The Good Orientalists in Westernness

Lena Salaymeh
The “good Orientalists”

Abstract: This chapter argues that some scholars portray Ignac Goldziher as a
“good Orientalist.” Contesting the assumptions behind the distinction between
“good” and “bad” orientalists, the chapter shows that Goldziher’s scholarly
methods relied on Orientalist bias. Such bias is the result of blindly repeating
and imposing Eurocentric methods, including the blurring of Jewish and Islamic
traditions into a single “Semitic” or “religious” tradition.¹
Introduction: Orientalist scholarship, not

Orientalist scholars
Scholarship may contribute to colonialism or to coloniality.² Whereas colonial-
ism is the socio-political domination of a territory, coloniality is a mode of
thought that legitimizes colonialism (and neo-colonialism) while espousing uni-
versalism.³ As a universalizing ideology, coloniality asserts both its applicability
and its superiority over colonized epistemologies. Catherine Walsh explained
that coloniality is “a matrix of global power that has hierarchically classified
populations, their knowledge, and cosmological life systems according to a Eu-
 An earlier, abridged version of one section in this chapter was published as “Deutscher Ori-
entalismus und Identitätspolitik: Das Beispiel Ignaz Goldziher.” In Der Orient: Imaginationen in
deutscher Sprache. Lena Salaymeh, Yosef Schwartz and Galili Shahar (eds.). Göttingen: Wallstein
Verlag; Tel Aviv: Minerva Institut für deutsche Geschichte Universität Tel Aviv, 2017, 140 – 157. An
abridged French version of one section was also published as “Goldziher dans le rôle du bon
orientaliste. Les méthodes de l’impérialisme intellectual.” In The Territories of Philosophy in
Modern Historiography. Catherine König-Pralong, Mario Meliadò and Zornitsa Radeva (eds.).
Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2019, 89 – 103. For their comments and feedback on this piece,
I thank Gil Anidjar, Daniel Boyarin, Lahcen Daaïf, Yaacob Dweck, Simon Goldhill, Emily Got-
treich, Rhiannon Graybill, Ira Lapidus, Assaf Likhovski, Maria Mavroudi, Ralf Michaels,
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Yosef Schwartz, Galili Shahar, and Yaacov Yadgar.
 Noah De Lissovoy and Raúl Olmo Fregoso Bailón. Coloniality. In Keywords in radical philoso-
phy and education: common concepts for contemporary movements. Derek R. Ford (ed.). Leiden,
Boston: Brill Sense, 2019, 83 – 97.
 María Marta Quintana. Colonialidad Del Ser, Delimitaciones Conceptuales. (Editorial Biblos
Lexicón, 2008). http://www.cecies.org/articulo.asp?id=226 (02.03. 2022).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110728422-007
106 Lena Salaymeh
rocentric standard.”⁴ Eurocentrism becomes coloniality when it is imposed on

colonized peoples or used to dominate them. Accordingly, academic scholarship
can be a form of coloniality (or intellectual colonialism) when it excludes or dis-
parages indigenous epistemologies and when it exploits or denigrates indige-
nous sources. Misunderstandings of the basic distinction between colonialism
(as a geo-political condition) and coloniality (as a form of epistemological
power) underlie scholarly debates about Orientalism, an over-politicized aca-
demic field of study. Much contemporary scholarship focuses on the relationship
between Orientalism and colonialism, rather than Orientalism and coloniality.
Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be criticized for utilizing specific
scholarly approaches and methods that manifest coloniality. In this chapter, I re-
veal that the assumed binary between “bad Orientalism” and “good Orientalism”
is not a productive scholarly inquiry because it concentrates on the colonialism
of Orientalist scholars, rather than on the coloniality of Orientalist scholarship.
Comprehending the phenomenon of coloniality is particularly crucial for the
study of German Orientalism. As compared to other nineteenth-century Europe-
an Orientalist schools (particularly English or French), German Orientalism was
less extensively involved in colonialism than its counterparts were.⁵ In recogni-
tion of this difference, some recent scholarship advocates that nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century German Orientalism should not be pigeonholed as an ex-
tension or manifestation of Western colonialism.⁶ In addition, the German lacu-
na in Edward Said’s criticism of Orientalism has led some scholars to absolve
German Orientalism of the accusation of coloniality.⁷ Said’s was neither the
first nor the final voice on the coloniality of Orientalist scholarship. Indeed,
Said’s criticism of Orientalism did not focus on methods because he, lacking
training in Islamic studies, was unable to evaluate Orientalist scholarly methods.
 Catherine Walsh. Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)Colonial

Entanglements. In Constructing the Pluriverse. Bernd Reiter (ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2018, 184.
 Jennifer Jenkins. German Orientalism: Introduction. Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa
and the Middle East 24.2 (2004): 97– 100. See also Bradley Naranch, Geoff Eley (eds.). German
Colonialism in a Global Age. Durham: Duke University, 2014.
 On the exceptionality of German Orientalism, see, for example, Suzanne L. Marchand. Ger-
man Orientalism and the decline of the West. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
145:4 (2001): 465 – 473, 473.
 Said himself acknowledged, “I do not exhaustively discuss the German developments after
the inaugural period dominated by Sacy. Any work that seeks to provide an understanding of
academic Orientalism and pays little attention to scholars like Steinthal, Müller, Becker, Gold-
ziher, Brockelmann, Nöldeke – to mention only a handful – needs to be reproached, and I freely
reproach myself.” Edward Said. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, 18.
The “good Orientalists” 107
Neither Germany’s comparatively limited colonial occupations nor Said’s ac-

knowledged neglect of German Orientalism negates the coloniality of German
Orientalism.
Recent revisionist scholarship about Orientalism has proposed a separation
between types of German Orientalism. A number of recent studies seek to differ-
entiate “German Christian” Orientalism from “German Jewish” Orientalism, im-
plying that the criticism of Orientalism as coloniality is not applicable to “Ger-
man Jewish” Orientalism.⁸ (Although I oppose the categorization of
scholarship based on a scholar’s presumed or projected identity, I am compelled
to do so in order to respond to the existing literature.⁹) This recent work alleges
that German Christian and German Jewish scholars approached the study of the
Orient in distinct ways during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries be-
cause of their “religious identity.”¹⁰ Responding to these assertions, this chapter
 Examples include John M. Efron. From Mitteleuropa to the Middle East: Orientalism through a
Jewish lens. Jewish Quarterly Review 94:3 (2004): 490 – 520; John M. Efron. German Jewry and the
allure of the Sephardic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015; Michel Espagne, Perrine
Simon-Nahum and Sophie Basch. Passeurs d‘Orient: les Juifs dans l‘orientalisme. Paris: Éditions
de l’éclat, 2013; Ottfried Fraisse. Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft: zur Historisier-
ung des Islam. Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014; Ottfried Fraisse. From Geiger to Gold-
ziher: historical method and its impact on shaping Islam. In Modern Jewish scholarship in Hun-
gary: “the science of Judaism” between East and West. Tamás Turán and Carsten Wilke (eds.).
Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016, 203 – 222; Susannah Heschel. German Jewish scholarship on Islam as
a tool for de-Orientalizing Judaism. New German Critique 39:3 (2012): 91– 107; Dietrich Jung. Is-
lamic studies and religious reform: Ignaz Goldziher – a crossroads of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam. Der Islam 90:1 (2013): 106 – 126; Martin Kramer. Introduction. In The Jewish discovery of
Islam: studies in honor of Bernard Lewis. Martin Kramer (ed.). Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center
for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999, 1– 48.
 Throughout this piece, I use the term “identity” as a shorthand to refer to belonging. On the
historical and conceptual complexities of Jewish identity, see, for example, Shaye J. D. Cohen.
The beginnings of Jewishness: boundaries, varieties, uncertainties. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2009; Shlomo Sand. The invention of the Jewish people. Yael Lotan (trans.). London:
Verso, 2009; Michael L. Satlow. Defining Judaism: accounting for “religions” in the study of re-
ligion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74:4 (2007): 1– 23; Daniel Boyarin. Judaism:
the genealogy of a modern notion. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2019. On the abuse of
identity categories in Islamic studies scholarship, see Chapter 3 in Lena Salaymeh. The begin-
nings of Islamic law: late antique Islamicate legal traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2016.
 For instance, Susannah Heschel observes, “The contrast between Jewish and Christian eval-
uations of Islam is striking.” Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 105; Susannah Heschel, Orien-
talist Triangulations: Jewish Scholarship on Islam as a Response to Christian Europe. In The
Muslim Reception of European Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze. Susannah Heschel and Umar
Ryad (eds.). London: Routledge, 2019, 147– 167, 157.
108 Lena Salaymeh
aims to elucidate how methods, rather than the imagined identity of scholars,
shapes scholarship. This recent body of scholarship ignores the significance of
methods because it is authored primarily by scholars of European intellectual
history who lack the training in “Oriental studies” that is necessary for evaluat-
ing Orientalist scholarship. In addition, scholars of European intellectual history
are entirely unfamiliar with scholarship produced in the global South that criti-
cizes Orientalism in ways that defy the myths of German exceptionalism or Jew-
ish exceptionalism.¹¹ In order to identify if “German Jewish” Orientalism is a
form of coloniality, it is necessary to “go to the colony” by examining the impli-
cations of this scholarship for the study of primary sources. I will illustrate that,
despite any fine distinctions between these two subgroups of German Orientalist
scholars (“Christian” and “Jewish”), they both participated in and contributed to
coloniality by applying methods that were prevalent in their shared scholarly
communities.
I will use a case study on the scholarship of Ignaz Goldziher (1850 – 1921), a
Hungarian Jewish Orientalist who was trained in Germany and often wrote in
German, in order to demonstrate that, despite his “religious identity,” he applied
colonialist methods. Goldziher is an important case study because he is widely
considered to be representative of a “German Jewish” Orientalist tradition and
to have established the modern discipline of Islamic studies (Islamwissenschaft)
in the West.¹² Part I summarizes some of the recent scholarship that alleges the
uniqueness of “German Jewish” Orientalism, in general, and of Goldziher, in par-
 By way of example, scholarship in Arabic includes: ʿAẓ m, Ṣ ā diq J. al-istishrāq wa-l-istishrāq

