Assignment Task

Your assignment task is to write a Research Paper of no more than 3000 words on ONE of the following eight questions listed below.

Using between 10 and 15 relevant scholarly sources, students must write an analytical and reflective Research Paper.

You are required to use the HARVARD style referencing in this assignment.

Essay Questions

1. Olivier Roy (2003) argues that EuroIslam is a form of Islam that has emerged in recent years in Western Europe as an alternative to traditional and ethnicised Islam, divorced from its place of origin and traversing the globe. Critically examine Roy’s argument.

2. Explain what happens in the process of de-ethnicisation of Islam in the context of Islamic revivalism.

3. In discussions of resurgent Islam, Western-born Muslims are viewed as different from their migrant counterparts. Critically evaluate this perspective.

4. The most impactful effect of the Tabligh Jama’at on its original place of birth - Mewat in India, and subsequently elsewhere, was the Islamisation of the established socio-cultural traditions. What were the catalysts for the emergence of the Tabligh Jama’at in Mewat and what is its connection with the contemporary phenomenon of Islamic revivalism? Examine.

5. According to the “defensive reaction to modernity perspective,” the world today is a place of great “disenchantment” and is in crisis due to the perceived or real failure of the “modernity project.” What are the failures of modernity, and how do Islamic revivalists seek to overcome them?

6. Since the 1970s, a worldwide Islamic revivalism has emerged in response to popular Muslim disappointment with secularism and Westernism. “Islamic revivalism” in academic circles has come to represent an umbrella term encompassing a wide variety of movements, some with intolerant and exclusivist attitudes, some with pluralistic outlooks, some accommodating of science, some anti-scientific, and some essentially devotional and some chiefly political. Thus, not all Islamic revivalist movements are the same. What distinguishes these movements?

7. Sayyid Qutb advanced the thesis that the contemporary world is in a state of jahiliyya (godlessness) and that Muslims who are true to their faith have the responsibility to conquer the jahili order and recreate it anew by infusing righteousness and piety into themselves and their society. Critique this thesis.

8. Some scholars such as Youssef Choueiri (1996) posit that for Islamist theoreticians like Maududi and Qutb, Islam is basically incompatible with secular modernity, and for Islamist ideology and a blueprint of society to succeed, secular modernity has to be reformed in line with Islamic principles and values. What is your reading of Islamist ideology and the blueprint of society? Discuss.