Program Overview

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Key information

Start date

• September

Duration

• 1 year

Start of programme

• September 2025

Attendance mode

• Full-time or part-time

Location

• On Campus

Fees

• Home: £12,220
• International: £25,320

Course code

• PGTF0302

Entry requirements

• We will consider all applications with 2:2 (or international equivalent) or higher. In addition to degree classification, we take into account other elements of the application such as supporting statement. References are optional, but can help build a stronger application if you fall below the 2:2 requirement or have non-traditional qualifications.

Course overview

This programme covers the social, cultural, and intellectual history, literature, religion, philosophy, arts, and digital humanities of the Islamic world, past and present.

Students deploy inter-disciplinary humanities approaches to the Islamic world and engage seriously with its production in the humanities not as an afterthought to the traditional humanities but as a source of critical insights for a global humanities. Challenging essentialist narratives, the programme fosters an appreciation of diversity – regional, cultural, and religio-intellectual – within the Islamic world.

Why study MA Islamic Humanities at SOAS?

• SOAS is ranked 7th in the UK for African and Middle Eastern Studies (Complete University Guide 2025)
• SOAS is ranked top 30 in the UK for Arts and Humanities (QS World University Rankings 2025)
• Modern Languages and Linguistics at SOAS has been ranked 10th in the UK in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021

Structure

Students must complete 120 credits of MA taught modules in addition to the compulsory dissertation (60 credits) as outlined below.

Core

• Dissertation in Islamic Humanities - 60 credits The dissertation is intended both to extend and consolidate the student’s theoretical and regional understanding applied to prominent themes and debates in the study of Islam and the Islamic world. Students will be assigned dissertation supervisors early in the academic year with whom the dissertation topics will be agreed. They will meet regularly with their supervisors to produce a systematic review of the secondary and regional literature which forms a core, if preliminary, aspect of their dissertation. The dissertation should demonstrate a critical understanding of the relevant literature, develop a focused and clear argument, supported by the relevant use of theoretical material and evidence. It should include: a review of the relevant theoretical and empirical literature; an outline of the specific questions to be addressed, methods to be employed, and the expected contribution of the study to debates in the field; an informed and comprehensive assessment of published surveys, data sets or other tabulated material that relate directly to their research interest; a discussion of the practical, political and ethical issues likely to arise during the research.

Compulsory

• Critical Themes in the Study of Islam and the Islamic World - 15 credits The aim of this module is twofold: to provide an understanding of some of the knowledge systems, institutions, and cultural forces that have shaped the Islamic world, past and present, and to engage critically with contemporary humanities approaches in the study of Islam and the Islamic world. Focusing on key themes and debates in recent scholarship, the module will probe each through a selection of primary sources in translation and secondary sources.

Guided Options List A

Minimum of 75 credits from List A

• Islam and the West: Artistic and Cultural Contacts - 15 credits This module examines histories of Islamic art from the perspective of cultural contacts with Europe, exploring the ways in which Islamic artefacts were acquired, appreciated, utilized, and imitated, and placing them also within the wider framework of the developing European intellectual awareness of Islam.
• Vision, Visuality and Islamic Visual Culture Studies - 15 credits This module studies the social construction of vision in the premodern urban Islamic world, with particular reference to North Africa. Attention is paid to 1) the sociological factors that influence vision and help determine what is visible and invisible for any given region of this world; and 2) the elements of the built environment that reinforce and index aspects of this socialised vision. The module's goals are two. First, to raise the question of visuality in Islamic art history, and then to work towards defining premodern urban Islamic visuality, with particular reference to the medinas of North Africa. Second, to highlight 1) the modern visual subculture, or 'scopic regime' undergirding certain key aspects of contemporary art historical practice; and 2) the importance of attending to the visual logic of the society whose material culture is under analysis.
• The Early Development of Islam in Context - 15 credits This course discusses emerging identities and contending views in the origins and early history of Islam, 600 and 1000 CE. The approach is historical, and examines the crucial question of how different types of Islam emerged.
• Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East - 15 credits This module studies the historical foundations of colonialism and revolution in the Middle East. It does not begin with a preconceived conception of the ‘colonial’ but examines a series of spatial and temporal transformations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the region. It explores the conceptual distinctions that emerged between the ‘economic’, the ‘religious’, and the ‘political’ to ask a series of questions: Where do we locate the ‘colonial’? At what moments does it come to be elaborated? Is it merely a result of ‘physical’ occupation by European powers, or could it have begun in another set of relations? Could the Ottoman empire and Qajar Iran be seen to become ‘colonial’ as the nineteenth century progressed? And what forms of resistance and revolution did this generate? Each week, the module examines one of the central categories of political and economic history, unpacking the processes by which they have emerged, transformed, or come to be reconfigured.
• Islamic Legal Theory - 15 credits This module presents, from a comparative legal perspective, an overview of Islamic law in its theoretical, historical, and jurisprudential evolution. Islamic legal theory (Usul al-Fiqh) is considered from a comparative perspective with a critical analysis of its history, development, and application in contemporary jurisdictions. An overview of the historical and jurisprudential themes includes the relationship between sacred texts and human reason in the development of the law, dissent and consensus in the articulation of the law, law and morality, and normative pluralism.
• Muslim Britain: Perspectives and Realities - 15 credits The course begins by establishing the religion in a historical context starting with early Muslim migrations and settlement in Britain in the 19th century, through the various phases of subsequent migrations, to the institutionalising of Islam in Britain in the early twentieth century and the emergence of community leaders. Within this framework, it will cover the different ethnic, sectarian, and doctrinal approaches to Islam belonging to and/or adopted by migrants and second and third-generation Muslims. The second part of the course will focus on particular issues that have arisen, uniquely, out of the above context and in response to world events.

