Government 323
Warring for Heaven and Earth: Jewish and Muslim Political Activism in the Middle East
Spring 2003
Donna Robinson Divine
GOALS
Government 323 focuses on the relationship of religion and politics forged over the past several decades in the Middle East. The course explores the impact of religious-based Muslim and Jewish political activism on a series of protracted regional power struggles and on the stability of the international system. Even as rescue workers moved into the rubble of the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 and the United States declared itself to be at war with terrorism, the terrorists in question claimed that the American campaign was really directed against Islam.
Religious inspired actions and policies in the Middle East seem complicit in the ever rising levels of violence aimed at destroying people rather than at strengthening dialogue or resolving conflicts. In the Middle East, religions seem to nurture a disposition to confrontation rather than to co-existence. Thus, this seminar must examine both the ways in which religions have been mobilized for political purposes and the degree to which politics has been hijacked to service religious visions.
Attendance and Participation in Weekly Discussions
One Oral Report
One Research Paper
Mansoor Moaddel and Kampan Talatoff, Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam
Aviezer Ravitsky, Messianism , Zionism and Jewish Political Radicalism
A supplemental packet of course readings is available for purchase from Copycat Printers, Pleasant Street, Northampton
February 4: Fundamentals of Muslim Fundamentalism and Politics
Roxanne L. Euben, “Killing (for) Politics”
John Kelsey, “Civil Society and Government in Islam”
Mansoor Moaddel and Kampan Talatoff, Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam : A Reader , chapters 3,4,5, and 15
February 11: Theory and Practice of Muslim Political Activism
Marks of Success; Criteria of Failure
John O. Voll, “Fundamentalism in the Sunni Arab World: Egypt and Sudan”
Sayed Khatab, “Hakimiyyah and Jahiliyyah in the Thought of Sayyid Qutb”
Mansoor Moaddel and Kampan Talatoff, Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader , chapters 19 and 21
February 18: Varieties of Muslim Political Activism
Shaping the Political Establishment
Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, “Activist Shi’ism in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon”
Farhad Kazemi, “Perspectives on Islam and Civil Society”
Mansoor Moaddel and Kampan Talatoff, Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam: A Reader , chapters 22, 23, and 28
Essential Writings of Adol Karim Soroush [excerpts]
February 25: Making Sense of Religious Wars
Excerpts from Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror
Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam”
Salman Rushdie “No More Fanaticism as Usual”
Fouad Ajami “The Uneasy Imperium Pax Americana in the Middle East”
Edward Said, “The Clash of Civilizations”
Excerpts from Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars
March 4: The Fundamentals of Jewish Politics
Charles S. Liebman, “Democracy and Religion in Israeli Society”
Shlomo Avineri, “Israel—A Normative Value of Jewish Existence”
Amos Oz, “The Meaning of Homeland”
Ruth Wisse, “Teaching the Living Language of Israel”
Daniel J. Elazar, “The Peace Process and the Jewishness of the Jewish State”
Noam J. Zohar, “Civil Society and Government: Seeking Judaic Insights”
David Biale, “Response to Zohar”
March 11: Jewish Political Activism: For Love of the Land or the Lord?
Gideon Aran, “Jewish Zionist Fundamentalism: The Bloc of the Faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim)”
Ehud Sprinzak, “The Politics, Institutions, and Culture of Gush Emunim”
Hanan Porat, “We Are The Compost of the Next Generation”
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, “Religious Zionism Revisited”
March 25: Jewish Fundamentalism: Warring for Heaven or Earth?
David Landau, Piety and Power [excerpts]
Menachem Friedman, “Jewish Zealots: Conservative Versus Innovative”
Rabbi Shmuel Jakobovits, “The Essential Haredi Attitude Toward the State”
Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem Friedman, “Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Jews: The Case of the Haredim”
Edud Sprinzak, Brother Against Brother [excerpts]
April 1: Jewish Political Radicalism in a Jewish State
Aviezer Ravitsky, Messianism , Zionism , and Jewish Political Radicalism
ORAL REPORTS: April 8, 15, and 22
Al-qaeda
Hizbullah
Palestinian Muslim Movements: Hamas, Islamic Jihad
Kurdish Movements
Algerian
Jewish Defense League and Kach
Radical Jewish Movements Past and Present
April 29: Religious Political Activism and Terrorism