Research Methods and Problems From The B PDF

The Bloomsbury
Companion to
Islamic Studies
Edited by
Clinton Bennett
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Research Methods and
Problems
Elliott Bazzano
What is Islam?
Inquiries into the nature of Islam cannot elicit neutral answers. To ask, "What is
Islam?" already presupposes a framework of inquiry that posits an ontology.1
Furthermore, because the lines between phenomenological and confessional
treatments of Islam are so easily blurred, perhaps the best way to address the
question for the purposes of this volume is to survey the spectra of approaches
that one might take in defining the complex Arabic term, Islam.
As Wilfred Cantwell Smith and others have articulated when theorizing
about religion, "Islam" is a special case because it appears in the Islamic holy
text—unlike "Christianity" or "Judaism," for example.2 The presence of "Islam"
in the Quran does not mean, however, that "Islam" was a widely used term
in Arabian religious contexts before, during, or immediately after the Prophet
Muhammad's lifetime (570-632 CE).3 And even if the verbal noun "Islam"
appears in the Qur'an only four times, its correlated active participle, "mus-
Um," appears much more often and the terms operate dialectically. It would
be untenable at any rate to assume that in seventh-century Arabia either term
would have been synonymous with the variety of meanings the words give us
today.4
From a confessional perspective, Islam may well be understood as a sui gen-
eris category—after all, God identifies the term in His Book.5 We also find men-
tion of the term in the Report of Gabriel and other accounts of the Prophet
Muhammad. 6 As articulated in the Report of Gabriel, Muslims understand that
Islam involves not only believing things but also doing things—in particular the
profession of faith (al-shahado), prayer (al-salat), fasting (al-sawm), giving charity
(al-zakat), and performing pilgrimage to Mecca (al-hajj). These "pillars," though,
are of course but a component of Islamic practice. If Islamic Studies scholars
wish to understand Muslims holistically, they must therefore pay attention to
Muslims' interpretations of texts, artistic expressions, local customs, and all
other behaviors and outlooks that influence the ways practitioners relate to
their multivalent religious traditions.
29
The Bhomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies
Because Muslims—those who profess to follow the religion of Islam—live in

diverse corners of the globe, speak hundreds of different languages, represent a
plethora of socioeconomic classes, and invariably interpret the parameters of their
religion in a corresponding multitude of ways, the "practice of Islam" can hardly
be assumed to be uniform. Of course certain features of Islamic practice can be
considered nearly identical in particular ways across the globe, such as rituals like
ablution and prayer, but when taken as a larger, more comprehensive system,
Islamic practice is as diverse as the practice of any religious tradition. Some schol-
ars, therefore, have even suggested that we speak of "islams," in the plural, rather
than the singular Islam—the former representing heterodoxy and locality and
the latter representing reification and orthodoxy.7 In some cases this distinction
might prove useful, but it would also imply the need to pluralize other concepts
that are understood and defined heterogeneously, including God, Muhammad,
Qur'an, 'All, or any number of terms key to the study of Islam. Pluralizing Islam
will inevitably strike many as idiomatically awkward, moreover. What is most
important to recognize, though, as Ebrahim Moosa articulates, is that
whatever Islam is, the closest we can come to whatever "it" is or is not, is
through its embodiment in concrete forms, practices, beliefs, traditions,
values, prejudices, tastes, forms of power that emanate from human beings
who profess and claim to be Muslim or profess belonging to a community
that calls itself Muslims.8
In lieu of plurals, the reality of Islam's heterogeneity might instead accom-

modate specificity by way of qualification with variously nuanced adjectives,
such as: moderate, reformist, American, liberal, traditional, Sufi, and the like.
In the case of assigning Islam nationalities, one might consider interchanging
the terms "American Islam" and "Islam in America," or "Indian Islam" and
"Islam in India," but such language still cannot escape the issue that the latter
examples still speak about Muslims in these places. As Carl Ernst points out
in Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World about the
tendency to assign agency to religious traditions, "no one, however, has ever
seen Christianity or Islam do anything," so it is problematic to suggest that any
particular tradition "be" anywhere.9 As Omid San puts it, "'Islam' does not get
up in the morning. Islam does not brush its teeth. Islam does not take a shower.
Islam eats nothing. And perhaps most importantly for our consideration, Islam
says nothing. Muslims do."10 Emphasizing this point both in scholarship and
in the classroom will help to disabuse people of the idea that religion exists
in a timeless, disembodied state, devoid of human influence and tempera-
ment. Assigning religion nationalities remains problematic as well because it
assumes homogeneity, whereas regional expressions within a given culture or
nation-state are always idiosyncratic.
30
Research Methods and Problems
In determining whether Islam is radical, liberal, moderate, or any number

of qualified versions of the religion, one must negotiate the meaning of such
relative terms. Jesus, of course, was radical by anyone's estimation, but today's
scholars and journalists who write about religion probably do not mean to
imply that "radical Muslims" are Christ-like. Similarly, Muslims are often con-
sidered "moderate" only when they cease practicing their religion or taking it
seriously.11 Rhetoric shapes discourse and, as Edward Curtis reminds us, we
must continually challenge misleading paradigms and confront language that
seeks to steer conversations in a predetermined manner because "if we can-
not question the assumptions on which questions are posed, we cease to be
critics."12 Remaining vigilant about not only the words we use but also why we
use them is therefore just as relevant to the attempted description of Islam as it
is to any other aspect of rigorous scholarship.
When denning Islam and Muslims, one might also consider those traditions
that have arisen in relationship to Islam but whose intensely anormative expres-
sions put into question their "Islamic" nature. Such traditions include the Baha'i
faith, Druze faith, Western Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan (d. 1927), and certain
New Age movements that adopt Islamic thought and rituals.13 In the United
States, the leadership of the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism (USHS),
for example, works with Muhammad al-Jamal, a renowned Palestinian Sufi
shaykh and scholar; yet many affiliates of the school actively resist the label of
Muslim, preferring a more universal understanding of Sufism. Similarly, prac-
titioners of Western Sufism almost unanimously do not consider themselves
Muslims.14 Definitions are often political as well when one looks, for example,
to groups that the Saudi Arabian government has banned from Mecca due to
their non-Muslim status, such as the Ahmadis, even though the groups them-
selves identify as Muslim.
Authority
Defining Islam, as already illustrated, is usually more useful as a pedagogical

exercise than it is evincive of dictionary precision.15 This becomes particularly
clear in Andrew Rippin's edited volume, Defining Islam, where we find that the
meaning of Islam evolves across time and in relation to personal agendas and
scholarly orientations. In addition to secondary scholarly sources, Rippin also
includes the voices of influential Muslim thinkers, including Sayyid Qutb (1966),
Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab (1792), and Abu Hanlfah (d. 767) himself. Given
the variety of voices, the authors in his volume, not surprisingly, differ on the
best ways to characterize Islam. Norman Calder (d. 1998), for example, argues
that orthodoxy has remained more important than orthopraxy in Islamic histo-
ry.16 Richard Bulliet argues the opposite.17
31
The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies
Electing Islam's most deserving spokespeople is a central enigma for Muslim