Guided Options List B

Up to 30 credits from List B

• Art and Architecture of the Seljuks and Ottomans (12th -15th centuries) - 15 credits This module is designed to introduce the material culture (art, architecture, numismatics, and so-called 'minor arts') of the different peoples and polities of medieval and early modern Anatolia in the Seljuk, Beylik, and early Ottoman periods. Students will learn to analyse the totality of material cultural production and how it changed as the result of economic, social, and historical forces. They will learn to analyse the artistic interplay between Islamic and Christian societies, as well as the artistic manifestations of such subjects as mysticism, chivalry, and Eurasian steppe traditions.
• Community, Religion, and Conflict in South Asian History - 15 credits This module brings a nuanced approach to understanding conflict between communities, often defined by religion, sect, or caste. Political leaders and media channels promote simplistic narratives of such conflict, suggesting it is inherent to South Asian society. This perspective ignores the complexity of South Asia where communities are at times clearly defined, at others overlapping and blurred, sometimes in conflict, but more often in coexistence. The module explores components of group identity including religion and sect, language and place, images of self and other, religious conversion, and the ways that coercion and violence existed alongside accommodation and cooperation. Special attention will be given to caste, devotionalism, interreligious contacts, and the tension between the local and the cosmopolitan. The module is thematically organised and examines case studies beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni through the medieval and early modern periods into the twentieth century.
• The Afghanistan Wars, 1979 to the Present - 15 credits This postgraduate module examines the various international and domestic factors that led to and fed the wars in Afghanistan (and standoff between the US and Iran) since 1979.
• Islamic Family Law - 15 credits This module provides a detailed examination of Islamic family law, covering the laws of marriage, dissolution of marriages, guardianship, and child custody. These are examined in light of classical rules of Islamic jurisprudence and recent family law reforms in different parts of the Muslim world and also with relevant examples from UK cases. Taking the different areas of family law in turn, we examine the development of positions in the different jurisprudential schools (including the sources on which the classical schools relied) before considering later (colonial and post-colonial) treatment of and approaches to these areas of law in states' courts and codes. A focus on codification and the modern state's identity as legislator is highlighted. Approaches to reform of particular areas of law by different social actors are considered, including the use they make of classical and post-classical sources.
• Classical Persian Poetry: Texts and Traditions (PG) - 15 credits This module is primarily an advanced language use course (MA In Theory and Practice of Translation [Asia & Africa]), however, the study of the literary history of Iran and the development of Persian poetry complements the study of Persian culture and the cultural characteristics of the wider region of Near & Middle East and Asia (MA in Cultural Studies).
• Palestine, History, Culture, Politics - 15 credits The aim of the course is to provide an overview of the ways in which varying bodies of scholarship across and intra-various disciplines engage and study Palestine, and also an examination of how the study of Palestine cuts across and informs scholarly, theoretical, political, and disciplinary approaches. The course addresses issues relating to the questions of conflict and political economy, development, cultural politics, social and economic relations, identity, and other major concerns of humanities and social sciences.
• Turkey: Continuity and Change - 15 credits The course focuses on the transition from empire to republic, examining the key turning points and assessing the relevance of the events of the period for understanding Modern Turkey.
• Film and Society in the Middle East and North Africa - 15 credits The module will offer a survey of films from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, as well as an overview of the historical development of film in the region and a grounding in the socio-cultural contexts in which films have been produced. Films will be analysed aesthetically, with an awareness of multiple aspects of film technique, and meanings will be interrogated through a number of interdisciplinary and theoretical prisms.
• PG Classical Arabic: Biography, History and Travel - 15 credits This is an intermediate language acquisition module that complements Arabic 3 A and B, and/or Arabic 4 A and B, by familiarising students with genres and styles of Arabic writing through reading authentic classical Arabic biography, history, and travel.
• Religion and Violence - 15 credits This module addresses the issue of violence in the context of religious studies. It takes a multiperspectival approach studying insider and outsider perspectives on religious violence across cultures and historical periods. The module will provide insights into the complexity of violence, considering besides physical violence also violence in speech and intentions. It views violence as playing a key role in the development of belief systems, as well as in the relationship between religions and the secular world. The module will introduce students to core concepts in the study of religion such as sacrifice, asceticism, purity and impurity, and blasphemy, and delve into ethical issues such as religious suicide, the question of just war, free speech, and hierarchies of life within religious contexts. These topics have a long history in global societies and remain relevant today as religious opposition is emerging more clearly in connection with political processes in, for example, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West. The purpose of this module is to provide students with a sound and critical understanding of the relationship between religion and violence that does not necessarily consider religion as a cause of violence, but that also includes how religious epistemologies seek to limit, avoid, and lessen violent practices.
• Esotericism and the Making of Modernity in the Global South - 15 credits From the 19th century onwards, during the height of European colonialism, many religious expressions around the world began to be labelled as esoteric." This module examines the theoretical and methodological challenges that define the academic study of esotericism within the context of modernity. By engaging with empirical cases from the Global South, it situates esotericism within global history, moving beyond Western interpretive frameworks and recognising distributed agency and multiple ontologies."

