In recent decades, academic debates on how to conceptualize ‘Islam’ as an object of study and how to approach it theoretically have been revitalized. Not only has research on Islam grown enormously and become much more differentiated, but Islam is also being discussed more intensively in society and politics than ever before.
This reader, which brings together the perspectives of various disciplines, provides an overview of academic approaches to Islam against the backdrop of these, in some cases tense, entanglements. Through two contributions from scholars working on Buddhism and Hinduism, these debates are situated in the context of broader trajectories of research history. In sum, this book does not only offer its readers entry points to a more complex and refined understanding of Islam, but also to research processes within the study of Islam as well as religion in general.
Table of Contents:
Introduction Part 1: Studying Islam and the 'Western' Order of Things 1. Historicising Colonial Islam: Religion and Law in German East Africa 2. A Dynamic Triangle: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Marshall G.S. Hodgson, and Toshihiko Izutsu’s Conceptualization of Islam 3. Who invented Buddhism? Or: what was Buddhism before it was called Buddhism? 4. Hinduism, Sanātana Dharma, and the Global Struggle about “True Religion” 5. Framing Islam as Conceptual History 6. Decolonising ‘Islam’ 7. Muslim Publics between Discourses of Religion and Islam Part 2: Entangels Sites of Negotiation 8. Conceptualising “Islam in Europe”: A Postcolonial Approach 9. Beyond the Emic-Etic Distinction: Conceptualizing Islam in Our Inter-Connected World 10. Is “progressive Islam” still “Islamic”? Examining the question through the lens of Shahab Ahmed’s approach to conceptualising Islam 11. Religion and/or Culture? The Trouble with Conceptualizing Islam in Europe Part 3: Hegemonies and Peripheries 12. Conceptualizing Muslim “Sectarianism" 13. Genealogies of Islam Noir: Racializing Islam 14. Conceptualizing in the Medieval Indian Ocean World Part 4: Conceptual Approaches in Research Practice 15. God, Islam, and Anthropology 16. What Does Discourse Theory Contribute? Capturing Muslim Perspectives on Inheritance Law in Switzerland 17. Global and Vernacular Patterns of Islamic Orthodoxy: A Discursive Perspective 18. Charisma, Embodiment and Continuous Revelation: Broadening the Concept of Islam 19. The Discursive Tradition Framework: New Directions for the Study of Islam After 'The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam' (1986)
About the Author :
Frank Peter is a Research Fellow at FAU Centre for Islam and Law in Europe in Erlangen. His current research examines articulations of Islam in contemporary France with a focus on digital media. He previously published Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France: Secularism without Religion (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Paula Schrode is a Professor of the Study of Religion specializing in contemporary Islam at the University of Bayreuth. Her current research focuses on the transnational entanglements of Turkish Islam and, in particular, the involvement of Turkish religious NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ricarda Stegmann is a Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and specializes in the fields of Islam in Europe and contemporary Sufism worldwide. Her particular research perspectives include discourse theory, colonial history, and a globally entangled history of religions.