and non-Muslim scholars alike, and in Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion
Muslims Really Think, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed tackle this ambitious
project. By relying largely on polls, they seek to compile an allegedly repre-
sentative account of what more than 90 percent of Muslims worldwide think
about various topics, from democracy to terrorism.18 Setting aside the method-
ological accuracy and other challenges of Esposito and Mogahed's project, who
does speak for Islam? Does anyone, or do only select, educated, qualified indi-
viduals? How a scholar explicitly or implicitly responds to such questions will
surely determine her approach to a given study. Consequently, paying more
or less attention to the masses or an elite group inevitably serves different pur-
poses and reflects the scholar's own intellectual background and oftentimes the
specific context of her research.
Men, moreover, have overwhelmingly been the spokespersons of Islam, at
least as far as texts and political authority are concerned. The same also rings
true for any other major religion of the world. Especially in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, however, a number of scholars (male and female, but
mostly female) have sought to reevalute the importance of female voices both in
the history of Islam and in modern-day debates and scholarship. A few promi-
nent female voices in Islamic studies over the past several decades include Leila
Ahmed, Fatima Mernissi, Kecia Ali, and Saba Mahmood. Both implicitly and
explicitly, these scholars have sought to assess a body of texts and rituals, the
creation of which have been overwhelmingly male-dominated both in theory
and practice. The critical evaluation of this reality has led to new trends in the
study of Islam.
Fatima Mernissi, for example, has argued that because reports of the
Prophet Muhammad were recorded primarily by men, we should approach
these sources with respective caution while acknowledging the significance of
potentially suppressed female voices.19 Unlike Mernissi, Ahmed relies almost
entirely on English secondary sources; Mernissi cites classical texts extensively.
Like Mernissi, however, Ahmed writes somewhat apologetically and chal-
lenges the authority of a male-dominated tradition. Ahmed posits two aspects
of Islam, in this regard: the ethical, which would be the spirit or the message
of Islam, and the institutional, which reflects human power structures and vies
for authority.20 This bifurcation is not without its problems, and of course raises
questions of essences. Can we speak about Islam as something sui generis or can
we speak only about context-specific texts and lived expressions? Moreover,
Mernissi provocatively asks "if a desegregated society, where formerly secluded
women have equal rights not only economically but sexually, would be an
authentic Muslim society."21 That is, the lived history of Muslim societies has
been one of male-domination. Would it therefore be appropriate to call an egali-
tarian society, as Mernissi conceives of it, authentically "Islamic" or "Muslim"?
32
In Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject anthropologist Saba
Mahmood tackles a related question.
In the ethnography, Mahmood examines female mosque movements in Cairo
and the empowerment of women that results. By way of participant observation,
Mahmood documents the political and social significance of these movements
on the lives of the women she studies and argues that greater knowledge of their
religion increases the authority of Egyptian women both inside and outside the
home.22 Her lack of primary sources, though, as in Ahmed's case, weakens her
ability to make certain claims, especially in regards to Islamic law.
Conversely, much of Kecia Ali's work on gender gives meticulous attention
to primary sources. Her monographs on sexual ethics and marriage pay close
attention to classical juridical discourses. She argues that apologetic works on
gender often fail to admit egregiously unegalitarian precedents in traditional
Islamic law. Ali believes, however, that the richness of classical Islamic texts and
ethical ideals they espouse are reason to take them seriously if gender reform
is to take place and that real reform will not find widespread support without
engaging tradition directly.23
Defining Islamic Studies
Although the debate over what constitutes Islam as a religious and ideological
system has existed for well over a millennium, the same is not true for "Islamic
Studies." It has existed for a far shorter period of time. Although "Islamic
Studies" (Ar. al-dirasat al-lslamiyya) may be used in theological institutions of
Islamic learning, that meaning is not what we intend here. Instead, we have in
mind the Western, academic study of Islam.
Any number of texts demonstrate the work of those who study or profess
Islam, but what the Western academic discipline of "Islamic Studies" is remains
less clear. For purposes of exploring how Islamic Studies scholars have con-
sciously thought to define the field, two volumes—both edited at least in part by
Richard Martin—are particularly worthy of mention here: Approaches to Islam in
Religious Studies, first published in 1987 and again in 2001 and Rethinking Islamic
Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, published in 2010.24 Both volumes,
in their own ways, explore the characteristics and boundaries of Islamic Studies
and present a spectrum of views. In neither text is there even agreement on
what the most basic methodological issues are and their authors often write
with competing visions for the study of religion in general and the study of
Islam in particular, so Islamic Studies remains amorphous even when attempt-
ing to articulate its key features. Thus, like defining Islam, defining Islamic
Studies also necessitates surveying a variety of approaches, encompassing both
insider and outsider viewpoints.
33
One might define Islamic Studies through a survey of texts that deal with
Islam or even texts themselves that directly seek to explain and define Islamic
Studies. And yet another approach to understanding the field involves survey-
ing institutions that train Islamic Studies scholars. In the United States there
are dozens of graduate programs in Religious Studies that offer emphases on
Islam, and even more undergraduate programs. Of course, though, depart-
ments of history, divinity, anthropology, sociology, ethnomusicology, art his-
tory, and others may also offer degrees with an emphasis on Islam.25 Islamic
Studies certainly does not belong solely to Religious Studies.
There are institutions like Columbia University and the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which host interdisciplinary graduate pro-
grams in Islamic Studies whose courses and students draw on the expertise
of faculty from a number of departments, including Near Eastern Languages
and Cultures (NELC), History, and Law. We also find scattered throughout
the United States programs in Middle East Studies, Arab Studies, South Asian
Studies, Middle East and South Asian Studies, and other area studies emphases
that may well relate quite specifically to the study of Islam, and host students
and faculty who specialize in topics related to Islam. The interdisciplinary
nature of Islamic Studies, however, perhaps reflects trends in popular think-
ing to conflate the Middle East, Arab world, and Muslim world.26 Although
terms such as "Oriental Studies" are now generally avoided in US institutions,
the American Oriental Society (AOS) holds annual meetings, and of course the
prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London
remains among the premier area study programs in the world.27
Given the vast auspices under which Islamic Studies work takes place,
looking for consistencies and commonalities among dissertations and pub-
lications within particular departments and programs may not present con-
clusive impressions about the nature of said departments and programs,
simply because of their diverse nature. Richard Martin has lamented the "fail-
ure of religious studies to congeal as a 'discipline,' despite the appearance
of an increasing number of departments of religion or religious studies," an
argument that presumably extends to the subdiscipline of Islamic Studies as
well.28 The failure of the discipline "to congeal," however, may not be a bad
thing. After all, interdisciplinarity is the foundation of Religious Studies as
a field—to say nothing of Islamic Studies—unlike its more firmly grounded
cousins in theology and other disciplines that thrive in seminaries. The con-
tested nature and undefined boundaries of Religious Studies ensures that it
remains a robust umbrella field able to accommodate broad subfields such as
Islamic Studies.
Department titles are but one indicator, however, of a program's nature.
Because Religious Studies departments did not exist prior to the late sixties,
many scholars who received their PhDs before that era could not be expected
34
to have graduated from a Religious Studies department, even though they

may have ended up working in a Religious Studies department.29 Moreover,
professors who specialize primarily in language or literature may find them-
selves employed in a Religious Studies department for any number of reasons,
even if their research and teaching interests bear little on the study of religion.
Consequentially, many dissertations or publications related to the study of
Islam could just as easily come from a history department or a cultural studies
department as they could Religious Studies.
Today in the United States and England, Islamic Studies programs are devel-
oping not only to serve the academy but also to respond to the needs of Muslims
in particular. Taking, for example, Zaytuna College and Hartford Seminary in
the United States and the Cambridge Muslim College in the United Kingdom,
we can see that the lines between secular and religious education are not so easily
defined. Zaytuna College, cofounded by Hamza Yusuf and Zaid Shakir, offers
BA degrees in both "Arabic" and "Islamic Law and Theology," while simulta-
neously requiring students to take general education courses in subjects includ-
ing economics, astronomy, and political science. Notably, as evidenced by the
Zaytuna luncheon at the 2011 American Academy of Religion (AAR) National
Meeting, Islamic seminaries in the West may be growing as interlocutors for
scholars working in a secular Western framework. (The Introduction refers to
other examples of accredited colleges in the United Kingdom context run by
Muslim organizations.) Hartford Seminary is quite different and solely a gradu-
ate institution, offering an MA degree in Islamic Chaplaincy. And Cambridge
Muslim College, headed by T. J. Winter (also known as Abdal Hakim Murad),
is different still. Geared toward Muslims with traditional training in Islamic
religious sciences, the college aims to supplement their studies with liberal arts
training with an emphasis on Islam in Britain and the contemporary world.
Also reflective of Zaytuna and Cambridge Muslim College, there is a growing
trend of Islamic Studies scholars who boast formal training from both secular
and religious institutions. No list of names has been formally published—
and if one had, it would be quite subjective because the members could vary
depending upon how one defines "traditional training"—but our globalizing
world is certainly responsible for a changing face of interdisciplinary academic
training in the study of religion. Tariq Ramadan's plenary address entitled
"Contemporary Islam: The Meaning and the Need of a Radical Reform" at the
2009 annual meeting of the AAR in Montreal marks the gray territory between
secular and confessional approaches to the study of religion, especially given
his prominent insider voice as a scholar-activist of Islam in Europe. The role of
scholar and Muslim intellectual, however, is of course not something exclusive
to Europe.
Omid Safi, a public intellectual and Islamic Studies professor based in the
United States at University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, is a regular
35
The Bloomsbury Companion to islamic Studies
contributor to the religion blog of the Huffington Post and Religion News Service.
He also published a scholarly monograph, and edited the 2003 publication
Progressive Muslims, comprised of contributions by Muslim academics giving
voice to a "progressive" Islam that is also firmly rooted in centuries of tradi-
tion and scholarship. San also edited the fifth volume for Voices of Islam, also
authored by Muslims treating a variety of topics.30 He thus has a foot firmly
planted in the worlds of both descriptive and prescriptive scholarship. Many
other prominent Islamic Studies scholars in the United States fall under a simi-
lar category, including Sherman (Abd al-Hakim) Jackson, who not only holds
an endowed chair in Islamic thought in University of Southern California (USC)
School of Religion, but also cofounded the American Learning Institute for
Muslims (ALIM), and has given lectures at Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS)
and other large Muslim gatherings.
The second annual Islamic Studies conference hosted by the University of
California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) entitled "Locating the Shari'a" bears witness to
the presence of Islamic Studies scholars in the United States whose training stems
from both Western academies and traditional institutions overseas. Each of the
three keynote speakers at the conference—Ahmad Atif Ahmad (UCSB), Khaled
Abou El Fadl (UCLA), and Sherman Jackson (USC)—reflects this tendency, as
they have each received substantial training in Islamic religious sciences outside
of the United States, in addition to their Western post-graduate education.31
Antagonistic and Revisionist Approaches to the Study of Islam
Although there is no shortage of openly non-Muslim Islamic Studies scholars

