Interpretative Prospects: Engaging Gender and Sexuality in Islam

This course is an introduction to the study of gender and sexuality in Islam and in the contemporary Muslim societies. It critically discovers ideologies of gender and sexuality with a particular focus on present- day readings/interpretations and realities. It aims students to examine, understand and analyse diverse aspects and interpretive possibilities of gender issues in Islam by looking at religious identities, discourses, practices, rituals, roles, sexuality and body. Through surveying contemporary literature and closely looking at lived experiences on sexual rights, domestic violence, fertility, marriage practices and masculinity in places as diverse as Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arab Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman), Middle East and North Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey and Muslims living in Europe, this course addresses key debates and problems including but not limited to how gender and sexuality is produced, constructed and mediated by religious discourses and practices, how the geographical and cultural differences are reflected in women's life and religious interpretations, how tradition, religion and modernity are conceptualized, enacted, embodied, resisted and invoked by both pious and secular women, men and LGBTQI community, how the feminist and queer approaches to the Qur’an, hadith, Islamic law and ethics are understood and how gendered images of Muslim societies in social media and film are represented.

(hier müssen die Studierenden direkt bei den Dozierenden nachfragen, ob eine Teilnahme möglich ist)