maʿkūsan. Beirut: Dā r al-Ḥ adā thah, 1981; Fayyū mī, Muḥ ammad. al-istishrāq: risālat istiʿmār: ta-
ṭawwur al-ṣirāʿ al-gharbī maʿ al-islām. Cairo: Dā r al-Fikr al-ʿArabī, 1993; Huusayn, Muḥ sin M. al-
istishrāq bi-ruʾyah sharqīyah. Baghdā d: Bayt al-Warrā q, 2011; Huwaydī, Aḥ mad M. al-istishrāq al-
almānī: tārīkhuhu wa-wāqiʿuhu wa-tawajjuhātuhu al-mustaqbalīyah. Cairo: Jumhū rīyat Miṣ r al-
ʿArabīyah, Wizā rat al-Awqā f, 2000; Jabalā wī, Ā minah. al-istishrāq al-anjlūsaksūnī al-jadīd: ma-
qālah fī al-islām “al-mubakkir”: bātrīsiyā krūn wa-māykil kūk numūdhajan. Tū nis: Dā r al-Maʿrifah
lil-Nashr, 2006; Jabrī, ʿAbd. al-istishrāq: wajh lil-istiʿmār al-fikrī: dirāsah fī tārīkh al-istishrāq wa-
ahdāfihi wa-asālībihi al-khafīyah fī al-ghazw al-fikrī lil-islām. Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1995;
Jarā d, Safīr. al-istishrāq wa-l-mustashriqūn: fann al-tazyīf al-ʿilmī wa-l-akhlāqī. Damascus: Dā r
al-ʿAṣ mā ʾ, 2015; Kharbū ṭ lī, ʿAlī. al-istishrāq fī al-tārīkh al-islāmī. Cairo: Jamʿīyat al-Dirā sā t al-Is-
lā mīyah, Maʿhad al-Dirā sā t al-Islā mīyah, 1976; Sā mū k, Saʿdū n M. al-istishrāq wa-manāhijuhu fī
al-dirāsāt al-islāmīyah. ʿAmmā n: Dā r al-Manā hij lil-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 2009; Sharqā wī, Muḥ am-
mad A. al-istishrāq wa-tashkīl naẓ rat al-gharb lil-islām. Cairo: Dā r al-Bashīr lil-Thaqā fah wa-l-
ʿUlū m, 2016; ʿUmar, Fā rū q. al-istishrāq wa-l-tārīkh al-islāmī: al-qurūn al-islāmīyah al-ūlá: dirāsah
muqāranah bayna wijhat al-naẓ ar al-islāmīyah wa-wijhat al-naẓ ar al-ūrūbbīyah. ʿAmmā n: al-Ah-
līyah, 1998; ʿUthmā n, Ṣ alā h. al-istishrāq wa-manhajuhu fī dirāsat al-islām. Cairo: Dā r al-Kutub,
1994.
 By way of example, see Efron, From Mitteleuropa to the Middle East, 509.
ticular. Part II explains the coloniality of particular methods in Goldziher’s schol-

arship (and prevalent in nineteenth-century German Orientalism): source criti-
cism (or the notion of an “original text”), searching for “origins,” and imposing
the category of “religion.” Goldziher’s methods were not his original inventions;
instead, he applied and adapted common nineteenth-century Western methods
to Islamic studies and, consequently, he is representative of a broader intellectu-
al context. My objective is to illustrate that despite his intentions, Goldziher’s
scholarship replicated the methodological and theoretical limitations of his con-
temporaneous European Orientalist tradition. It is not my objective to criticize
Goldziher, to depict him as a “bad Orientalist,” or to depict all Orientalist schol-
arship as “bad.” As I will illustrate, the category of “good Orientalists” falsely
represents certain scholars as exceptional, even though they produced scholar-
ship under the influence of coloniality.
Not every study of European Orientalism must be focused on methods. How-
ever, any study of Orientalism that seeks to refute the validity of coloniality as a
classification must analyze methods and their implications for primary sources.
In comparison, there are important studies of European Orientalism that do not
attempt to reject the classification of coloniality. In particular, many studies ex-
amine how Orientalist scholarship dialogically constructed Judaism and Islam,
as well as Jews and Muslims, as related.¹³ That scholarship examines the role
of German Jewish Orientalists in separating Judaism and Islam; it has contribut-
ed to Jewish studies and to Islamic studies by showing how these disciplines
have adopted limiting frameworks and assumptions. Like that body of scholar-
ship, this chapter emphasizes substantive implications of Orientalist scholar-
ship, rather than the ineffective labels of “bad” or “good” – whether they are ap-
plied to a scholar or to scholarship.
 Examples of this area of scholarship include Gil Anidjar. The Jew, the Arab: a history of the
enemy. Cultural memory in the present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, 192– 194, n.51;
Gil Anidjar. Semites: race, religion, literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008; Gil
Anidjar. Muslim Jews. Qui parle: critical humanities and social sciences 18:1 (Fall/Winter 2009):
1– 23; Ivan D. Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar. Orientalism and the Jews. Waltham, Massachusetts:
Brandeis University Press, 2005; Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin. Orientalism, Jewish Studies, and Israeli
society: a few comments. Philological Encounters 2:3 – 4 (2017): 237– 269; Ruchama Johnston-
Bloom. Analogising Judaism and Islam: nineteenth- and twentieth-century German–Jewish
scholarship on Islam. Journal of Beliefs & Values 38:3 (2017): 267– 275.
110 Lena Salaymeh
1 Misrepresentations: “German Jewish”

Orientalists as “good Orientalists”
In recent years, an increasing number of studies appear to identify “German Jew-
ish” Orientalists as “good Orientalists.” This problematic characterization mis-
construes and conflates four issues as evidence of “good Orientalism”: (1) the
oppressed status of Jews in Europe; (2) the relationship between identity and
scholarship; (3) European Jewish scholarly identification with Islam; and (4) Eu-
ropean Jewish scholarly praise of Islam. In this section, I elaborate why these
four issues are not relevant to evaluating the coloniality of scholarship.
First, since many Jewish Orientalists encountered severe discrimination in
Europe, some scholars incorrectly implied that they could not have participated
in coloniality. For example, Dietrich Jung claimed, “the explanatory framework
of colonialism does not neatly fit the role of Jewish scholars in Islamic studies.
Under the hegemony of Christianity, Jewish scholars of Islam experienced a sit-
uation of ‘internal colonialization.’”¹⁴ In addition, John Efron asserted that Ger-
man Jews were not “agents of the state” or “serving” the state’s objectives, im-
plying that their scholarship could not be colonialist.¹⁵ Similarly, Susannah
Heschel emphasized that German Jewish Orientalists engaged with their predic-
ament as a subjugated minority through the study of Islam.¹⁶ Contrary to these
claims, the oppression of Jews in Europe did not preclude European Jews from
authoring scholarship that colonizes the Orient. Although nineteenth-century
European Jews suffered under European Christian hegemony, they still occupied
a position of colonial power vis-a-vis the Oriental subject. Undeniably, some Eu-
ropean Jews were involved in European colonialism, both intellectually and po-
litically.¹⁷ Thus, the category of Jews (like any other category) can include both
victims and agents of colonialism because colonialism is a consequence of posi-
tions of power, not identity.¹⁸ Indeed, colonialism is unjustifiable irrespective of
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 125 – 126; Efron, From Mitteleuropa to the Middle
East, 491.
 Efron, German Jewry, 15.
 Susannah Heschel. Abraham Geiger and the emergence of Jewish philoislamism. In “Im vol-
len Licht der Geschichte”: die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der kritischen Koran-
forschung. Dirk Hartwig, Walter Homolka, Michael J. Marx, and Angelika Neuwirth (eds.). Würz-
burg: Ergon, 2008, 65 – 86; Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 148.
 Colonialism and the Jews. Ethan Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud Mandel (eds.). Modern Jew-
ish experience. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017.
 Jonathan Irvine Israel. Diasporas within a diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the world maritime
empires (1540 – 1740). Leiden: Brill, 2002; Albert Memmi. Portrait du colonisé: précédé du Portrait
the identity of the colonizer. More importantly, being a minority in Europe is not
the equivalent of being a subaltern in the global South.¹⁹
Second, when contemporary scholars presume that German Jewish oppres-
sion resulted in scholarship that is distinct from that of German Christian schol-
ars, they adopt a false causal assumption about the relationship between iden-
tity and scholarship. While there is always a relationship between a scholar’s
identity or circumstances and scholarship, there is no simple causal relationship
that can be imputed to all members of a particular group. Emphasizing identity-
based differences between German Christian and German Jewish scholars resem-
bles the racist project of defining the Aryan in opposition to the Semite. Marking
German Jews as outside the Orientalist discourse that dominated their intellectu-
al landscape mimics the nineteenth-century German rejection of Jews as incapa-
ble of being German and/or Aryan. The seemingly “positive” stereotype of Euro-
pean Jewish Orientalists as “natural translators” of the Islamic tradition is as
essentializing (and judeophobic) as a “negative” stereotype.²⁰
Third, many scholars falsely claim that since Jewish Orientalists identified
with Islam and were interested in productively exploring the relationships be-
tween Judaism and Islam, their scholarship did not manifest coloniality.²¹ By
way of example, Efron noted, “far from finding Islam strange and hostile, they
found it entirely familiar and symbiotically linked to Judaism.”²² Similarly, He-
schel alleged that “Islam’s function in nineteenth century German Jewish dis-
course was not part of an agenda of Orientalism; on the contrary, identifying Ju-
daism with Islam was the tool to de-Orientalize Judaism.”²³ Some scholars even
accept the notion that European Jews were “Oriental” (rather than stereotyped as
such by non-Jewish Europeans) and that the interest of European Jewish schol-
du colonisateur, et d’une préface de Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris: Agence de coopération culturelle et