working in Western academies, a portion of them engage in sometimes antago-
nistic studies of Islam, perhaps confessional in their own right, at times meant
to disprove various normative claims. For example, in the 1977 publication,
Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World, Michael Cooke and Patricia Crone
maintain that the book is
written by infidels for infidels, and it is based on what from any Muslim
perspective must appear an inordinate regard for the testimony of infidel
sources. Our account is not merely unacceptable; it is also one which any
Muslim whose faith is as a grain of a mustard seed should find no difficulty
in rejecting.32
A main thread in Hagarism is that Islamic historical sources are unreliable, which
prompted the authors to construct early Islamic history on the basis of non-
Islamic, non-Arabic sources. Even at the time of publication, the book met with
firm criticisms and scholars generally continue to dismiss its main conclusions
36
today. The issue of polemical intentions aside, telling the Muslim reader what
her faith should dictate ironically presents the same type of normative rhetoric
that the authors sought to escape while producing the text. Moreover, much
of Religious Studies and Islamic Studies scholarship that claims to work from
a phenomenological or descriptive framework ends up advocating normative
claims in many regards, for it is of course presumptuous if nonetheless stra-
tegic to attempt to engage religion solely as a thing to be studied.33 Crone and
Cook published Hagarism several decades back, but methodologically weak
and inflammatory texts continue to be published today, sometimes by first-rate
academic publishers.
Efraim Karsh, for example, has managed to publish several books through
Harvard and Yale University presses—books that make untenable claims and
have received steady criticism from the scholarly community. One must surely
wonder how this can be, as Richard Bulliet calls Karsh's Empire's of the Sand "a
tendentious and unreliable piece of scholarship that should have been vetted
more thoroughly by the publisher."34 Of course, just because a piece of scholar-
ship challenges normative claims about history, or critiques social or political
systems does not automatically render the piece as antagonistic.
John Wansbrough, Luxenberg, and others have critiqued the commonly held
belief that the Qur'an was codified in the seventh century, but what is scholar-
ship if not an arena to challenge assumptions?35 There is, moreover, a difference
between texts that are overtly antagonistic and those that are more tacit in their
assertions. Edward Said's Orientalism and the responses to that publication by
Bernard Lewis and others offer insight into this debate. Whether they like it or
not, authors writing about Islam must be sensitive and attuned to the politi-
cal implications of their work. This is not simply a post-9/11 issue, either. In
Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism, Zachary
Lockman details the complex history of Muslim/non-Muslim relations with par-
ticular attention to power dynamics and intercultural exchange.36 Without duly
acknowledging this history, scholars will fail to produce truly honest work.
Dealing with Popular Perceptions of Islam
For better or for worse, no matter how restrictive in scope Islamic Studies
scholars try to keep themselves, the ubiquitous presence of misinformation
about Islam is impossible to ignore. Aside from antagonistic scholars, voices
such as David Horowitz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Geert
Wilders, and Brigitte Gabriel, to name some of the most prominent professional
propagandists with few or dubious credentials—and who are not, therefore
scholars—enjoy profitable careers in exchange for spreading politically moti-
vated and disingenuous rhetoric about Islam and Muslims. In addition to these
37
self-proclaimed experts on "Islamic radicalism," other public figures fill air-

waves and bookshelves with their inflammatory rhetoric as well.
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain declared during his 2011 cam-
paign that were he elected he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, a
statement that he then qualified by saying he may consider it, but only if said
Muslim passed a loyalty test of unspecified parameters. For Cain to have made a
similar comment about a Jew or an Hispanic immigrant would have been politi-
cal suicide, but his contemporary social climate accommodated the remark, and
Cain continued on the campaign trail.
Unfortunately, many media outlets happily give voice to demagogical per-
sonalities and large portions of the American population obtain information
about Islam from their pseudo-intellectual output, which is indicated in part by
the number of books that professional polemicists sell, often exceeding that of
even introductory books written by Islamic Studies scholars for popular audi-
ences. University student associations routinely offer such speakers handsome
stipends, moreover, to give public lectures on university campuses, and surely
to the dismay of almost any Islamic Studies scholar working in the American
academy, Walid Shoebat has received 5,000 dollars per speaking engagement
to educate police officers and Homeland Security employees on the "Islamic
threat."37
In 2005, the Clarion Fund produced Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against
the West, a vitriolic DVD that buttresses Huntington's clash of civilizations the-
sis in a sensational and high-budget manner.38 By 2008, some 28 million DVD
copies had been distributed for free, often showing up in university mailboxes
of faculty and students alike across the country.39 Whether individuals such
as Shoebat and Horowitz are "Islamophobes" or bigots notwithstanding, what
remains clear is that they ought to be taken seriously by Islamic Studies schol-
ars—not because their contributions to knowledge exceed the ridiculous and
absurd, but rather because if educated academics do not take the reins of public
discourse surrounding Islam, there are innumerable unqualified mouthpieces
who have already and will continue to find lucrative careers in spreading their
messages instead.
There are of course many popular authorities on Islam, only some of whom
possess academic credentials but who nonetheless attempt to counteract the
negative vitriol of the demagogues. These voices include Reza Asian, Eboo
Patel, Edina Lecovic, Faisal Abdul Rauf, Daisy Khan, and Chris Hedges.
And following the New York Police Department (NYPD) surveillance epi-
sode, even unlikely voices arose, when New Jersey Republican Governor
Chris Christie criticized the actions of the NYPD. Several members of the
Republican Party also spoke out against representative Michelle Bachmann's
attempts to discredit Huma Abedin, top aide to Secretary of State Hilary
Clinton, claiming that Abedin had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But public
38
intellectuals, politicians, and media personalities cannot take the place of

scholars. It is therefore incumbent upon Islamic Studies scholars to proac-
tively assert their authority beyond the classrooms, peer-reviewed journals,
and academic presses, so that their voices may be heard by broad audiences.
Comparative Projects
Comparative projects related to the study of Islam have a long and sometimes
controversial history, as works like Hagarism indicate. The study of Islam natu-
rally crosses a number of disciplinary boundaries, and oftentimes gives rise
to explicitly comparative projects encompassing various religions, philosophi-
cal systems, and political theories. The work of Marshall Hodgson (d. 1968),
one of the founding fathers of contemporary Islamic Studies, marked a shift
in the study of Islam—in part due to its emphasis on understanding Islam and
Islamic history in the greater context of world history and world civilization.40
His scholarship is most famously represented in his three-volume magnum
opus, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization.4^ Bruce
Lawrence and others have championed Hodgson's pioneering work as a move
away from Orientalism and toward the dynamic and cosmopolitan face of
Islam and Muslims.42
Another multipronged approach to investigating Islamic thought involves
juxtaposing the ideas of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. In Ebrahim Moosa's
2007 publication, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, the author puts Ghazali
(d. 1111) into conversation not only with noteworthy Muslim thinkers, includ-
ing al-Muhasibi (d. 857), Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), and Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) but
also a host of Western philosophers from Plato (d. ca. 347 BCE) and Aristotle
(d. 322 BCE) to Hegel (1831) and Foucault (1984). In the text, Moosa emphasizes
the notion of the dihliz, or threshhold, as a means to reinforce Ghazali's liminal
and multivalent thinking.43
In contrast to scholars like Moosa, who draw nuanced connections between
Islamic thought and Western philosophical traditions, a rich, and sometimes
notorious legacy can be found in comparative studies of Islam, Christianity,
and Judaism. Many of the tendencies in such studies are at the fore of Said's
critiques in Orientalism, but there are also plenty of ostensibly nonpolemical
comparative projects between Islam and its "Abrahamic" counterparts.44 One
might include The Qur'an and its Biblical Subtext by Gabriel Said Reynolds in
this latter category.
Reynolds' monograph examines the Qur'an in light of its biblical "subtext,"
which the author defines as the social and literary milieu in which the Qur'an
arose in the seventh century. He therefore examines Jewish and Christian apoc-
ryphal works in addition to canonical texts—sources that have been largely
39
overlooked in studies of the Qur'an.45 Secondly, although presumably non-

