margins of the core requirements of the disciplinary area, academic staff are likely
to have to compact the vast subject area into single semester modules, in turn having to distill
complexities and enhance the “topical features” of the field.
Finally, the limited number of UK academics working within the field of Islamic politics means that
they are often spread thinly across institutions, thus making synergy, peer-related learning and
exchange more difficult. At present, only a handful of Higher Education Institutions have multiple
faculty members teaching aspects of Islamic politics (historically those who have exhibited
specializations in the teaching of the Middle East). In the absence of strategic institutional
commitments to the field, however, the thinly spread teaching provision is likely to remain the case
for the foreseeable future. It therefore remains doubly important that trans-institutional networks
that share beneficial teaching practices, such as the Islamic Studies Network under whose auspices
the present research was conducted, remain active and well-supported.
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7. REFERENCES
Bernasek, Lisa and Bunt, Gary (2010) Islamic Studies Provision in the UK: Report to HEFCE by the
Higher Education Academy. Bristol: HEFCE. Available at:
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/year/2010/islamicstudiesprovisionintheuk/ (accessed 6
August 2012).
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Acknowledgements
The present report owes a debt of gratitude to the Islamic Studies Network, whose funding allowed much of
the research to be conducted. Particular appreciation goes to Dr Lisa Bernasek for her continued support and
patience in the prolonged final stages of the project. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the general willingness of
UK academics to share their teaching material on which the present report is based, and equally thank
perpetually helpful members of administrative staff who have been able to help with occasional, but always
pressing, queries and information requests.
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