technique, 1989.
 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Can the subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation of
culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988,
271– 313; Patrick Wolfe. Can the Muslim speak? An indebted critique. History and Theory 41:3
(2002): 367– 380.
 Sander L. Gilman. Smart Jews: the construction of the image of Jewish superior intelligence.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997; Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe. Philosemitism
in history. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011; Zygmunt Bauman. Allosemitism: premo-
dern, modern, postmodern. In Modernity, culture, and “the Jew”. Bryan Cheyette and Laura Mar-
cus (eds.). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, 143 – 156.
 Kramer, Introduction; Efron, From Mitteleuropa to the Middle East, 513; Heschel, Orientalist
Triangulations, 149.
 Efron, German Jewry, 229.
 Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 107; Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 147– 148.
112 Lena Salaymeh
ars in Islam constituted a form of “self-study.”²⁴ In the particular case of Gold-

ziher, several scholars asserted that he sought to do for Islamic historiography
what he wished he could do for Jewish historiography.²⁵ Céline Trautmann-Wal-
ler stated that Goldziher’s attachment to Judaism allowed him to be “objective
and appreciative” of Islam.²⁶ However, the pairing of Judaism with Islam was
and continues to be a problematic scholarly practice. Scholarship that posits a
“fundamental” relationship between Judaism and Islam perpetuates the mythol-
ogy of Semitic identity; characterizing Judaism and Islam as two Semitic tradi-
tions (“Jewish and Arab”) is both inaccurate and essentializing.²⁷ The Orientalist
depiction of Islam as “inherently” related to Judaism is a manifestation of colo-
niality.
Moreover, Jewish identification with Islam should be analyzed more critical-
ly. Daniel Boyarin proposed that European Jewish scholarly interests in Islam
may have been the equivalent of putting on “blackface.”²⁸ Building on the
work of Michael P. Rogin, Boyarin suggested that just as Jews in Hollywood dem-
onstrated their whiteness by wearing blackface, European Jews may have dem-
onstrated their Europeanness (or their intellectual worthiness) by pursuing Ori-
entalist scholarship.²⁹ His analogy to blackface situates the phenomenon of
“Jewish Orientalism” within the broader dynamics of Orientalism’s role in West-
ern self-definition. Boyarin’s comparison between “Jewish Orientalism” and
blackface also implies that European Jewish interests in Islam may have been
forms of appropriation and exotification.
Fourth, some scholars mistakenly imply that because they portrayed Islam
in positive terms, Jewish Orientalists produced “better” scholarship than their
 Efron, German Jewry; Bernard Lewis. The pro-Islamic Jews. Judaism: a journal of Jewish life &
thought 17:4 (1968): 391– 404.
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 118; David Moshfegh. Ignaz Goldziher and the rise
of Islamwissenschaft as a “science of religion”. (PhD Dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2012), 189.
 Céline Trautmann-Waller. Histoire culturelle, religions et modernité, ou: y a-t-il une “mé-
thode” Goldziher?. In Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.).
Paris: Geuthner, 2011, 115 – 138, 126.
 Lena Salaymeh. “Comparing” Jewish and Islamic legal traditions: between disciplinarity and
critical historical jurisprudence. Critical Analysis of Law, New Historical Jurisprudence 2:1 (2015):
153– 172.
 Boyarin proposed this idea to me during the conference What is western about the West? in
Erfurt (24– 26 October 2019).
 Michael P. Rogin. Blackface, White noise: Jewish immigrants in the Hollywood melting pot. Ber-
keley: University of California Press, 2007.
non-Jewish peers.³⁰ For instance, Heschel asserted, “European Jewish scholars of

Islam praised Islam as a rational religion that shared with Judaism an emphasis
on an ethical religious legal system, strict monotheism, and rejection of anthro-
pomorphism.”³¹ Nonetheless, positive representations of the Islamic tradition do
not make scholarship “good” and even such representations may contribute to
coloniality. A scholar may not be disparaging in his portrayal of the Islamic tra-
dition, while also using methods of coloniality or a colonizing epistemology. Re-
latedly, a scholar’s political positions do not prevent coloniality of scholarship.
For example, some scholars have emphasized that German Jewish Orientalists
opposed European colonialism of the Muslim world.³² In the specific case of
Goldziher, several scholars have highlighted positive views of Islam in his
diary, his personal letters, and his correspondence with Muslim reformers.³³
Efron alleged, “Goldziher’s scholarship displayed an unparalleled degree of
compassion, respect, and admiration for the Muslim world.”³⁴ Many scholars
have commented on Goldziher’s relationships with prominent Muslims of his
era and his studies at al-Azhar.³⁵ In addition, Jung and Efron emphasized that
Goldziher viewed Islamic civilization as superior to European civilization.³⁶ No-
tably, recent scholarly depictions of Goldziher’s personal life and relationships
typically focus on “positive” aspects; rarely mentioned, for example, is his prej-
udicial criticism of contemporaneous scholar Savvas Pacha (a former minister of
foreign affairs for Turkey) as a “naive Oriental.”³⁷ As a prominent European
 Heschel emphasized that European Jewish scholars depicted Islam positively as compared to
European Christian scholars. Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 157.
 Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 149.
 Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher, 275; Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 157.
 P. S. van Koningsveld. Scholarship and friendship in early Islamwissenschaft: the letters of C.
Snouk Hurgronje to I. Goldziher. Leiden: Rijkuniversiteit, 1985; Raphael Patai. Ignaz Goldziher and
his Oriental diary: a translation and psychological portrait. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1987; Róbert Simon. Ignác Goldziher: his life and scholarship as reflected in his works and corre-
spondence. Budapest, Leiden: Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, E.J. Brill, 1986;
Peter Haber. Zwischen jüdischer Tradition und Wissenschaft: der ungarische Orientalist Ignac
Goldziher (1850 – 1921). Lebenswelten osteuropä ischer Juden, Bd. 10. Kö ln: Bö hlau, 2006;
Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.). Paris: Geuthner, 2011.
 Efron, From Mitteleuropa to the Middle East, 513.
 Nora Lafi. Goldziher vu d’Al-Azhar: ‘Abd al-Jalīl Shalabī et la critique de l’orientalisme Eu-
ropéen. In Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.). Paris: Geuth-
ner, 2011, 249 – 59.
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 117 (“for the young Goldziher it was European cul-
ture which was inferior”); Efron, From Mitteleuropa to the Middle East, 519.
 Savvas Pacha. Le droit Musulman expliqué: réponse à un article de M. Ignace Goldziher. Paris:
Marchal et Billard, 1896, 26. Patricia Crone mentions Goldziher’s inappropriate remark in Patri-
114 Lena Salaymeh
scholar, Goldziher’s life experiences, scholarly networks, and relationships may