Muslim, Reynolds has much in common with various Muslim reformists in
that he believes that Muslim exegetes and traditional scholars have sullied an
authentic interpretation of the Qur'an, and accordingly wishes to reconceive the
enterprise of Qur'anic exegesis.46
Todd Lawson also plays the role of exegete in The Crucifixion and the Qur'an,
in which he probes the variety of Muslim interpretations of Q 4:157.47 In addi-
tion to Lawson's recent publication, scholars have written innumerable treat-
ments of Jesus' role in Islam and we also find scholars such as John Renard
and Clinton Bennett who approach Islam from perspectives rooted in Christian
theology but nonetheless sympathetic and certainly not antagonistic to Islamic
tradition.48 We also find examples of Christian scholars writing about Islam
who note the appreciable spiritual impact that the study of Islam has had on
their lives.49
Language Competency
Generally speaking, when considering the language training that is required

to study Islam in depth, Arabic and Persian, in that order, should come to
mind. One might then ask, "Are such languages 'Islamic' languages?" Even
if Qur'anic Arabic is "Islamic," does the modifier then apply equally to any
Arabic source, or at least any Arabic source related to Islam? And which
languages might comprise a fuller list of "Islamic" languages? Ottoman
Turkish and Urdu, for instance, would surely be at the top. But again, are
they "Islamic" languages? What of administrative texts in Ottoman Turkish,
for example, which have little to do with religion? Are they Islamic texts,
written in an Islamic language? And what of the widely spoken Indonesian,
or Bengali languages? French and German are also undeniably important,
given the vast history of scholarship in those languages. Italian and Russian,
moreover, must also be included. Given the evolving impact of globalization
English is rapidly becoming one of the most important languages today for
the study of Islam. Although there may be a difference between "Islamic lan-
guages" and languages necessary for the study of Islam, it is perhaps a lost
cause to create a hierarchy of importance in terms of language competency
for Islamic Studies scholars. Languages serve a variety of context-specific pur-
poses, so from this perspective there is little use in generalizing their relative
importance.
And yet there are certain languages whose impact on Islamic Studies schol-
arship is universally acknowledged. Because the genesis of Islam revolves
intimately around the Arabic language, and because Arabic remained the
dominant language of Muslim scholarship for centuries, it retains unparalleled
40
importance for Muslim and non-Muslim scholars today. Even if one's primary
research language is not Arabic, there are too many terms—and therefore con-
cepts—rooted in the Arabic language that without a familiarity with or even
moderate proficiency in the language, one's authority and overall comprehen-
sion of the Islamic tradition will be severely limited. Etymological and morpho-
logical familiarity with key terms such as Islam, Muslim,fiqh,shari'a, hijab, Sufi,
and kalam—to name but a few—is indispensible for any grasp of the Islamic
tradition that aims to reach beyond the rudimentary.
During extensive periods of Islamic history, Persian also enjoyed great sig-
nificance and acted as an administrative, spoken, and scholarly language for
much of Central and South Asia. Therefore, depending on regional and his-
torical focus, an Islamic Studies scholar may indeed require a more in-depth
knowledge of Persian than Arabic, but because Persian is sprinkled with thou-
sands of Arabic words and idioms, working primarily with Persian texts with-
out securing a foundational knowledge of Arabic would nevertheless create
many roadblocks.
In order to engage with Muslims across the globe, it may naturally become
necessary to study the myriad of languages they speak. Especially for anthro-
pological or ethnographic projects, learning dialects and colloquial expressions
proves necessary, and any number of languages and language varieties may
be particularly important depending on the nature of one's study. Finding the
resources to learn relevant languages can of course present challenges as well.
Until recently, many Islamic Studies programs in North America focused
primarily on reading without necessarily encouraging students to speak, <
aurally comprehend, let alone write in Arabic. Given the worldwide popularity
of Al-Kitaab—not only in the United States but also in Arab countries including
Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, and Syria—American students of the Arabic language
are increasingly approaching the subject from a more holistic perspective.50
Additionally, and perhaps ironically, Al-Kitaab pays little attention to Islam or
religion more broadly and may indeed reflect that many if not most Western stu-
dents of the Arabic language are not primarily or even incidentally interested in
the study of Islam. Arabic language training in North America oftentimes takes
emphasis away from Islam—perhaps in part to rightly portray Arab countries
as pluralistic and multicultural in many cases—although there is probably an
overcorrection at times, which is unfortunate, because formal Arabic became
codified because of, not in spite of, the Qur'an.
In recent years, the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), which has
served as the premier Arabic Studies program for American students since
1967, has enrolled hardly any students in Islamic Studies or Religious Studies.
Advanced reading seminars in graduate programs are often the exception to
avoiding religious matters and focus on a number of different topics related to
Islam, depending on department and instructor. There is a growing demand
41
for Arabic language instruction in Western institutions, but at what point does
leaving the confines of the classroom prove necessary in order to study Islam
and Muslims?
Given the importance of language competency and an historical focus—
which is now changing—on texts, a responsible Islamic Studies scholar cannot
always rely on texts alone in order to understand the ways in which Muslims
think. On the one hand if one's study were historical, then what use would
interviews, for example, with contemporary Muslim thinkers serve? A con-
temporary Arabic speaker would have no more specialized knowledge of a
medieval text or scholar than would a contemporary English speaker for an
analogous case. Therefore, although holistic language study serves certain pur-
poses, much of scholarship nonetheless requires an exclusive or near-exclusive
focus on reading comprehension, to the exclusion of other language acquisition
skills.
When we compare, for example, Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921) who studied at
al-Azhar in Cairo, to Reynold Nicholson (d. 1945) who worked with texts in the
United Kingdom, we find two radically different approaches to the study of
Islam and the Arabic language as well.51 Ascertaining who was the more effec-
tive scholar between Goldziher and Nicholson would be a futile exercise, but
based on their education styles alone the comparison nonetheless illustrates
that studying Islam has been undertaken by competent scholars in a variety of
ways for a long time. We should add here that the roots of Western studies of
Islam date back to medieval times and indeed relied heavily on philology. This
reliance should not halt, but scholars must simultaneously keep in mind that
texts are limited. That not withstanding, the ability of Islamic Studies schol-
ars to seriously engage primary sources in their original languages will always
remain crucial, lest primary sources become secondary and secondary sources
primary.
What if one seeks to study Islam in America, for example, a country
where English is the national language and where Friday sermons are given
in English? Even then, a firm grasp of Arabic would be necessary in order to
make sense of how Muslims in the United States function, because Arabic
remains the liturgical language for the overwhelming majority of Muslims
across the globe. Given the plethora of immigrant communities in the United
States, moreover, English alone cannot likely suffice for any in-depth study of
Muslims in the United States, no matter how Anglo-centric the study may be.
But in an English-speaking context, Islamic Studies scholars must also negoti-
ate their relationship with a number of English terms related to the study of
Islam and religion more generally—terms that are often without a clear defini-
tion and egregiously abused by scholars, politicians, and the popular media.
Words such as radical, extreme, fundamentalist, terrorism, moderate, Islamophobia,
and Islamist play a role in a variety of discourses but are not always defined
42
sufficiently or even at all. Oftentimes, these words are nothing more than elabo-
rate synonyms for "bad" (with the exception of "moderate," as we discussed
earlier, which might simply mean "good").
In terms of emphasizing the role of English in the study of Islam, the authors
of Jamal Elias' edited volume, Key Themes for the Study of Islam, are sure to use
English terms for each chapter title (e.g. art, prayer, law, modernity, institution,
and death). By emphasizing "themes" the authors veer from trends of introduc-
tory texts that focus primarily on doctrinal aspects of Islam or its chronological
development. As can be seen in each chapter, moreover, Arabic terminology is
not discarded; it simply is not the starting point and is used only when neces-
sary, with an appropriate glossary at the end.52 After all, at what point do foreign
terms become a distraction in English writing? William Strunk asked this ques-
tion decades ago in his classic The Elements of Style and scholars would likely do
well to consider the necessity of non-English words in their scholarship today.
Referring to Islam as "submission" might prove awkward, and referring to
Sufism simply as Islamic mysticism may prove misleading. So sometimes leav-
ing terms untranslated best serves one's needs, but when non-English words
are used haphazardly they can easily clutter and obfuscate one's prose.
A few particularly important Arabic-English dictionaries should be noted
here, including those by Hans Wehr, J. G. Hava, and Edward Lane. Numerous
online Arabic-English and Arabic-Arabic dictionaries exist as well. One of the
best, if not the best, is "The Arabic Almanac" because it digitally searches Hava,
Wehr, and Lane.53 In terms of Arabic-language reference works, Wolfdietrich
Fischer has authored one of particular authority, even if its language is often
dense, but such is Arabic grammar.54 There are dozens of resources for other
Islamic languages as well and important references for the Persian language
include Steinlass' dictionary and Thackston's grammar.55
The Insider/Outsider Problem
According to Russell McCutcheon, the insider/outsider problem is, in a nutshell,

"whether, and to what extent, someone can study, understand, or explain the
beliefs, words, or actions of another."56 One might also go further, defining the
insider/outsider problem in light of one's ability to study religious traditions to
which one does not adhere. Whether we take McCutcheon's broad definition
or we think about the issue in terms of religious identity, it is a challenge that
every scholar of religion must face, and a challenge that carries consequences.
It is of course not a new issue, and founding fathers of Religious Studies
such as William Cantwell Smith were already giving attention to the insider/
outsider issue some fifty years ago. And scholars continue those efforts today.
But for many of us, decades after Cantwell Smith, the insider/outsider problem
43
is still an elephant in the room—one that deserves our persistent attention in

teaching and scholarship.
Scholars, in their publications and in the classrooms, often reveal their per-
sonal religious persuasions—and often they do not—but it is important to
realize that religious identity is just one of many identities and not necessarily
any more important to an Islamic Studies scholar than numerous other lay-
ers that comprise her worldview and social presence, including gender, skin
color, nationality, linguistic abilities, political affiliations, sexuality, and socio-
economic background. Thus, when considering the difference in scholarly
approach between Muslims and non-Muslims, we must first recognize that
there is no more homogeneity within the category "Muslim" than there is in
the category "non-Muslim." The spectrum on both sides is so vast that giving
preference to a Muslim's approach to Islamic Studies versus a non-Muslim's
approach (or vice versa) is virtually meaningless. As Marshall Hodgson articu-
lately states, "it is no guarantee of balanced insight, to be a Muslim, nor of
impartiality, to be a non-Muslim."57
As a Christian Palestinian working in the Western academy, Edward Said
was also keenly aware of the slippery nature of identity. In Orientalism he writes
that
the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and