Teaching and learning

The MA Islamic Humanities is designed both as a professional development qualification and as a platform preparing students for doctoral research.

Students are required to follow taught modules to the equivalent of 120 credits and to submit a dissertation of 10,000 words, worth 60 credits. Modules are assessed through a variety of methods including short and long essays, examinations, oral presentations, and response papers. An overall percentage mark is awarded for each module, based on the marks awarded for individual assessment items within the courses. The MA may be awarded at Distinction, Merit, or Pass level in accordance with the common regulations for MA/MSc at SOAS.

We recommend that part-time students have between two and a half and three days free in the week to pursue their course of study.

Programme learning outcomes

Upon completion of this programme, you will:

• have understanding of a range of aspects of the history, culture, and religion of the Islamic world through different humanities approaches
• have familiarity with a variety of approaches relating to humanities disciplines
• have gained factual knowledge about the history, culture, and religion of Islam and the Islamic world, past and present, and about the cultural and historical forces that have shaped the Islamic world
• be able to synthesize different kinds of information, and be precise and cautious in your assessment of evidence
• have developed effective writing and referencing skills and attention to detail and accuracy in presentation
• have gained awareness of how to locate materials and use research resources, assess data and evidence critically from a variety of sources, and solve problems of conflicting sources and conflicting interpretations
• be able to work alone in a self-motivated fashion; take feedback and criticism positively and use it as a springboard for effective improvement of your work

Employment

In addition to an understanding of global faiths, histories, and cultures, graduates from the Department of Religions and Philosophies develop the skills to analyse and communicate ideas in a clear, rational, and comprehensive manner. These key proficiencies are valuable in many careers and are transferable to a wide range of sectors and roles.

Recent Department of Religions and Philosophies graduates have been hired by:

• Asia Society
• British Council
• Cabinet Office
• Chatham House
• Edelman
• Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
• HELP USA
• King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Princeton University
• Royal Government of Cambodia
• The Happiness Factory
• The Inter Faith Network for the UK
• The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
• UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency
• United Nations Development Programme

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