contribute to European cultural or intellectual history; however, this biographi-
cal and historical information is not a legitimate source of evidence for evaluat-
ing the coloniality of his scholarship. A scholar’s praise of or relationships with
“Muslim natives” has no effect on scholarship’s correspondence with coloniality.
Identifying “good depictions” is not evidence of the non-coloniality of scholar-
ship.
A scholar’s political marginalization, identification with his research sub-
ject, and noble intentions vis-a-vis his object of study (particularly the colonized
subject) are inconsequential in assessing the coloniality of scholarship. Oriental-
ism is not criticized merely because nineteenth-century Orientalist scholars were
bigots, or bad people, or even colonizers. Orientalist scholarship is criticized be-
cause – regardless of intention – it adopts a positionality and applies methods
that are colonial. Colonialism is criticized despite the “good intentions,” or civ-
ilizing mission, of colonizers; “humanitarian interventions” are criticized for
their colonialism, despite the purported “good intentions” of the invading or oc-
cupying armies. Similarly, colonial knowledge production is criticized despite
the “good intentions” of the scholar.
Scholars often misunderstand the coloniality of scholarship because they do
not have the necessary training to evaluate scholarly methods. In the case of
Goldziher, Suzanne Marchand and other scholars claim that Said’s paradigm
is irrelevant, without substantively examining Goldziher’s scholarship.³⁸ Like-
wise, a recent volume dedicated to Goldziher’s scholarship suggests in its title
that Goldziher established an alternative Orientalism, without providing evi-
dence based on his scholarship.³⁹ Several scholars have explored Goldziher’s
critical disagreements with contemporaneous philologists, particularly Ernest
Renan.⁴⁰ In doing so, they erroneously deduced that those disagreements are evi-
dence of the non-coloniality of Goldziher’s scholarship. However, Goldziher
cia Crone. Roman, provincial and Islamic law: the origins of the Islamic patronate. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002, 102.
 Suzanne L. Marchand. Ignác Goldziher et l’orientalisme au XIXe siècle en Europe centrale. In
Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.). Paris: Geuthner, 2011,
89 – 113, 89.
 Trautmann-Waller, Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme?.
 Lawrence I. Conrad. Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan: from Orientalist philology to the study
of Islam. In The Jewish discovery of Islam: studies in honor of Bernard Lewis. Martin Kramer (ed.).
Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1999,
137– 180; Sabine Mangold. Ignác Goldziher et Ernest Renan – vision du monde et innovation sci-
entifique. In Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.). Paris: Geuth-
ner, 2011, 73 – 88.
could disagree with Renan and still produce colonial scholarship. It is not mere
coincidence that most of the scholars who advocate for differentiating between
“German Christian” and “German Jewish” Orientalisms or who depict Goldziher
as a “good Orientalist” are not trained in a relevant field of “Oriental studies,”
such as Islamic studies. Consequently, they do not provide substantive evidence
for their claims about the distinctions between “German Jewish” Orientalism and
“German Christian” Orientalism or about Goldziher’s scholarship. In and of it-
self, this neglect of the substantive content of Orientalist scholarship constitutes
a form of coloniality. Why do scholars of European intellectual history who can-
not read Arabic presume that they can evaluate Goldziher’s scholarship in Islam-
ic studies? That is coloniality. While scholars of European intellectual history
may contextualize European Orientalism within broader European intellectual
trends, their expertise does not facilitate evaluating the coloniality of Oriental-
ism.⁴¹ By contrast, only scholars with deep knowledge of primary sources can de-
termine what aspects of nineteenth-century European Orientalism were colonial-
ity.
2 Goldziher’s scholarship: methods for

assessing coloniality
Instead of simply depicting scholars as “good Orientalists” or “bad Orientalists,”
I advocate that we scrutinize Orientalist scholarship for coloniality by focusing
on methods. In this section, I examine representative selections from Goldziher’s
scholarship that demonstrate that “German Jewish Orientalism” was a dialect of
nineteenth-century Orientalism.⁴² Although Goldziher opposed many aspects of
his contemporaneous philological Orientalist tradition, his work nevertheless
adopted several prevalent methods.⁴³ Indeed, it is not incidental that his Euro-
pean Orientalist contemporaries celebrated Goldziher’s scholarship. Jung accu-
rately observed: “Goldziher’s work was embedded in the academic worldview
of the late nineteenth century. He was instrumental in transferring the historicist
 Heschel recently acknowledged that contemporary scholarship about nineteenth-century Eu-

ropean Orientalism contributes to “Jewish self-understanding” and “Christian-Jewish struggles
for theological dominance.” Heschel, Orientalist Triangulations, 164.
 Goldziher’s methods are evident throughout his scholarship, such that it is not necessary to
conduct an exhaustive study of all of his writings. For an overview, see Hamid Dabashi. Intro-
duction: Ignaz Goldziher and the question concerning Orientalism. In Muslim Studies (Muham-
medanische Studien). S. M. Stern (ed.). New Brunswick: N.J. Aldine Transaction, 2008, ix–xciii.
 Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher; Fraisse, Ignác Goldzihers monotheistische Wissenschaft.
116 Lena Salaymeh
and hermeneutical methods of biblical criticism to Islamic studies and analyzed

Islam with reference to the axiomatic conceptual knowledge about modern reli-
gion provided by liberal Protestant theology, as well as the rising fields of the
social sciences and humanities.”⁴⁴ In this section, I will explain why applying
these methods in Islamic studies reflects coloniality. Coloniality of scholarship
is evident in the implications of Eurocentric classifications and Eurocentric uni-
versalism.
I explore three methods (source criticism, searching for “origins,” and im-
posing the category of “religion”) that may not essentially be forms of coloniality,
but rather their applications in Islamic studies are intellectual and scholarly col-
onialism. These methods have different implications in distinct disciplines, such
as Classics or biblical studies; however, evaluating the implications of these
methods in other disciplines is beyond my scope.⁴⁵ In previous work, I have ela-
borated how these three methods function as coloniality in Islamic studies. For
instance, I have shown that the search for mythical “origins” is a false search for
authenticity; as an alternative, I have illustrated that the Islamic tradition “recy-
cled” previous traditions in ways that cannot be quantified.⁴⁶ In this chapter, I
will provide only brief summaries of why these conventional and prevalent
methods are problematic. Notably, while I will point out errors in Goldziher’s
scholarship, those errors are not themselves indicators of coloniality.
The coloniality of source criticism
Source criticism consists of comparing surviving textual sources and, based on a

set of presumed neutral principles, identifying which source is supposedly older
or more authentic in order to construct an “original text” (Urtext). Among nine-
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 108.

 I recognize that the modern discipline of philology is not homogenous and that some early
philologists were not textual fundamentalists or in pursuit of an “original text”. Nevertheless,
analyzing varieties of philological methods and scholarly approaches is not the objective of
this chapter. There is a vast body of scholarship on the modern discipline of philology that can-
not be reviewed here. On philology, see, for example, Sean Gurd. Philology and its histories. Co-
lumbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010; World philology. Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman
and Ku-ming Kevin Chang (eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015; James Turner.
Philology: the forgotten origins of the modern humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2015.
 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law; Lena Salaymeh. Legal traditions of the “Near
East”: the pre-Islamic context. In The Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law. Khaled Abou El
Fadl, Atif Ahmad Ahmad, and Said Fares Hassan (eds.). New York: Routledge, 2019, 275 – 285.
teenth-century European scholars of Islam, there was a prevalent assumption

that source criticism was an advanced method for authenticating “problematic”
Islamic texts.⁴⁷ Recent scholarship in critical philology and critical bibliography
has challenged – and, arguably, discredited – many of the conventional assump-
tions of source criticism.⁴⁸ Source criticism is not an objective method for organ-
izing or evaluating historical sources; instead, it is often a method for construct-
ing an imaginary “original text.” Source criticism – as both a method and a way
of thinking – is pervasive in Islamic studies and it exemplifies coloniality be-
cause it is a Eurocentric and universalizing method.
First, source criticism is a universalizing method that denies the particular-
ities of Islamic sources. Many Orientalists mistakenly presumed that since source
criticism was applied in biblical studies and other fields, it was equally applica-
ble to Islamic sources. However, the Bible and Islamic sources are radically dis-
tinct and methods should be customized for specific sources. The application of
source criticism in Islamic studies mimics the imposition of colonial forms of
governance in order to “civilize” colonized people; just as colonial governance
dismissed local specificities, the universal application of source criticism ignores
the specificities of Islamic sources.
Goldziher devoted much of his book Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim
studies) to the application of source-critical ideas to tradition-reports
(aḥādīth).⁴⁹ He acknowledged the integration of modern biblical criticism in
his scholarly approach.⁵⁰ Some contemporary scholars celebrate Goldziher as
being “the first scholar” to apply “rigorous, historical critical methods” to Islam-
ic sources.⁵¹ Relying primarily on Goldziher’s scholarship, these scholars incor-
rectly presume that the indigenous methods of analyzing tradition-reports
were neither rigorous, nor historical, nor critical. Scholars who applied source
criticism perpetuated coloniality by alleging the universality and neutrality of
their method, while ignoring a key distinction between the Bible and Islamic
sources: the indigenous methods of evaluating Islamic historical sources.
 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law, Ch. 1.