powerlessness in each society, and is therefore anything but mere academic
woolgathering. What makes all these fluid and extraordinarily rich actualities
difficult to accept is that most people resist the underlying notion: that human
identity is not only not natural and stable, but constructed, and occasionally
even invented outright.58
Moreover, the identities of scholars are often judged by their names, with the
assumption that there are "Muslim sounding" names and "non-Muslim sound-
ing" names. For example, in the 2009 version of The 500 Most Influential Muslims,
the authors accidentally include the Christian scholar Wael Hallaq in this list.59
Additionally blurring the lines between the inside and outside, the book
review guidelines for the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences state that the
reviewer should note any "relevance or contribution to Islamic thought" that
she finds in her subject. Of course any thought could be construed as relevant to
another, but can a non-Muslim contribute to Islamic thought? If so, what makes
the thought Islamic? Because the journal does not solicit contributions based
explicitly on religious identity, the editors appear to indicate that Islamic thought
is not simply the domain of Muslim authorship and creativity. Perhaps following
Hodgson's lead, the guidelines should discuss "Islamicate" thought instead.60
Moreover, the issue of belonging is complicated by a phenomenon suggested
by Amina Wadud, who has argued that many academics today remain "closet
44
Muslims," out of fearing negative professional consequences.61 Whether a hir-

ing committee seeks a candidate from a particular religious background or if a
speaking engagement would presumably favor scholars for religious reasons,
the issue of religious identity is not absent from the Western academy—not by
a long shot. From another perspective, it is demonstrably true that many openly
Muslim academics are leading successful scholarly lives, at least in terms of
their professional appointments and publication records.
Amir Hussain, a Canadian scholar of South Asian background, illustrates this
well. He has published extensively—interestingly, even on the insider/outsider
issue—and is the editor of the Journal for the American Academy of Religion. In his
work, Hussain has reflected on his own identity and in one article even asserts
that in the United States his primary identity is Canadian, and not Muslim,
though he finds that changing post 9/11. a In the same article, he also recounts
deliberately inviting a non-Muslim filmmaker to the first event he coordinated
as part of the Study of Islam Program put on by the Islamic Studies program at
his university, with the purpose of demonstrating that one need not be Muslim
to study Islam.63
For this author, the general silence of discussion of religious identity in
pedagogy and scholarship presents a subtext that says it is irrelevant—that
belonging or not belonging to a particular tradition bears no relevance on one's
competence as a scholar. And although this assumption might seem gener-
ous, it is not unheard of (although probably not legal) for hiring committees
to inquire into the religious affiliation of candidates during the hiring process,
and the ability to ascertain faith commitments can inevitably influence hiring
decisions. Despite the political and social relevance of scholarly commitments
and pre-commitments, a noticeable lacuna remains in studies of the insider/
outsider problem in an Islamic Studies context. Despite a dearth of studies on
the insider/outsider problem more generally, there is no shortage of data, how-
ever, from which to explore the phenomenon.64
Many of the "founding fathers" of contemporary Islamic Studies in the United
States, including Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Ismail
Faruqi (d. 1986) straddled the line between prescriptive and descriptive scholar-
ship. Nasr and Rahman, for example, write through an explicitly confessional
lens in much of their work. In Rahman's introduction to Islam, an introductory
text, he tells the reader that he finds it "impossible [to] simply 'describe' a reli-
gion and particularly his own faith and fail to convey to the reader anything of
that inner intensity of life which constitutes his faith."65 Nasr approaches his
scholarship in a similar manner, under the assumption that separating religious
commitments from scholarship would be somehow disingenuous.66
In The Vision of Islam, William Chittick and Sachiko Murata walk a fine line
between descriptive and prescriptive scholarship. The authors present Islam
as something aesthetically pleasing, morally inspiring, and cosmologically
45
comprehensive. At no point do the authors reveal their religious identity,

but given the nature of the presentation in the book, it is difficult to assume
that the authors are not Muslims. The text is thoroughly sympathetic toward
a Muslim worldview and the authors hardly suggest why anyone would not
want to be Muslim.67 There are many more examples of telling publications that
demonstrate the implications of religious identity and the relationship between
descriptive and prescriptive scholarship, but the South African native Farid
Esack provides a good case study for interrogating this topic further.
Esack speaks candidly of his Muslim faith in much of his scholarly work.68 In
The Qur'an: A User's Guide, he gives us a particularly illustrative example. The
text is a thoroughly scholarly work on the Qur'an, yet Esack creatively weaves
in elements of his confessional orientation into his scholarship without sacrific-
ing a critical approach. He addresses contentious issues that many Muslims
would shy away from, such as anormative narratives on the collection and can-
onization of the Qur'an, as well as problematizing what it means to call the
Qur'an "divine." Esack discusses all the major Qur'anic sciences, such as the
occasions of revelation, abrogation, exegesis, and recitation, and his bibliogra-
phy contains Arabic and English sources one would expect to find in a scholarly
work on the Qur'an. But by no means does Esack pretend to be a disinterested
scholar. He begins the book with a peculiar trope: the many types of lovers that
study the Qur'an.
There is the uncritical lover, who "reflects the position of the ordinary Muslim
toward the Qur'an"; he loves his beloved and is content with that love—it need
not be analyzed much.69 Then there is the "scholarly lover," which refers to
Muslims who are convinced the Qur'an is the absolute word of God and who
are interested in formulating arguments to prove their case;70 there is also the
"critical lover." This lover is one who may be
enamoured with his beloved but will view questions about her nature
and origins, her language, or if her hair has been dyed or nails varnished,
etc., as reflecting deeper love and more profound commitment, a love
and commitment that will not only withstand all these questions and the
uncomfortable answers that rigorous enquiry may yield, but that will
actually be deepened by them.71
The next category, "the friend of the lover [...] accepts the broad outlines of
Muslim historiography and of claims about the development of the Qur'an,"
but does not identify as a Muslim.72 Such a person "may not be a full citizen
of the world of the Qur'an, but is certainly no foreigner either—let alone an
invader!"73 The next type, "the voyeur," claims to be the disinterested observer,
but who is not necessarily interested in a sympathetic approach. This approach,
Esack writes,
46
has not been welcomed by those who openly acknowledge a relationship

between themselves and [...] the beloved [...] These "objective" scholars
claim to have no confessional or ulterior motive in approaching the Qur'an
other than that of examining the body in the interest of scholarship. Alas,
there is no innocent scholarship.74
The final category Esack lists is the "polemicist," who is "in fact, besotted with
another woman, perhaps the Bible or Secularism [...] Pamphlets, tracts and the
internet are where these polemicists hang out."75 Esack identifies himself as a
"critical progressive Muslim, a student of the Qur'an with a respect for all seri-
ous scholarly inquiry" who draws upon his "South African Muslim heritage
in explaining what the Qur'an means to Muslims."76 Although Esack spends
some time explaining his taxonomy of the lovers, it is all to say that scholarship
is not neutral. He of course implies that a sympathetic yet critical view is best.
And many if not most Islamic Studies scholars would likely agree. But defining
"sympathetic yet critical" leaves the gates of interpretation wide open.
We might here mention Carl Ernst as a non-Muslim, "sympathetic yet criti-
cal" scholar of Islam. Coming from the other end of the specrum as Esack, Ernst
goes out of his way to tell the reader he is not Muslim, in the preface to Following
Muhammad.77 For other scholars, however, their non-Muslim identity becomes
quite relevant to their scholarly productions. Such is the case of Mark Berkson,
who has written on the insider/outsider issue in the study of Islam. In his article
on the subject, he does not, however, mention his personal religious leanings;
all he tells the reader is that he is not Muslim. And even though Berkson is not a
prominent scholar in Islamic Studies, he nonetheless ranks among the few who
have published on the topic of Islamic Studies pedagogy more broadly and
religious identity in Islamic Studies specifically.
Berkson describes himself as pluralistic and sympathetic to Islam, but what he
means by "pluralistic" remains unclear, and Esack's taxonomy might place Berkson
somewhere between the "friend of the lover" and the "voyeur." Berkson writes that
he encourages his students to embody what he refers to as an "imaginative insider's
perspective," which involves learning "to see our face in the face of the 'other,' [...]
while still preserving and appreciating the profound difference."78 "I am a plural-
ist," Berkson writes, "because I have found that every major religious tradition and
sacred text that I have studied contains profound truths and beauty."79 In this respect,
Berkson is the friend of the lover, but he is also a voyeur because he makes dogmatic
criticisms without giving them thoroughly reflective or reflexive consideration.
After mentioning it is "unfortunate that so few Muslims are willing to apply
historical and source criticism to the Qur'an," he also writes that in light of "a
rich history of critical thinkers and creative interpreters in Islam, [...] the Muslim
world would benefit from a revival of that spirit today."80 Despite one's confes-
sional preferences, however, surely the history of the Qur'an, and the relation of
47
inerrancy to the text, is different than that of the Bible. Following this, Berkson
argues that outsider status should not preclude one from criticizing religious
doctrines and practices when one finds them morally unacceptable. But of what
import is it to know what a scholar thinks of a given ethical concern? Of what
relevance are those concerns to scholarship? At the end of the day, what matters
most in one's scholarship is not religious identity, but instead intellectual rigor,
language competency, familiarity with the field and sophistication of approach
to many of the challenges that this chapter and volume surveys.
Anthropology/Sociology/Ethnography81
Because the Muslim world is so diverse and geographically spread out, con-
ducting fieldwork as part of one's research may present particular challenges.
Obtaining visas to certain countries remains problematic. And sojourners famil-
iar with travel in the Middle East and Muslim world know well that if one's
passport bears an Israeli stamp, entrance into countries like Syria and Lebanon
might be impossible; many travelers, therefore, operate with two passports,
despite the dubious legality of such strategies.
The sovereigns of Mecca have generally forbidden non-Muslims from enter-
ing the holy city, which keeps a site that would otherwise be of great interest to
a variety of anthropologists out of radar. In Morocco and Yemen, for example,
many mosques are off limits for non-Muslims, as is the case with the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem during prayer times. Therefore, religious identity may well
determine one's ability to access certain structures and precincts.
Also, many cultural studies may well overlap significantly with Islamic Studies
yet nonetheless remain distinct projects—whether a study, for example, on qat in
Yemen, architecture in Dubai, epic poetry traditions in Egypt, or on the political
turmoil that has surged in the Arab world since the revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt in 2010 and 2011.82 Increasingly since 9/11, Islamic Studies scholars have
been called upon by media organizations to explain events in the Muslim world,
even if religion plays only a small part in the respective events. This demonstrates
both the rising importance of Islamic Studies scholars in the public sphere but
also the popular if often misleading conflation of religion and politics.
While politics and religion are intimately intertwined in many circumstances,
a scholar with academic training in twelfth-century Sufi texts would conceivably
be quite unqualified to comment on so-called religious violence in Afghanistan,
for example. But general audiences often assume that an Islamic tudies scholar
is capable of giving intelligent commentary on everything and anything related to
Islam. Presumably, a graduate studentsetting out to pursue ethnographic research
already has fieldwork training, or would do so before beginning this. This would
include fieldwork methods (participant observation, reflexivity, and qualitative
48
research project design), preparing and using data-collecting instruments and

