Liberal Democracy & Islamic Fundamentalism

This course by Tommaso Virgili and Dario Portong introduces bachelor’s students of social sciences and related fields to the controversy around the topic of “Liberal Democracy & Islamic Fundamentalism.” The course introduces students to the underlying main theoretical and empirical foundations and equips them with the competences to critically think about these and other issues. These contents and competences will be taught in an interactive and student-centered way.

The Islamic world suffers from a systematic, blatant democratic deficit. Among the around 50 Muslim-majority countries, there is not a single liberal democracy, and only a tiny minority of electoral democracies. The majority of the least democratic and most repressive regimes in the world are Islamic countries—such as Saudi-Arabia, Iran, or Syria. At the same time, many scholars of democratization have discarded cultural or religious explanations for the failure of democratization across the Islamic world. They highlight non-cultural explanations—such as the political resource curse, the legacy of colonialism or the post-colonial interference of Western powers. This course critically examines the claim that cultural or religious factors do not help to explain the blatant democratic deficit of the Islamic world. Thus, the course discusses the relationship between “real existing Islam” (a term coined by Prof. Ruud Koopmans) and liberal democracy. The social sciences perspective enables us to empirically investigate this relationship and distinguish between different dimensions of religiosity that are often lumped together—such as religious practices, orthodoxy, and, in particular, fundamentalism. The course does not cover the issue of the essential or “true nature of Islam,” which is a theological question. The students learn about the major definitions of the core concepts (such as liberal democracy or fundamentalism), the main claims about their relationship and the underlying arguments and major Islamic thinkers’ postures towards democracy. We use representative population surveys and legal sources, among other data, to shed light on the underlying controversy.

At the same time, Islamic fundamentalism is often neglected as a factor, both in the academic literature and in teaching—especially because of the controversies surrounding the issue. In many cases, the neglect of cultural or religious factors seems to originate from normative concerns or biases that impair critical reasoning. This course aims to strengthen students’ critical thinking. This means that they learn to construct sound arguments—arguments that are logically correct and build on reasonable premises. This critical thinking approach to tackle controversial topics will equip students with a competence that is essential in a wide range of academic, professional, and social contexts. Critical thinking is especially relevant for analyzing complex issues and foster productive disagreement in polarized debates. Students will also understand in practice that critical thinking is the opposite to fundamentalist thinking, which builds on dogma and a universal quest for truth. Another learning outcome of the course relates to the ability to debate and engage in group work. Students will improve their oral presentation and group discussion competences. Furthermore, the course will strengthen students’ basic discipline-specific skills, especially regarding statistical literacy and the understanding of judicial texts.

This means that the learning outcomes, learning techniques, and assessments all focus on students learning experience. Student-centered learning outcomes mean that the lecturers do not try to just teach their research topics but focus on students’ learning goals. Learning outcomes do not just  relate to the content that is taught but also to competences and skills. Student-centered learning techniques mean that teaching is as interactive as possible. The lecturers try to keep lecture-style teaching to a minimum. They aim to engage students through various teaching forms like the jigsaw method (watching videos and reading), quizzes, group discussions, mini-papers, and Socratic questioning. In all these learning techniques, the lecturers guide the learning process, structure discussions, if necessary, and help where needed. Students will be exposed to various opinions on the topic and will learn to navigate through the intellectual controversies by forming independent but solidly based opinions. Student-centered assessments refer to formative assessments, which means that students get continuous, ample, and fine-grained feedback and are also forced to learn continuously. This includes several quizzes and group presentations. The students also write a paper on one of the course topics. By incentivizing students to work throughout the course, this minimizes the risk that students will fail to pass the course. It also provides a basis for creative and well-thought output. Obviously, the use of formative assessments depends on examination rules. In case the examination rules are restrictive, the lecturers could try to at least offer a bonus point system that allows maintaining the envisioned formative assessments.