 See, for example, Jerome J. McGann. A critique of modern textual criticism. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1983; G. Thomas Tanselle. Textual criticism since Greg: a chronicle, 1950 –
2000. Charlottesville: The Bibliographical Society of The University of Virginia, 2005.
 Ignaz Goldziher. Muhammedanische Studien. Halle: Niemeyer, 1889; Ignaz Goldziher. Muslim
studies (Muhammedanische Studien). S. M. Stern and C. Renate Barber (eds.). 2 vols. London:
Allen and Unwin, 1971, vol. 2.
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 110. Céline Trautmann-Waller described Goldzih-
er’s method as “an extension or even intensification of philology.” Trautmann-Waller, Histoire
culturelle, 130.
 Trautmann-Waller, Histoire culturelle, 115.
118 Lena Salaymeh
Second, when source-criticism is applied in Islamic studies, it is typically

premised on the Eurocentric superiority of source-critical methods over the in-
digenous methods of Muslim scholars. Mahmud explains, “The colonizer was
the subject of this [colonial] knowledge production; the native only the object
who furnished the body on which colonial power was to be inscribed. The na-
tives were held not to be ‘safe guides…to their own past history.’”⁵² Orientalist
scholars perpetuated Western colonialism’s civilizational mission when they dis-
counted the science of tradition-reports (ʿilm uṣūl al-ḥadīth) of Muslim scholars,
based on the presumption that those methods were inferior. Goldziher claimed,
“we must go far beyond the critical method which the Musalman school has
practised in a rational manner since the second century of the hijra…The modern
historical critic puts us on guard against this antedeluvian (sic) fashion [of rely-
ing on tradition-reports for historiography].”⁵³ Goldziher basically argued that
only modern, Eurocentric methods were valid methods for historiography. By
presuming that indigenous methods were inferior, Goldziher perpetuated a Euro-
centric perspective of knowledge production.
In part, Goldziher’s dismissal of indigenous methods stems from his misun-
derstanding, as the following brief survey elucidates.⁵⁴ Goldziher asserted, “The
pious fraud of the inventors of hadith was treated with universal indulgence as
long as their fictions were ethical or devotional.”⁵⁵ His statement, however, is a
fundamental misunderstanding of the science of tradition-reports, which did not
accept tradition-reports that were identifiably fraudulent.⁵⁶ In addition, Goldzih-
er claimed that “Nobody is allowed to say: ‘because the matn [text of the tradi-
tion-report] contains a logical or historical absurdity I doubt the correctness of
the isnād [chain of transmission].’”⁵⁷ He also incorrectly stated that “Muslim crit-
ics have no feeling for even the crudest anachronisms provided that the isnād is
 Tayyab Mahmud. Colonialism and modern constructions of race: a preliminary inquiry. Uni-
versity of Miami Law Review 53:4 (1999): 1219 – 46, 1227.
 Ignaz Goldziher. Influence of Parsism on Islam. In The religion of the Iranian peoples. C. P.
Tiele (ed.). Bombay: “The Parsi” Publishing Company, 1912, 163 – 186, 163.
 See Talal Maloush. Early ḥadīth literature and the theory of Ignaz Goldziher (PhD Disserta-
tion, University of Edinburgh, 2000). Goldziher asserted, “Muslim theologians created an ex-
tremely interesting scientific discipline – that of hadith criticism.” Ignaz Goldziher. Introduction
to Islamic theology and law. Andras Hamori and Ruth Hamori (trans.). Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1981, 39.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 44.
 Muʿtaz al-Khaṭīb. Raddu al-ḥadīth min jihat al-matn: dirāsah fī manāhij al-muḥaddithīn wa
al-uṣūlīyīn. Beirut: Arab Network for Research and Publishing, 2011.
 Goldziher, Muslim studies, 2:141.
correct.”⁵⁸ However, Muslim scholars did reject tradition-reports based on the

content of the report, even if the chains of transmission were considered relia-
ble.⁵⁹ Goldziher declared that his methods “will often raise doubts where its
Muslim counterpart believes that it has found undoubtedly authentic materi-
al.”⁶⁰ Yet, medieval Muslims scholars did not believe that the science of tradi-
tion-reports produced “indubitable” or “undoubtedly authentic” sources of in-
formation because that notion is a modern, positivist one. In short, Goldziher
depicted the Islamic science of tradition-reports as being inferior to source criti-
cism because he viewed indigenous methods, which he misunderstood and mis-
represented, through the lens of coloniality.
Third, the application of source criticism to Islamic sources has the effect of
destroying indigenous archives by caricaturing Islamic historical sources as folk-
lore. When Orientalist scholars dismissed the Islamic science of tradition-reports,
they effectively dismantled the archive of late antique and medieval Muslim
scholars. Although the methods of Muslim scholars who compiled and redacted
tradition-reports differed from those of modern scholars, both are equally subjec-
tive and imperfect.⁶¹ That is, because the methods of premodern scholars and the
methods of modern scholars are each based on cultural assumptions and ideol-
ogies, they are neither neutral nor infallible. As I have explained elsewhere, Ori-
entalist methodologies subalternize Islamic sources.⁶² Source criticism discredits
(using the notions of reforming or modernizing) the historical testimony of the
narrators of tradition-reports. Consequently, source-criticism erases the histori-
cal value of late antique and medieval Islamic sources. Orientalist scholars
colonized Islamic historical sources by using source criticism to claim that the
sources were in need of correction and reform and that indigenous archives
 Goldziher, Muslim studies, 2:141.

 Jonathan Brown. How we know early ḥadīth critics did matn criticism and why it’s so hard to
find. Islamic Law and Society 15:2 (2008): 143 – 184.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 39. Goldziher alleged, “Naturally the point of view of their criticism
[of tradition-reports] is not ours, and the latter finds a broad field of action, where the Moslem
critic believes he is producing indubitable tradition.” Ignaz Goldziher. Mohammed and Islam.
Kate Chambers Seelye (trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917, 44. Although Goldziher
condemned Seelye’s translation of his work, I use it here because it is accurate enough for
our purposes.
 I demonstrated the limitations and inaccuracies involved in applying source criticism to Is-
lamic historical sources in Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law, Ch. 1; Salaymeh, “Compar-
ing” Jewish and Islamic legal traditions; Lena Salaymeh. A genealogy of Islamic law: a critical
approach to late antique Islamic legal history. Mizan (2017). https://mizanproject.wpengine.com/
?p=4783 (02.03. 2022).
 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law; Salaymeh, A genealogy of Islamic law.
120 Lena Salaymeh
were unreliable. The use of source criticism in Islamic studies parallels colonial
destructions of indigenous archives. Orientalists did not recognize that the cor-
pus of tradition-reports is a historical archive because they viewed these sources
through the lens of colonial superiority.
Goldziher’s assertion that tradition-reports were historically unreliable is
considered one of his more significant contributions to Islamic studies. It has
had enduring, negative consequences for the field and it is a key demonstration
of the coloniality of his methods.⁶³ By alleging that tradition-reports merely re-
flected the socio-political and theological concerns of redactors and transmitters
who postdated the reported historical events, Goldziher colonized Islamic histor-
ical sources.⁶⁴ Like many of his scholarly contemporaries, he did not realize that
even historical sources that are contemporaneous to historical events reflect the
socio-political and theological concerns of authors and transmitters; thus, post-
dated sources cannot be presumed to be less historically reliable than contem-
poraneous ones. The claim that tradition-reports are ahistorical texts is not a
neutral or “scientific” assertion about what constitutes a valid or reliable histor-
ical source. Consequently, classifying late antique Islamic historical sources as
folklore is a form of colonial epistemicide.
The coloniality of origins
Underlying source criticism is a notion of an “original text” that scholars extend-

