Introduction to Islamic Psychology is the start of what UI adjunct professor Carrie York Al-Karam hopes will blossom into an Islamic Psychology Institute offering an Islamic psychology certificate.
"It’s not even just a new course at the University of Iowa,” York Al-Karam told The Gazette. "It’s a new course; nobody is teaching this.”
Islamic Psychology will be offered online for three semester hours this fall to traditional and non-traditional students alike.
The course will cover past and present ties between psychology and religion and delve into how the Muslim world has dealt with psychology and related ideas.
Proponents of the course say it will take students beyond the headlines and into the lives of practicing Muslims, presenting practical aspects of the world’s second-largest religion. It also could shed stereotypes and highlight broader connections between psychology and religion in general.
"In order to understand any culture and understand its history, understand what’s important to it, understand its cultural products, you have to understand something about religion,” said Diana Fritz Cates, chairwoman of the UI Religious Studies department.
And student interest in Islam — as it continues to grab headlines nationally and internationally — is robust, according to Cates.
"I think there’s a strong interest on the part of students in understanding their world,” she said. "And they know they really can’t understand what’s happening, especially in the Middle East, without knowing something about Islam.”
But, Cates said, many don’t know how to look at religion as an object of research or scholarship.
"They only know how to believe or disbelieve personally,” she said. "So I think it’s really important that they learn to look evenly and open-mindedly at all the variations of religion.”
That includes its psychological aspects, which York Al-Karam said are significant and profuse.
Islam, she said, has a lot to say about the nature of being human, about psychopathology and about healing both mentally and physically.
Students will become familiar with therapeutic modalities in Islam, and they’ll understand the differences between Islamic psychology and mainstream psychology — including the central role the soul plays in Islamic psychology.