analysis of findings. Many institutions require approval from a Research Ethics
Committee before field work can be pursued. Of course, ethnography does not
have to involve obtaining visas and overseas travel; there are many opportunities
to research among Muslim communities in Europe, Australasia, and the Americas
for students already living or studying there.
Pedagogy
Finally, a significant void would remain in a discussion of research methods

and problems in Islamic Studies without exploring the issue of pedagogy, in its
widest sense—insofar as it relates to classroom environments, public forums,
and academic scholarship. Pedagogy in the classroom cannot, of course, be
separated from pedagogy in published scholarship, for both venues involve
teaching. But, teaching in the classroom and teaching through publications are
nonetheless different vehicles for communication and often involve different if
not much different audiences.
Importantly, the types of rhetoric and sources that a scholar uses and her
conscious and unconscious reasons for doing so are integrally tied to her abil-
ity to teach as well as communicate information and ways of thinking. How a
scholar relates to her audience is of course also integral to her overall effective-
ness as a communicator. When considering audience, one must often strike a
balance between specialized and general readerships. Given the wide-ranging
caliber of books on Islam, it is clear that this skill is not easy to master.
In terms of scholarship on Islamic Studies pedagogy, there is a noticeable
dearth. Brannon Wheeler's edited volume, Teaching Islam, is the standard book
on the subject, but it is some ten years old and of course limited by the selection
of contributors.83 The AAR syllabus project is a great resource for course develop-
ment and compiling bibliographies but the project lacks uniformity and the cali-
ber of syllabi varies significantly. Like the insider/outsider problem, a brief survey
of approaches to pedagogy will serve us best for purposes of this volume.
Texts that serve as "introductions to Islam" are too numerous to count and
their range in quality is surely as great as their number. Some texts that display
particular erudition without compromising readability include Key Themes for
tlie Study of Islam (ed. Jamal Elias), Following Muhammad (Carl Ernst), Introduction
to Islam (Daniel Brown), and Introduction to Islam (Frederick Denny). Sometimes
introductions to Islam can be found in chapters of texts on world religions,
such as God is Not One by Stephen Prothero and The World's Religions by Huston
Smith. Although treatments of Islam by nonspecialists may offer a refreshing
style, they are often prone to inaccuracies.84 This proves especially challenging
when an explicit political or state-sponsored agenda is present.
49
For many outside the academy, the study of Islam and the study of the Middle
East conjure connections to work in government, policy, or "anti-terrorism" efforts.
This connection certainly is not always present for Islamic studies scholars, but
sometimes it is, especially when they find themselves teaching, or at least advising,
in military training programs. Major Mark Jacobsen writes about this challenge
in an Armed Forces Journal article (2012), "How to Teach about Islam: Rather than
Seeking one 'True' Meaning, Explore the Views of Friends and Foes Alike." In the
face of suspicious government campaigns to profile Muslims, Jacobsen writes a
refreshing piece that argues for the need to educate the U. S. military about Islam
largely in the same way a Religious Studies class should function: to present mul-
tiple and competing perspectives, and to be concerned with fostering critical think-
ing skills rather than how to determine which side of a given debate is "correct."85
In terms of reference works on Islam, their numbers are great. One of the most
important publications is Brill's multivolume Encyclopaedia of Islam, now in its
third (not yet completed) edition. Although indispensible for most any Islamic
Studies scholar, its highly erudite style and attention to primary sources, and a
sometimes distracting format, make it less than ideal for a general audience or
even a specialized audience that is not trained in deciphering its glyphs. Plus,
entries are sorted according to Arabic terms; without a working familiarity with
Arabic, the encyclopedia will present a formidable challenge.
But Brill's epic tome is not the end of the road. A number of good general refer-
ence works exist as well, including Juan Campo's Encyclopedia of Islam, written by
specialists in digestible prose and containing a good bibliography of secondary
sources after reach entry. For academic references that give particular attention
to gender, The Enyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (ed. Suad Joseph, Brill,
2003), should prove beneficial. Other useful encyclopedias for the field of Islamic
Studies include the Encyclopedia of Islam and Muslim World (ed. Richard Martin)
and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (ed. John Esposito). Kecia
Ali and Oliver Leaman have also written a valuable reference work. Their Islam:
The Key Concepts contains not articles so much as brief entries aimed at broadly
defining terms, with a very brief list of further readings at the end of each entry in
addition to an extensive bibliography.86
Notes
1 For a discussion of whether Islam is a coherent category, see Abdulkader I. Tayob,
"Defining Islam in the Throes of Modernity," Studies in Contemporary Islam 1:2 (1999),
1-16, esp. \-i.
2 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to tltc
Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York: The McMillan Company, 1963), esp.
Chapter 4: "The Special Case of Islam," 80-118. Additionally, Christianity and
Judaism are of course English terms but there is nonetheless no all-encompassing
proper noun used in the New Testament or Hebrew Bible to signify Christian or
50
Jewish traditions at large. And this is to say nothing of "Hinduism," which was
developed by British colonizers.
3 I distinguish here between "islam" as an improper noun and "Islam" as a proper noun.
There are no capital letters in Arabic, so such a distinction in the Qur'an would be appar-
ent only by context and interpretation and even then may still remain ambiguous.
4 For more on this matter, see Fred Dormer, Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins
of Islam (Cambridge: The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
5 Q 3:19; 3:85; 5:3; and 61:7.
6 In the report, Islam is famously defined as: submission (islam), belief (iman), and
doing what is beautiful (ihsan). For an explanation of the report, see William Chittick
and Sachiko Murata, The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon Press, 1994).
7 See, for example, Ebrahim Moosa, "The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam," in
Progressive Muslims, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 111-27, esp. 113-17;
and John Renard, Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and
Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), xvii.
8 Moosa, "The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam," 114.
9 Carl Ernst, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 51.
10 OmidSafi,"TheTimesTheyarea-Changin':AMuslimQuestforGenderJustice,Equality,
and Pluralism," in Progressive Muslims, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 22.
11 SeeSherali Tareen, "Park51." http://freq.uenci.es/2011/12/13/park-51,2011. Accessed
January 30,2012. In his article, Tareen highlights the "the racist colonial history that
sustains the category" of moderate Islam. Used as a verb, Tareen argues, when we
moderate things, it is to control, to rationalize, to purify. And although the term has
been embraced by some public figures and activists, as such it remains deeply prob-
lematic linguistically because if the only good Muslim is a moderate Muslim, then
Muslims who resist that definition are not good Muslims.
12 See Edward Curtis. 'Teaching Islam to the Public." http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/05/09/
explaining islam-to-the-public, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2012. Curtis explores the
challenges of writing for a general audience, which sometimes involve tight word
limits and simplified, if not simplistic, descriptions. He does not, however, conclude
that writing for general audiences is condescending or less important than specialized
scholarship; on the contrary, Curtis highlights the benefits of a wide audience and
that if Islamic Studies scholars do not take advantage of opportunities to publish for
general audiences, then utterly unqualified authors will delight to take their place.
13 See Elliott Bazzano, "Shadhili Sufi Order," in Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History,
ed. Edward Curtis IV (New York: Facts on File, 2010), 509-11 and Elliott Bazzano,
"Sufi Order of the West," in Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History, ed. Edward
Curtis IV (New York: Facts on File, 2010), 535-6.
14 See www.sufiuniversity.org for information on the institution.
15 Carl Ernst makes this point about Sufism, as well, in The Shambala Guide to Sufism
(Boston: Shambhal^,1997). He argues that "definitions of Sufism are, in effect, teach-
ing tools," 24. By extension, the same can be said about Islam.
16 See Norman Calder, "The Limits of Islamic Orthodoxy," in Defining Islam: A Reader,
ed. Andrew Rippin (London: Equinox, 2007), 222-36.
17 See Richard Bulliet, "Conversion as a Social Process," in Defining Islam: A Reader, ed.
Andrew Rippin (London: Equinox, 2007), 323-31.
18 See John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed. Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims
Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2008), xi.
19 See Fatima Memissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), esp. 47. For a treatment of how
biographical and other literature was manipulated with a gender bias, see Asma
Afsaruddin, "Reconstituting Women's Lives: Gender and the Poetics of Narrative
51
in Medieval Biographical Collections," The Muslim World 92: 3-4 (2002): 461-50 and
Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa'd to Who's Who"
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 1994).
20 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modem Debate (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
21 Mernissi, 9.
22 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005).
23 See Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence
(Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2006); Kecia Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2010);and Judith Tucker, Women, Family, and Gender inlslamicLaw
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Other texts that deal with gender reform,
authority, and primary texts include Amina Wadud, 77K Qur'an and Women: Rereading the
Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Asma
Barlas has also written on patriarchal readings of the Qur'an but gives almost no attention
to primary sources, in "Believing Women " in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the
Qur'an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). Ayesha Chaudhry has written extensively
on "the wife-beating verse," 4: 34. See, for example, "The Ethics of Marital Discipline in
Premodern Qur'anic Exegesis," Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 30:2 (2010), 123-30;
and her forthcoming monograph Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition: Ethics, Law and
the Muslim Discourse of Gender (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
24 Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin (eds), Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to
Cosmopolitanism (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010); the volume seeks
to continue the project that Richard Martin et al. began in the 1980s in Approaches to
Islam in Religious Studies, which is to locate Islamic Studies in the larger discipline of
Religious Studies as a means for outlining issues in the field and offering methodological
approaches by way of case studies. The framework of the volume, explained in the intro-
duction, responds to the influence of Said's Orientalism and Eliade's pioneering efforts in
developing the History of Religions (3-5). For more information on locating Islam within
the broader study of religion, see Marianna Klar's synopsis of the Princeton conference,
"Islam and the Study of Religion," Journal of Qur'anic Studies 6 (2004), 103-8.
25 See "International Approaches to Islamic Studies in Higher Education" (www.
hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2008/rd07_08, accessed January 30, 2012), as well as
Carl Ernst's Islamic Studies webpage (www.unc.edu/~cernst/reliprograms.htm,
accessed January 30, 2012), both of which provide useful if incomplete references on
academic programs. Also see: Carl Ernst and Charles Kurzman, "Islamic Studies in
US Universities," Review of Middle East Studies 46:1 (2012): 2 4 ^ 6 " and "Carl Ernst,
"It's Not Just Academic: Writing Public Scholarship in Middle Eastern and Islamic
Studies," in Review of Middle East Studies 45:2 (2011): 164-171.
26 In lieu of the Middle East, Marshall Hodgson suggests the "Nile to Oxus Region." This
neologism seems not to have caught on among scholars but the value of his contribution
should be noted, given the geographic bias inherent in "Middle East." See, in particu-
lar, Venture of Islam, vol. 1 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1974), 60-1. Also see
Charles Kurzman, "Cross-Regional Approaches to Middle East Studies: Constructing
and Deconstructing a Region," MESA Bulletin 41:1 (2007), 24-9.
27 Following the publication of Orientalism, one can find a steady current of intellectual
sparring matches between Edward Said and Bernard Lewis who faults Said with
inconsistent reasoning and myopic thinking for his failure to recognize the virtues
and breadth of Orientalists.
28 Richard Martin (ed.), Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001),
I; also see Richard Martin, "Islamic Studies in the American Academy: A Personal
Reflection," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78:4 (2010): 896-920.
52
29 See Jeffrey C Ruff, "Study of Religion: The Academic Study of Religion in North
America," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones, 2nd edn (Detroit: McMillian
Reference USA, 2005), 13:8784-9.
30 Progressive Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008) and Voices of Islam, 5 vols. (Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2007) consist of exclusively Muslim authors.
31 Khaled Abou El Fadl, like Jackson and Safi, also keeps a foot in two worlds, and
may also be placed in this category of scholar-activists. Many of his works, such as
his monograph Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law, and numerous articles also on