ed beyond textual studies. Many scholars applied analogous notions in search-
ing for the “origins” of civilizations or traditions. In doing so, these scholars
adopted a Eurocentric hierarchy of civilizations (embedded in the dichotomy
of Aryan versus Semitic).⁶⁵ Western colonialism propagated notions of Western
racial and civilizational superiority that falsely ascribed to the colonized racial
inferiority and civilizational primitiveness.⁶⁶ Likewise, the scholarly search for
“origins” parallels colonial denigrations of the colonized subject as needing
“civilization” from the colonial power. Nineteenth-century European Orientalism
adopted colonial ideology in two interrelated moves. First, European Orientalists
 Kramer, Introduction.
 Goldziher, Muslim studies, 2:19 (“The ḥadīth will not serve as a document for the history of
the infancy of Islam, but rather as a reflection of the tendencies which appeared in the commu-
nity during the maturer stages of its development.”).
 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law, Ch. 3.
 Mahmud, Colonialism, 1220 (“colonialism is a relationship of domination and difference,
with race constituted as a primary marker of difference.”).
portrayed Arabs as “backward” and lacking civilization. In doing so, they relied
on a reductive caricature of Arabness, ignoring that Arabs could be Jews and
Christians, in addition to being hybrids (such as Arab Jewish-Christians or
Arab Muslim-Jews).⁶⁷ Second, based on a simultaneous denigration of Arabs
and recognition of Islam as a civilization, European Orientalists sought to iden-
tify Islam’s “origins” in a non-Arab civilization.⁶⁸ Accordingly, Orientalists con-
ceptualized Islam as having “borrowed” or been “influenced” by a preexisting
Aryan or Semitic civilization. The notion of “borrowing” is not an insult, but it
is based on false notions of inside/outside, authenticity (or purity), and cultural
ownership.
The European Orientalist project of identifying non-Arab “origins” of Islam is
a form of coloniality. European Jewish Orientalists were involved prominently in
scholarly searches for Islam’s “origins.”⁶⁹ As Heschel observed, some German
Orientalists sought to identify “Judaism’s influence in shaping Islamic belief, rit-
ual practice, and law.”⁷⁰ Put differently, some German Orientalists sought to
identify Judaism as the “original source” of Islam. Commenting in particular
on the work of Abraham Geiger, Heschel explained, “For Geiger, Islam was as-
sembled from the building blocks of Jewish ideas and religious practices.”⁷¹
Many Orientalist scholars failed to realize that many of the first Muslims were
Jews, such that the scholarly notion of cultural ownership is false. They also
did not recognize that multiple, regional traditions shared what scholars fre-
quently misidentified as “originating” in one particular pre-Islamic tradition.
Notably, Orientalist scholarship infrequently identified “borrowings” in aspects
of the Islamic tradition (including issues related to violence, women, and minor-
ities) that are criticized (or propagandized) in modern debates.⁷² Thus searching
for Islam’s “origins” in Judaism is a colonial method through and through.
Goldziher’s notion of “origins” was interwoven with his use of the method of
source criticism; in numerous writings marking Islam as not originally Arab,
Goldziher emphasized that “Whatever Islam produced on its own or borrowed
 Mahmud observed that in colonial discourse, “Often categories of race, caste, tribe, nation,
language, and religion were conflated and even used interchangeably.” Mahmud, Colonialism,
1228.
 Salaymeh, “Comparing” Jewish and Islamic legal traditions; Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Is-
lamic Law, Ch. 3.
 Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 93 (European Jewish scholars “created a significant
body of research on the origins of Islam, the biography of the prophet Muhammad, and Jewish
influences on the Qur’an as well as on the Hadith”).
 Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 94.
 Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 95.
 Salaymeh, Legal traditions of the “Near East”.
122 Lena Salaymeh
from the outside was dressed up as hadith. In such alien form, borrowed matter
was assimilated until its origin was unrecognizable.”⁷³ Goldziher’s scholarship
contributed to “origins”-based coloniality by perpetuating implicit and explicit
assumptions of Arab “backwardness.”⁷⁴ He declared:
the religion [of Islam] has been unjustly held responsible for moral deficiencies, and intel-
lectual lacks which may have their origin in the disposition of the races. As a matter of fact,
Islam, disseminated among a people belonging to these races, has moderated rather than
caused their [Arab] crudeness. Besides, Islam is not an abstraction to be considered apart
from its historical periods of development, or from the geographical boundaries of its
spread, or from the ethnic character of its followers…⁷⁵
Goldziher also insisted, “The old Arabs had no science of genealogy – indeed
science had no part in their lives at all.”⁷⁶ He asserted that Muḥammad “pro-
claims no new ideas. He brought no new contribution to the thoughts concerning
the relation of man to the supernatural and infinite.”⁷⁷ Like many of his Orien-
talist contemporaries and like European colonizers, Goldziher viewed Arabs as
primitive and unoriginal, even while appreciating and admiring the Islamic tra-
dition.
Having depicted Arabs as incapable of establishing Islamic civilization,
Goldziher participated in the European Orientalist exercise of claiming Jewish,
Christian, or Persian “original” sources for certain aspects of Islamic civilization.
In general, he concurred with European Orientalist scholars who presumed that
Judaism and Christianity were “the sources of the information of the Qoran.”⁷⁸
 Goldziher, Introduction, 40. Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, 45 (“foreign elements have
been so assimilated that one has lost sight of their origin”); Ignaz Goldziher. Vorlesungen über
den Islam. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1910, 43 (“wurde das Fremde,
das Erborgte bis zur Unkenntlichkeit seines Ursprungs für den Islam assimiliert”).
 In addition to his work in Islamic studies, Goldziher’s methodological commitment to the
notion of borrowing is evident in his work on Hebrew mythology. See Ignaz Goldziher. Mythology
Among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development. J. Martineau (trans.). London: Literary Li-
censing, LLC, 2014; Ignaz Goldziher. Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Ent-
wickelung. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1876. See also Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher.
 Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, 15 – 16; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 15.
 Goldziher, Muslim studies, 1:177; Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, 177 (“Eine Wissen-
schaft der Genealogie hatten die alten Araber nicht, wie bei ihnen die Wissenschaft überhaupt
keine Stelle hatte”).
 Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, 3; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 3 (“Sein [de l’i-
slam] Stifter, Muhammed, verkündet nicht neue Ideen. Den Gedanken über das Verhältnis des
Menschen zum Übersinnlichen und Unendlichen hat er keine neue Bereicherung gebracht”).
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 177 (citing Abraham Geiger); Ignaz Goldziher. Islamisme et
Parsisme. In Gesammelte Schriften. Hildesheim: Olms, 1970, 232– 260, 252.
He declared, “it is mostly the assimilation of foreign influences which mark the
most important moments of its [Islam’s] history.”⁷⁹ He alleged that Muḥammad
learned from his “original teachers, the Christian ruhbān (monks) and the Jewish
aḥbār (scholars of scripture).”⁸⁰ Presuming “foreign influence,” Goldziher assert-
ed, “It was the immediate and permanent contact with Sasanian culture which
gave to the Arabs…the first impulse which permitted the expansion of a deeper
intellectual life.”⁸¹ And if this were not enough, Goldziher further insisted, “there
would be no Arab historians if the first impulse had not been received by Arab
litterateurs from Persia, and that it was this impulse which led them to make re-
searches and preserve the historic memory of their own nation. The ante-Islam-
ian [pre-Islamic] Arabs were devoid of all sense of history.”⁸² He also appeared to
blame Persian society for some aspects of the Islamic tradition that he disliked.⁸³
The prevailing, colonial method of searching for Islam’s “origins” resounds in
Goldziher’s scholarship.
Many European Orientalists focused their notion of “origins” on Islamic law,
claiming that it was the product of non-Arab civilizations.⁸⁴ Goldziher’s scholar-
ship did not diverge from this prevalent assumption, as he identified Islamic
 Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, 2; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 3 (“so ist es zu-
meist die Assimilierung fremder Einflüsse, was die wichtigsten Momente seiner [de l’islam] Ge-
schichte kennzeichnet”). Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 164 (“the foreign influences which had
a determining importance on the formation and development of Islam.”); Goldziher, Islamisme
et Parsisme, 233 (“nous devons […] diriger notre attention sur les influences étrangères qui eur-
ent une importance déterminante sur la formation et le développement de l’islamisme”).
 Goldziher, Introduction, 10; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 9 (“die ruhbān (Mönche)
der Christen und die aḥbār (Schriftgelehrte) der Juden, eigentlich seine Lehrmeister”). Goldziher
also claimed that Zoroastrianism “did not fail to leave its mark on the receptive mind of the Arab
Prophet.” Goldziher, Introduction, 15; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 14 (“Auch das Par-
sentum […] ist nicht spurlos an dem empfänglichen Sinne des arabischen Propheten vorüberge-
gangen”).
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 165; Goldziher, Islamisme et Parsisme, 235.
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 165; Goldziher, Islamisme et Parsisme, 235.
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 168 (“The Moslem idea of theocracy was born in Persian at-
mosphere and in its application and practical effect, it breathed the spirit of Persian tradition.”);
Goldziher, Islamisme et Parsisme, 238 (“Vous voyez quelle influence profonde la conception sas-
sanide de l’État a exercée sur la royauté abbaside et comment elle en a fait valoir l’idée théocra-
tique. Vous voyez comment cette dernière est née dans l’atmosphère persane”). See also Ludmila
Hanisch. “Islamisme et Parsisme” après Goldziher: contributions des iranisants allemands. In
Ignác Goldziher: un autre orientalisme? Céline Trautmann-Waller (ed.). Paris: Geuthner, 2011,
139 – 147.
 Wael B. Hallaq. The quest for origins or doctrine? Islamic legal studies as colonialist dis-
course. UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 2:1 (2002– 2003): 1– 31.
124 Lena Salaymeh
law’s “origins” in Roman law.⁸⁵ In his entry on fiqh for the Encyclopaedia of
Islam, he asserted that fiqh is “like the jurisprudentia of the Romans”⁸⁶ and al-
leged “the thoroughgoing adoption of Roman law by the jurists of Islām.”⁸⁷ Gold-
ziher further assumed, “even many of the provisions of Roman Law that have
been adopted by Islām only found a place in Fiḳh through the intermediary of
the Jews.”⁸⁸ Likewise, he claimed, “The receptive character that marks the forma-
tion and development of Islām also found expression, naturally first of all in
matters of ritual…in borrowings from Jewish law.”⁸⁹ Goldziher’s numerous schol-
arly declarations about the Roman or Jewish “origins” of Islamic law were un-
substantiated and have been refuted by recent scholarship.⁹⁰
Rather than being a “scientific” approach, origins-oriented Orientalism rest-
ed on speculative observations and sloppy research. Orientalist scholars did not
provide sound evidence for their assumptions about the “origins” of Islam.⁹¹ In-
stead, European Orientalists connected the dots between idiosyncratic observa-
tions that they happened to know. For instance, Goldziher claimed that “The
number of the daily devotional repetitions, which have their germs in Judo-Chris-
tian influence, certainly goes back to a Persian origin…The five gahs of the Per-
sians, their five times of prayers, were borrowed…by the followers of the Prophet,
and henceforth the Moslem prayers were not three but five in a day.”⁹² Referring
to no more than circumstantial evidence of a prior Persian practice, he expended
 Crone, Roman, provincial and Islamic law, 102– 106 (Appendix 2, “Goldziher on Roman and
Islamic law”).
 Ignaz Goldziher. Fiḳh. In The Encyclopaedia of Islam: a dictionary of the geography, ethnog-
raphy and biography of the Muhammadan peoples. M. Th. Houtsma et al. (eds.). Leiden; London:
E.J. Brill; Luzac & Co., 1913, 101.
 Goldziher, Fiḳh, 102; Goldziher, Introduction, 44 (“Islamic jurisprudence shows undeniable
traces of the influence of Roman law both in its methodology and in its particular stipula-
tions.”); Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, 51 (“Even Islamic jurisprudence bears, for example,
in its methods as well as in its detailed enactments special undeniable traces of the influence of
Roman law”).
 Goldziher, Fiḳh, 102.
 Goldziher, Fiḳh, 102.
 See Chapter 3 of Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law. See also Hallaq, The quest for ori-
gins or doctrine?; Ze’ev Maghen. First blood: purity, edibility, and the independence of Islamic
jurisprudence. Der Islam 81:1 (2004): 49 – 95.
 Goldziher did not analyze “borrowed origins” or their transformations with precision. I dis-
agree with those who do not specialize in Islamic studies and mistakenly claim that Goldziher’s
methods were rigorous. See, for example, Trautmann-Waller, Histoire culturelle, 132 (“Il analyse
de manière très précise comment des éléments d’une culture sont conservés tout en étant trans-
formés…”).
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 173; Goldziher, Islamisme et Parsisme, 246.
no effort to explain why non-Persian pre-Islamic practices or specific Islamic

