The course focuses on the role of Islam in world politics, posing two inter-related questions: First, how can we explain the varying nature and strength of Islam as a discursive and mobilizational force in world politics? Second, how should we understand the impact of changes in world politics on the institutions, authority structures, and identities associated with Islam? In this course, the approach to these questions is comparative. The course begins by tracing the trajectory of Islam as a force in world history from from the late nineteenth century through the tumultuous years of mass mobilisation in the interwar era, demobilisation with the formation of new nation-states in the early Cold War era, and the revival of Islam in world politics by the 1970s with the Iranian Revolution and developments elsewhere in the Muslim world. But most of the course covers the contemporary post-Cold War era, examining the varying role of Islam in diverse regional settings - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe - and in the contexts of globalization and democratization, mass migration, civil wars, and separatist struggles. Close attention is paid to the role of Saudi Arabia and Iran and the rise of sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shi'a. The course also focuses on important cases like Al Qa'ida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, civ, the so-called 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria, the U.S.-led ‘Global War on Terrorism’, as well as important trends in the UK and across Europe, with close attention to the rise of Islamophobia in these contexts and elsewhere.