Islamic law do not exhibit a confessional tone. But in many of his other works like
Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam and The Great Theft: Wrestling
Islam from the Extremists, Abou EI Fadl writes prescriptively. One can also see this
side of the scholar at his website, scholarofthehouse.org.
32 Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), vii-viii. The authors eventually scaled
back on the claims they made in the text, but Crone in particular remains inter-
ested in revisionist history, arguing in a number of her writings that traditionally
held events of Islamic history, including the life of Prophet Muhammad, ought to be
revisited with scrutiny rather than accepted as dogmatic myth.
33 See, for example, David Sander, "Wholeness and Creativity in Religious Studies
Teaching," Religion and Education 35:1 (2008): 79-94. Sander employs the metaphor of
mining a mountain for gold in relation to the study of religion. When religion, like the
gold, is objectified, we become rich with information, but we destroy the mountain.
Rather than suggesting, however, that scholars cannot study religion at all, he instead
argues that poiesis is necessary—that students, in the case of his article but also by
extension, must participate in the worlds they claim to study if they seek holistic
rather than mined knowledge of their subject. Also see Jeffrey Kripal, The Serpent's
Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007) and Jordan Paper, The Mystic Experience (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2004). Kripal and Paper have gone further, arguing that students of Religious
Studies that fail to enjoy a mystical experience will be unable to properly appreciate
the subject matter in the classroom.
34 See Richard Bulliet's unfavorable reviews of Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of
Sand: the Strugglefor Mastery in the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1999), Middle East Review 54:4 (2000): 667-8; and Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A
History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) International Journal of Middle East
Studies 40 (2008): 485-6.
35 See John Wansbrough, Qur'anic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004).
36 See Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of
Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
37 See the CNN special report about Shoebat's dubiouscredentials and background, http://
ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/13/ac360-preview-ex-terrorist-rakes-in-homeland-
security-bucks, accessed January 30, 2012.
38 See http://omidsafi.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid
=35, accessed January 30, 2012; and Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2011).
39 Ibid.
40 He articulates Islam in a global perspective inThe Venture of Islam as well, but for a
more concise treatment of this project, see Marshall Hodgson, "The Role of Islam in
World History," The International Journal of Middle East Studies 1:2 (1970), 99-123.
41 Marshall Hodgson, The. Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). The text remains unparalleled in terms
53
of its scope and size. Despite Hodgon's proficiency in a number of languages, includ-
ing Arabic and Persian, his bibliography is surprisingly sparse in the primary text
department. The text, therefore, remains invaluable in terms of its method but its
lack of attention to primary sources nonetheless inhibit its place as a scholarly refer-
ence, and its dense language limits its role in undergraduate classrooms.
42 See Bruce Lawrence, "Competing Genealogies of Muslim Cosmopolitanism," in
Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, eds Carl W. Ernst and
Richard C. Martin (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 302-23.
43 Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003). Moosa defines dihliz as "'that space between the door and the
house' [...] However, the crucial dimension is the fact that one cannot speak of an embod-
ied 'door' and a 'house/ nor can one speak of an 'outside' and an 'inside.' Even though
it is located in between spaces, the dihliz frames all other spaces" (48-9). We might also
very well locate a number of Islamic Studies scholars in this conception of the dihliz, in
light of interdisciplinary approaches in the field and the importance of framing.
44 Although Edward Said worked as a scholar of comparative literature, his influence
on Islamic Studies cannot be exaggerated, especially through his 1978 publication
Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1994).
45 Gabriel Said Reynolds, 77K Qur'an and its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2011).
46 See Bruce Fudge, "Qur'anic Exegesis in Medieval Islam and Modern Orientalism,"
Die Welt des Islams 46:2 (2006): 115-47. He argues that "in the case of the Qur'an, the
study of native exegesis has largely been avoided in favour of imitations of native
exegesis" (144). I suspect he has authors like Reynolds in mind.
47 Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009); the article by
Gabriel Said Reynolds, "Muslim Jesus: Dead or Alive?" Bulletin ofSOAS 72:2 (2009):
237-68, draws similar conclusions to Lawson's monograph on the topic. Also see,
for example, Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity (New York: SUNY Press,
1991); Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim: An Exploration (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999);
Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Qur'anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern
Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Jane I. Smith and
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, "The Virgin Mary in Islamic Tradition and Commentary,"
The Muslim World 79:3-4 (1989), 161-87.
48 For example, Abdul Gaffor Nourani describes Bennett's In Search of Muhammad
(New York: Continuum, 1998) as an "earnest effort by a devout Christian to under-
stand Muhammad" (Islam and Jihad: Prejudice Versus Reality (London: Zed Books,
2002), 53. Towards the end of John Renards 101 Questions on Islam (Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist Press, 1998), he gives a personal theological assessment of Islam's role in his
Catholic perspective. Renard asserts that he has never felt compelled to convert to
Islam, but he writes: "That is not because I do not find it an attractive tradition, but
because I regard my faith and membership in the worldwide community of Roman
Catholics as a gift to be cherished and nurtured," 151-2.
49 See, for example, R. J. McCarthy's translation of al-Ghazali's Deliverer from Error, in
Freedom and Fulfillment (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980). In the Introduction, he
writes: "My reading of Ghazali has made me, or at least incited me to be, a better
practicing Catholic in the fullest sense of the term," lix.
50 Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Abbas Al-Tonsi (eds), Al-Kitaabfi Ta'allum
al-'Arabiyya, (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2004). This has become the
standard textbook for normative speakers of Arabic learning the language. Meaning
literally, "the book," Al-Kitaab derives its name from renowned eighth-century gram-
marian, Sibawayhi (d. 788).
51 The work of Goldziher's, such as Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981) and Nicholson, such as A Literary History of tlie
54
Arabs (New Yoik: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004) remain classics today, even though much
of their work was first published over a century ago.
52 Jamal Elias (ed.), Key Themes for the Study of Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010). Through
the unique method of the book, the authors are able to paint a picture of Islam
unbound by typical categories, giving readers a more fluid illustration and concep-
tualization than they might otherwise find. Islam is presented as a force in the world,
not as a distant cosmology locked away in some desert cave.
53 http://ejtaal.net/m/aa/#HW=19,LL=l_38,LS=3,HA=21. This site provides digital searches
for Arabic words in Hans Wehr's Dictionary, J. G. Hava's Arabic-English Dictionary,
and Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, making it one of the most indis-
pensible linguistic tools for English-speaking scholars working with Arabic texts.
54 See Wolfdietrich Fischer, A Grammar of Classical Arabic, trans. Jonathan Rodgers
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
55 See J. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (Springfield, VA: Nataraj
Books, 2011) and Wheeler Thackston, An Introduction to Persian, 4th edn (Bethesda,
MD: Ibex Publishers, 2009)
56 Russell McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider/Outsider Problem and the Study of Religion:
A Reader (New York: Cassell, 1999): 2; also see Russell McCutcheon, Critics Not
Caretakers (New York: SUNY Press, 2001).
57 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 1:27.
58 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1994), 332.
59 See The 500 Most Influential Muslims (Amman: The Royal Strategic Studies Center,
2009), 98; his name was removed from the list in the 2010 and 2011 versions.
60 See Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, esp. 1:3-8. Hodgson also introduces a number of
other neologisms, which for the most part have not caught on in modern scholar-
ship. But "Islamicate" does find currency in a few venues and although not necessar-
ily in the active vocabulary of every Islamic Studies scholar, the over 70,000 results
on Google do demonstrate that Hodgson's creation is here to stay.
61 Amina Wadud, The Qur'an and Women: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's
Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), xvi and fn. xix; also see Amina
Wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006),
82. As a black American woman, Wadud also articulates additional challenges that
scholars and activists like her might face. See Amina Wadud, "American Muslim
Identity: Race and Ethnicity in Progressive Islam," in Progressive Muslims, ed. Omid
Safi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 270-85.
62 See Amir Hussain, "Teaching Inside-Out: On Teaching Islam," Method and Theory in
the Study of Religion 17 (2005): 248-63.
63 Ibid., 255.
64 For scholarship of the few Islamic Studies scholars who have written on the insider/
outsider issue, see Juliane Hammer, "Identity, Authority and Activism: American
Muslim Women Approach the Qur'an" Muslim World 98 (2008): 443-64; American
Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2012); and Tazim R. Kassam, "Balancing Acts: Negotiating
the Ethics of Scholarship and Identity" in Identity and Politics of Scholarship in the
Study of Religion, eds Jose Ignacio Cabezon and Sheila Greeve Davaney (New York:
Routledge, 2004), 133-62.
65 Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), ix; also see "The
People of the Book and the Diversity of Religions," Christianity Through Non-Christian
Eyes (New York: Orbis Books, 1990), 102-10; also see Mahmoud Ayoub, "Nearest in
Amity: Christians in the Qur'an and Contemporary Exegetical Tradition," Islam and
Christian Muslim Relations 8:2 (1997): 146-64. Moreover, Rahman and Ayoub are both
concerned with the salvation of non-Muslims; thus their confessional perspective is also
55
pluralistic. For a detailed treatment of the possibility of salvation for non-Muslims, see
Mohammad Khalil, Islam and the Tate of Others: The Salvation Question (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012). For a brief biographical account of Rahman, see Frederick
Denny, "Fazlur Rahman: Muslim Intellectual," Muslim World 79:2 (1989), 91-101. For
a biographical account of a non-Muslim Islamic studies scholar who found personal
meaning in his evaluation of Islam, see Jacques Waardenburg, "Louis Massignon
(1883-1962) as a student of Islam," Die Welt des Islam 45:3 (2005), 312-42.
66 For a simple yet illustrative example, see Nasr's note in the beginning of Reliance of
the Traveller (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1994): "In accordance with the real
nature of things it is the human that must conform to the Divine and not the Divine
to the human," ii.
67 William Chittick and Sachiko Murata, The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon Press,
1994). This text acts as a good introduction to Islamic cosmology in light of the Qur'an
and reports of the Prophet Muhammad but little attention to historical debates or
social context in the development of Islamic thought.
68 See, for example, see Farid Esack, On Being Muslim (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999) and
The Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997).
69 Farid Esack, The Qur'an: A User's Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 2.
70 Ibid., 4.
71 Ibid., 5.
72 Ibid., 7.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid., 9.
75 Ibid., 10.
76 Ibid., 10-11.
77 Ernst, Following Muhammad, xix.
78 Mark Berkson, "A Non-Muslim Teaching Islam: Pedagogical and Ethical Challenges,"
Teaching Theology and Religion 8:2 (2005), 87.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid., 93-4.
81 See Daniel Varisco, Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Talal Asad, "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,"
Occasional Paper Series (Washington DC: Georgetown University, 1986): 1-22.
82 See, for example, Dwight Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in
the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) and
Dwight Reynolds, Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in
The Arabic Epic Oral Tradition (New York: Cornell University Press, 1995). Reynolds
has published widely on autobiography and music in the Arab Islamic world, but
his research seldom focuses on religion.
83 Brannon Wheeler (ed.), Teaching Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
To my knowledge, there are no other texts that focus on pedagogical issues is the
classroom for Islamic Studies, and in Wheeler's edited volume, the contributors give
almost no attention to graduate seminar environments. Shanna A. Kirschner, more-
over, presents a helpful treatment on teaching about the Middle East, which has
obvious overlap with teaching about Islam, in "Teaching About the Middle Eash
Pedagogy in a Charged Classroom," Political Science and Politics 45:4 (2012), 753-8.
84 See, for example, my book review of Sufis in Western Society (New York: Routledge,
2009) in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 8:1 (2011), 135-38 for a few
examples of minor but important errors even in specialist scholarship.
85 Mark Jacobsen, www.armedforcesjournal.com/2012/07/10318434 (accessed on
September 27, 2012).
86 See Kecia Ali and Oliver Leaman, Islam: The Key Concepts (New York; Routledge, 200S).
56