events do not explain the number of daily prayers. Similarly, Goldziher alleged
that the Islamic “idea of the merit acquired by the reading of the text is an
echo of the Persian belief in the merit of reciting the Vendidad.”⁹³ Jews also per-
ceived merit in the recitation of the Torah, but this is not sufficient evidence to
prove a “Jewish origin.” Instead, it is likely that most communities with sacred
texts view the recitation of those texts as meritorious.⁹⁴ An additional example
is Goldziher’s assertion that “The idea of ‘the return’ [of the Imām] did not orig-
inate among the Shī‘īs. Judaeo-Christian influence probably contributed this be-
lief to Islam.”⁹⁵ Here again, the idea of a returning messiah figure is not unique
to Jews, Christians, or Muslims.⁹⁶ There are multiple pre-Islamic, including non-
monotheistic, traditions that included messiah figures; there is no evidence to
support either the existence of influence or the existence of a particularly
Judeo-Christian influence. Methodologically speaking, the conventional Oriental-
ist interest in identifying “origins” was akin to holding a hammer and only see-
ing nails.
The method of searching for Islam’s “origins” is involved in coloniality. I
demonstrated elsewhere some implications of the methodological deficiencies
of “origins” scholarship, for example, in mistaking male circumcision as an Is-
lamic practice with “Jewish origins.”⁹⁷ That Jewish circumcision chronologically
preceded Islamic circumcision is not evidence of Jewish “origins.” Male circum-
cision was a widespread custom in many parts of Southwest Asia and Africa and
not an exclusively “Jewish” practice. When late antique Muslims practiced cir-
cumcision, they did so for multiple reasons, including ideas of purity and clean-
liness that have no equivalent in the Jewish tradition. Indeed, Islamic texts illus-
trate a variety of understandings of circumcision, none of which correspond
neatly or simply to Jewish circumcision. Rejecting the notion of “origins” does
not mean that Islam is entirely “original.” Within the pluralistic Islamic tradi-
tion, Muslim scholars recognized multiple relationships to pre-Islamic predeces-
sors and they did not make claims to pure originality. Rather than searching for
false origins, I advocate recognizing that pre-Islamic ideas and practices became
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 170.

 Frederick Mathewson Denny and Rodney Leon Taylor (eds.). The holy book in comparative
perspective. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 194; Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 228 (“Die Idee der ‘Wie-
derkehr’ selbst ist nicht ihr [des chiites] origineller Gedanke. Dem Islam ist dieser Glaube wahr-
scheinlich aus jüdisch-christlicher Einwirkung zugeflossen”).
 Wilson Dallam Wallis. Messiahs: Christian and pagan. Boston: RG Badger, 1918.
 Chapters 3 and 4 of Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law.
126 Lena Salaymeh
Islamic and fused with new ideas and practices in a process that may be likened
to a craft: the artwork of Islamic recycling; the recycled components parts of Is-
lamic artwork are not distinguishable.⁹⁸
By declaring Judaism a civilization that was an “origin” for Islam, German
Jewish scholars imitated the broader coloniality of Orientalist searches for Is-
lam’s “origins.” Goldziher shared the prevalent European Orientalist notion
that “Islam was subject to Jewish and Christian influences.”⁹⁹ Heschel argues,
“Goldziher intended such denials of Islamic originality not to disparage Islam
but to demonstrate its vitality – and also that of Judaism.”¹⁰⁰ Regardless of Gold-
ziher’s intentions, the scholarly search for Jewish origins cannot be disentangled
from a colonial search for “origins” and a colonial notion of authenticity or pu-
rity. Identifying Jewish origins of Islam was part of the European colonial and
Orientalist agenda. When German Jewish scholars assumed Jewish origins for
Islam, they effectively colonized Islam in order to liberate themselves from mar-
ginalization in Europe.¹⁰¹
The coloniality of religion
The colonial dichotomy of Aryan/Semite disseminated from philology to other

academic disciplines, particularly religious studies.¹⁰² That is, the racialized, col-
onialist binary of Aryan/Semite often corresponds to secular/religious. Specifi-
cally, David Chidester, among many other scholars, demonstrated that the mod-
ern discipline of comparative religion was based on colonial constructions of
race.¹⁰³ Likewise, “Oriental studies” was frequently entangled with colonial no-
 I used the metaphor of recycled art to conceptualize the hybridity of legal traditions in Sal-
aymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law. See also Salaymeh, Legal traditions of the “Near East”.
 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 164.
 Heschel, German Jewish scholarship, 100.
 Relatedly, Raz-Krakotzkin explains, “In a seemingly paradoxical way, the departure of the
Jews from Europe and the founding of a Jewish settlement in the East served as a basis for an
integration into the West and for the redefinition of the Jews as a European nation.” Raz-Kra-
kotzkin, Orientalism, Jewish Studies, 250.
 Anidjar, Semites. By way of example, Friedrich Max Müller (d. 1900), one of the founders of
the modern discipline of comparative religion, applied philological methods to the study of re-
ligion. Salaymeh, “Comparing” Jewish and Islamic legal traditions.
 David Chidester. Empire of religion: imperialism and comparative religion. Chicago, London:
University of Chicago Press, 2014. See also Tomoko Masuzawa. The invention of world religions,
or, How European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005.
tions of race and religion.¹⁰⁴ The Eurocentric and universalist notion of religion
implicitly compares and evaluates traditions in relation to Protestant Christian-
ity, judging other traditions to be inferior and in need of reform.¹⁰⁵ Like the
source-critical search for an “original text” (Urtext) and the comparative philolo-
gical search for an “original language” (Ursprache), scholars of comparative re-
ligion searched for an “original religion.” The notion of “original religion” is
based on certain aspects of Protestant Christianity; consequently, religious stud-
ies can delegitimize traditions that do not conform to Protestant Christianity or
to secularism.¹⁰⁶ Ruchama Johnston-Bloom observed that “in the work of many
German-Jewish Orientalists, we can identify a Protestant-inflected understanding
of religion” and an assumption “that superstition and tradition must be stripped
away from both religions [Judaism and Islam] to reveal the rational core of
each.”¹⁰⁷ Like the colonial archaeologists who disposed of layers of historical
materials in order to unearth biblical-era remains, Orientalists sought to dispose
of layers of the Islamic tradition in order to unearth their notion of “original
Islam.” The Orientalist method of uncovering or discovering an original religion
is a colonial method.
In line with contemporaneous scholarly trends, Goldziher searched for an
“original monotheism” in Islam, one stripped of historical layers. Jung stated
that Goldziher attempted “to discover the pure content of the monotheistic rev-
elation and to understand its ‘historical distortion’ in the development of Muslim
civilization.”¹⁰⁸ Goldziher wrote about the “original Islamic ideal”¹⁰⁹ as located
in a historical moment, claiming that “early Muslims…were close to the original
ideas of Islam.”¹¹⁰ Because he applied a Protestant Christian notion of religion,
 Timothy Fitzgerald (ed.). Religion and the secular: historical and colonial formations. Lon-
don, Oakville, CT: Equinox Pub., 2007; Maurice Olender. The languages of paradise: race, reli-
gion, and philology in the nineteenth century [Les langues du paradis]. Arthur Goldhammer
(trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
 Lena Salaymeh. Taxing citizens: socio-legal constructions of late antique Muslim identity.
Islamic Law and Society 23:4 (2016): 333 – 367; Lena Salaymeh. “Decolonial translation: destabi-
lizing coloniality in secular translations of Islamic law.” Journal of Islamic Ethics 5 (2021): 250 –
277.
 Salaymeh, Taxing citizens.
 Johnston-Bloom, Analogising Judaism and Islam, 268.
 Jung explained, “Goldziher provides us with a paradigmatic example of… the foundation of
modern Islamic studies and religious reform.” Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 107. This
notion of reform corresponded to the European colonial understanding of modernizing or ration-
alizing “religion.”
 Goldziher, Introduction, 120.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 80.
128 Lena Salaymeh
Goldziher incorrectly assumed that, as Jung explained, the “association of reli-

