JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2006
SYLLABUS
TEACHING
FACULTY
Prof. Harkristuti
Harkrisnowo, University of Indonesia Faculty
of Law & UI Human Rights Study Center (on secular human rights)
Lily Zakiyah Munir,
Center for Pesantren & Democracy Studies (on shariah & Islamic feminism)
Sri Natin, Gadjah Mada
University Faculty of Law & UGM Women's Study Center (on women &
development)
Prof. David Linnan,
University of South Carolina School of Law
& LFIP (coordinating)
COVERAGE
Westerners generally recognize
but do not understand well the problematic status of women in the developing
Islamic world, nor that the Middle East and Islamic world are not synonymous.
To address both Western cultural incompetence and the social and legal
status of women in the developing Islamic world, the best approach is to let
leading women speak for themselves on such human rights issues.
The course will be taught chiefly by three leading Indonesian female
scholars of human rights, women’s studies and law, plus Islamic feminism and
sharia law as an intensive course in 13 two-hour meetings over 6-1/2 weeks.
The first two weeks will be an introduction to secular human rights
law in the Asian setting, the next two weeks will be devoted to women in development
legal topics, and the final weeks will be devoted to related sharia law issues
as they are understood in the contemporary Islamic world.
This course is intended as a special treatment of current human rights
issues. It is a perspective course for purposes of
Law School graduation requirements.
MEETING
TIMES & PLACES
The
class meets normally Mondays and Thursdays 08:00-10:10 in Room 338 from January
9, 2006 until February 20, 2006 . We also will have one videoconferenced class meeting for
a presentation from Anisa
Buckley of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam (CSCI) at the
University of Melbourne. When the
time comes, because of time differences, we shall meet in the Law Library
videoconferencing room in the late afternoon to speak with Ms. Buckley (because
Melbourne is 15 hours ahead of Columbia).
The 2006 Barnes Symposium
entitled Legitimacy and Western & Non-Western Views of Human Rights
will be held February 3-4, 2006 in the Law School auditorium. Students should also plan on attending the
Barnes Symposium both for general human rights views and its specific Islam
and human rights coverage.
COURSE
MATERIALS AND APPROACH
The course materials are posted on the course materials
link off the basic course page, and
you will be notified in class of the correct password for any passworded
course materials. Our passworded course material includes certain translated primary materials from a book to be published during 2006 by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore (ISEAS) entitled Sourcebook on Islam in Southeast Asia, edited by Dr. Greg Fealy and Prof. Virginia Hooker of the
We have a course LISTSERV (laws718@listserv.sc.edu) to keep in touch generally and for questions
and discussion outside of class. You
must join the listserv to fully participate in this class, since the teaching
faculty will use it like a bulletin board for announcements about reading
assignments, etc. while students and faculty should use it to ask questions
and carry on discussions outside our regularly scheduled classes.
For those of you unfamiliar with the LISTSERV concept, a LISTSERV is
simply a system in which e-mail communications are sent to a single address
and then distributed to all LISTSERV subscribers.
Please consult the LISTSERV information page at http://www.sc.edu/ars/listserv.html
for general directions, and click on the course webpage class administration link for directions about how to subscribe.
COURSE
CONCEPT
The course is designed to be taught intensively in meeting twice
per week for 6-1/2 weeks January-February 2006. It will be taught 1/3 each by a secular human rights person (Harkrisnowo),
a women's studies person (Natin), and an Islamic feminist doing sharia law
(Munir). The course will start out
with Prof. Harkrisnowo teaching a short summary introduction to human rights
theory as general matter (Universal Declaration, etc.), followed by special
aspects in Asia like the human rights commission approach instead of judicial
enforcement, and limited coverage about the claims that human rights are not
universal but there are special Asian values whether collectivism or whatever,
plus some coverage of the more recent UN specific agreements on women's rights
(like CEDAW and Rights of the Child) and how they may look different in the
developing world than in the US. With general course introduction, that should fill four course meetings.
Dr. Natin as women’s studies scholar then takes over to teach the
women's studies segment, in part as a women in development exercise talking
about what she sees when they do village project work, plus some traditional,
adat law, like for example the Minangkabau Islamic matriarchy, to show presumably
that Islam is not congenitally anti-woman as sometimes (incorrectly) claimed,
plus do a bit of social science on the comparative role of women in developing
and industrialized societies. For
example, in SE Asian Islamic society most women are not veiled, it is normal
for a woman to enter business or government service, etc., so that the picture
is undercut that Moslem women are required to be second class citizens by
their religion or society. This should
again fill four course meetings.
Ibu Munir as the Islamic feminism and sharia law person starts out
with a very general explanation of argumentation and precepts of Islamic law,
including a limited formal introduction to questions like the four schools
of Islamic law, haddith, itjihad, etc. We
shall also recycle some pre-existing Islamic law video material from Prof.
Mark Cammack of Southwestern Law from our Spring 2004 LAWS 827 Asian &
Comparative Law course (see http://www.lfip.org/laws827/index.htm). Discussions about women's rights under Islam
are typically part of a larger argument about what is true Islam, is the Koran
to be interpreted literally versus containing alongside religious precepts
a lot of social standards from 9th century Arabia that do not particularly
represent modern religious doctrine, etc. At this point there should be a tie in to the
social material presented by Dr. Natin.
There
is a final session reserved for summing up, which time may also be devoted
to a presentation via videoconferencing on equal protection issues and attempts
to introduce sharia law precepts for the Moslem communities in Western common
law countries by Ms. Alisa Buckley of CSCI, University of Melbourne. Students wishing to write papers may also be
encouraged to address such matters to pick up on the overlap of Islam and
women into Western secular societies. The February 3-4, 2006 Barnes Symposium will
also be considered part of the instruction.
Why
are we doing the course specifically with visiting faculty from Indonesia? Indonesia is both the world's largest Islamic
country by population, and a major developing country comparable in size and
ethnic diversity to the US. We choose
Indonesia in part for its diversity and in part because of existing work and
relationships with its universities via the Law & Finance Institutional
Partnership (http://www.lfip.org). Part of the hidden agenda in choosing Southeast
Asian Islam, however, is to work against a common misunderstanding in the
United States that Islam=Arab, but which insight also finds its way into internal
discussions about Islam itself in terms of whether beliefs and practices are
Islamic (religious) versus Arab (social) practices. You can see Prof. Harkrisnowo already talking
about Indonesians' views of human rights by accessing the streaming video
entitled A Conversation
about Indonesians' Views of Human Rights.
ASSESSMENT
The
primary contributor will be performance on take-home exam (essay) and short
assignments on readings for students taking the course for two credit hours,
and on their paper and short assignments on readings for students taking the
course for three credit hours. Class
participation may also be taken into account.
Students writing papers under the three credit option will have the
entire semester to complete them.
PREPARING FOR CLASS
Please note also that to prepare
each class you need to read the designated required sources in advance, watch
any related streaming video material in advance, then work the short assignments
mostly to evaluate your comprehension. The course materials and course website links generally contain
a variety of further recommendations for readings which you are encouraged
but not required to read based upon interest.
The course bibliography is chiefly for the benefit of those who wish
to write papers in the class.