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The Bloomsbury

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Hardback edition published 2013

© Clinton Bennett and Contributors, 2013,2015

Clinton Bennett has asserted his right under the Copyright,

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or

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Series: Bloomsbury Companions (formerly Continuum Companions)

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Because Muslims—those who profess to follow the religion of Islam—live in

In lieu of plurals, the reality of Islam's heterogeneity might instead accom-

In determining whether Islam is radical, liberal, moderate, or any number

Defining Islam, as already illustrated, is usually more useful as a pedagogical

Electing Islam's most deserving spokespeople is a central enigma for Muslim

Defining Islamic Studies

to have graduated from a Religious Studies department, even though they

Antagonistic and Revisionist Approaches to the Study of Islam

Although there is no shortage of openly non-Muslim Islamic Studies scholars

Dealing with Popular Perceptions of Islam

self-proclaimed experts on "Islamic radicalism," other public figures fill air-

intellectuals, politicians, and media personalities cannot take the place of

overlooked in studies of the Qur'an.45 Secondly, although presumably non-

Generally speaking, when considering the language training that is required

The Insider/Outsider Problem

According to Russell McCutcheon, the insider/outsider problem is, in a nutshell,

is still an elephant in the room—one that deserves our persistent attention in

the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and

Muslims," out of fearing negative professional consequences.61 Whether a hir-

comprehensive. At no point do the authors reveal their religious identity,

has not been welcomed by those who openly acknowledge a relationship

research project design), preparing and using data-collecting instruments and

Finally, a significant void would remain in a discussion of research methods

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