gion and politics” was “a very significant but revisable determinant in the histor-
ical development of Islam.”¹¹¹ Of course, the differentiation between religion and
politics is a modern and Eurocentric notion. Goldziher criticized the “perversion
of the religious ideal, which manifested itself very early in the history of
Islam.”¹¹² Goldziher’s scholarship often identified ways in which Muslims seem-
ingly tarnished his mythical notion of “original Islam.” For instance, Goldziher
lamented, “The Islamic idea of religion was overgrown and smothered by the
casuistry of its lawyers and the scholastic ingenuities of its theologians.”¹¹³ Sim-
ilarly, he evaluated some Muslim sects as not being authentically Islamic.¹¹⁴ Fur-
thermore, he described the popular Muslim veneration of saints as “contrary to
the Islamic idea of God” and “repugnant…to the genuine sunna [normative prac-
tice].”¹¹⁵ Here again, Goldziher’s scholarship concurred with, rather than di-
verged from, dominant trends in Orientalist scholarship of excavating an “origi-
nal” Islam.
Goldziher perceived Muslims as needing his modern methods to reform their
“religion.”¹¹⁶ It is inconsequential that he based his notion of “reforming Islam”
on differentiating between ideology (medieval) and religion (modern), a division
that he understood as replacing the Aryan/Semite binary.¹¹⁷ Goldziher argued
that Muslims had sullied Islam with politics during the medieval era and that
for Islam to become a modern religion, it would have to reform by discarding
its ideological layers.¹¹⁸ In other words, Goldziher sought to identify ideological
layers (what he labeled as orthodoxy) in order to fit Islam within a colonial con-
ceptualization of religion. Goldziher likely did not realize that he was attempting
to reform Islam so that it would conform to Protestant Christianity. Still, why did
a scholar (regardless of his identity) believe that he was in any position to “re-
form” Islam? Mahmud explains, “colonial rule was seen as diffusing progressive
attributes of the colonizers’ race in order to save the native from the degradation
 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 124.

 Goldziher, Introduction, 66.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 158.
 By way of example, Goldziher described the Nuṣayrī sect as “Islam only in appearance.”
Goldziher, Introduction, 228. He also claimed that “sects with atrophied beliefs are especially
prone to syncretism.” Goldziher, Introduction, 229.
 Goldziher, Introduction, 238.
 Fitzgerald, Religion and the secular.
 Goldziher sought to distinguish between medieval and modern, rather than Aryan and
Semite, according to Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher, 204.
 Jung claimed that “Goldziher interpreted Islamic history as a deviation progressing from its
original religious message.” Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 122.
induced by his own race.”¹¹⁹ Goldziher’s scholarship depicts a notion of religious

reform that reflects secular presumptions and colonial politics; he purported to
identify for Muslims “true Islam” and to admonish Muslims for corrupting orig-
inal Islam with ideology and politics.
Goldziher’s scholarly quest for “original Islam” involved not only attempting
to reform Islam, generally, but also Islamic law, particularly. He claimed that
“fiqh, the science of religious law, a science which, perverted by casuistry, was
soon to become disastrous for religious life and religious learning.”¹²⁰ Goldzih-
er’s critical evaluation of Islamic jurisprudence as “disastrous” is itself colonial.
(It is important to emphasize that law is not a modern concept; law is a norma-
tive praxis and there are modern varieties of it, including positive law.¹²¹) Mosh-
fegh elaborated that Goldziher viewed Islamic law “as an ideological discourse…
deployed to rationalize extant sociopolitical and cultural prerogatives.”¹²² Yet,
law is a rationalizing, ideological discourse; Goldziher’s perspective indicates
both a misunderstanding of the nature of law and an imposition of the notion
of “religion” – a secular/modern construct that is assumed to be separable
from law or politics. By declaring “a need for Islamic legal reform,”¹²³ Goldziher
demonstrated that he sought to reform Islamic law by making it a religion, rather
than a legal tradition. As with his Orientalist predecessors and contemporaries,
Goldziher’s scholarship constructed Islamic law as religion, instead of law. ¹²⁴ The
attempt to transform the Islamic tradition or Islamic law into a religion is colo-
nial.
Conclusion
For contemporary scholars in Islamic studies, discussing Goldziher’s scholarship
may seem unnecessary. Long superseded, his work is not as canonical as it once
was. And yet, criticism of Orientalism remains germane to Islamicists because
the prevailing scholarly methods and approaches in the field continue to be
forms of coloniality. In recent years, several scholars of Islam have attempted
to “explain” the Islamic tradition. Addressing Western audiences, these attempts
seek to define a historical tradition (Islam) using modern terms and concepts
 Mahmud, Colonialism, 1229.

 Goldziher, Introduction, 44.
 Salaymeh, Decolonial translation.
 Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher, 368.
 Moshfegh, Ignaz Goldziher, 359.
 Salaymeh, Taxing citizens; Salaymeh, Decolonial translation.
130 Lena Salaymeh
(particularly, religion). Although this line of scholarship is popular and celebrat-

ed within the field, it is misleading and analytically incoherent.¹²⁵ The continued
currency of particular Orientalist methods illustrates that the field of Islamic
studies needs to be decolonized. Decoloniality seeks to replace universalism
with pluriversality, which means that scholarship should be based on horizontal,
rather than vertical, relationships between scholar and subject. Decolonizing
scholarship necessitates questioning all embedded assumptions and recognizing
implicit comparisons between colonizer and colonized societies and traditions.
In addition, decolonial scholarship should treat primary sources as equals
(rather than colonial subjects), relinquish any attempt to conduct DNA tests
on traditions or societies, and reject the use of the category of “religion” for
any premodern society.
Although it is important to recognize the spectrum of differences within Ger-
man Orientalism, it remains significant that a particular body of recent scholar-
ship focusing on German Jewish Orientalism overlooks methodological colonial-
ity. A precise examination of the methods of “good Orientalism” reveals that this
scholarship engaged in coloniality. One such example is the work of Ignaz Gold-
ziher; Goldziher’s methods were not distinct from the colonial scholarly methods
of his era. Despite Goldziher’s identity or good intentions, he applied methods
and theoretical frameworks that were prevalent in his scholarly environment.
Rather than being a criticism of Goldziher or a condemnation of European Ori-
entalism, this insight illuminates the complexities of academic knowledge pro-
duction. The explanatory framework of coloniality can only be tested by analyz-
ing how methods and positions of colonial power shape scholarship. Such an
analysis should be applied to every scholar – regardless of identity or intentions
– because methods are the key factors in the coloniality of scholarship. Accord-
ingly, the critique presented here applies to scholars who identify as Muslim,
non-Muslim, or anything in between. An increasing number of scholars in the
West who identify as Muslim—particularly those with seminary training—pro-
claim themselves to be Muslim representatives or Muslim public figures without
considering their embeddedness in colonial institutions or epistemologies. As
the demographics of Islamic studies in the Western academy changes, scholars
should not presume that their identities as “insiders” prevents them from pro-
ducing colonial scholarship or that their identities as “outsiders” guarantees
that they produce neutral scholarship. No scholar’s identity – “good Orientalist,”
 On the conceptual messiness of using “secularism” and “religion” in Islamic studies, see
Salaymeh, Decolonial translation.
“native informant,” or “well-intentioned sympathizer” – can replace rigorous

analysis of the coloniality of scholarly methods.
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The Good Orientalists in Westernness

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The Good Orientalists in Westernness

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Lena Salaymeh

The “good Orientalists”

Introduction: Orientalist scholarship, not

rocentric standard.”⁴ Eurocentrism becomes coloniality when it is imposed on

 Catherine Walsh. Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)Colonial

Neither Germany’s comparatively limited colonial occupations nor Said’s ac-

 By way of example, scholarship in Arabic includes: ʿAẓ m, Ṣ ā diq J. al-istishrāq wa-l-istishrāq

ticular. Part II explains the coloniality of particular methods in Goldziher’s schol-

1 Misrepresentations: “German Jewish”

du colonisateur, et d’une préface de Jean-Paul Sartre. Paris: Agence de coopération culturelle et

ars in Islam constituted a form of “self-study.”²⁴ In the particular case of Gold-

non-Jewish peers.³⁰ For instance, Heschel asserted, “European Jewish scholars of

scholar, Goldziher’s life experiences, scholarly networks, and relationships may

2 Goldziher’s scholarship: methods for

 Heschel recently acknowledged that contemporary scholarship about nineteenth-century Eu-

and hermeneutical methods of biblical criticism to Islamic studies and analyzed

The coloniality of source criticism

Source criticism consists of comparing surviving textual sources and, based on a

 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 108.

teenth-century European scholars of Islam, there was a prevalent assumption

 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law, Ch. 1.

Second, when source-criticism is applied in Islamic studies, it is typically

correct.”⁵⁸ However, Muslim scholars did reject tradition-reports based on the

 Goldziher, Muslim studies, 2:141.

The coloniality of origins

Underlying source criticism is a notion of an “original text” that scholars extend-

no effort to explain why non-Persian pre-Islamic practices or specific Islamic

 Goldziher, Influence of Parsism, 170.

The coloniality of religion

The colonial dichotomy of Aryan/Semite disseminated from philology to other

Goldziher incorrectly assumed that, as Jung explained, the “association of reli-

 Jung, Islamic studies and religious reform, 124.

induced by his own race.”¹¹⁹ Goldziher’s scholarship depicts a notion of religious

 Mahmud, Colonialism, 1229.

(particularly, religion). Although this line of scholarship is popular and celebrat-

“native informant,” or “well-intentioned sympathizer” – can replace rigorous

Heschel, Susannah. Orientalist Triangulations: Jewish Scholarship on Islam as a Response to

Memmi, Albert. Portrait du colonisé: précédé du Portrait du colonisateur, et d’une préface de

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