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saabbas@arizona.edu
Abbas, Shabbir Agha
Graduate Associate
saabbas
Currently Teaching
RELI 389 – Middle Eastern Ethnic and Religious Minorities
Overview of ethnic and religious minorities in the contemporary Middle East, study of ethnic and religious diversity and its origin and manifestations in the modern Middle East. Examination of how the concept of religious and ethnic minority has emerged as a key factor in state policies towards minorities as well as the cultural, economic, political, religious, and educational lives of its people.
RELI 334 – Islamic Thought
This course provides an overview of Islamic intellectual history from the origins of Islam to the present day. The course is divided into three units: 1) Classical Islam and religious sciences; 2) Classical Islamic thought more broadly; 3) Modern Islamic thought. Students will be introduced to Islamic scriptures as well as original writings in translation by preeminent figures of the Islamic tradition and will learn how Muslim thinkers engaged issues concerning scriptural authority, theology, mysticism, human happiness and flourishing, politics, colonialism and gender. The course approaches these writings with particular attention to analysis of the concepts central to Islamic thought and their interconnections, and to the forms of expression through which these concepts are presented to envisioned audiences. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on the implications of the ideas we study for values pertaining to justice, social hierarchy and inequality, freedom and domination. Ideas regarding the nature of human existence and its place within the universe always have relation to social life and order. Examining this relation in Islamic thought will involve probing our own notions on these matters and their implications in our own social life.