Violent Jihad in the Twentieth Century - A Global History

This course focuses on the history of Muslim groups and social movements which are often regarded as politically fundamentalists or radical in the twentieth-century Middle East. We shall critically survey the intellectual origins of radical ideologies, the social history of the 'Muslim Brotherhood' in Egypt and Syria, the politics of Saudi Arabia, the rise of Hizbullah, the question of the caliphate, the interaction between foreign intervention and the approval of violence as a legitimate means in politics, a history of al-Qaeda, and finally of what we know about ISIS.