New Methods in the Study of Islam: (Advances in the Study of Islam)

Methods play a key role in how we access and subsequently organise data. There is a tendency, however, for scholars to focus primarily on their data at the expense of the methodological acts that bring such data into existence in the first place. The academic study of Islam is certainly no different in this regard. Indeed, many continue to employ established or classic methods that often echo (neo-)orientalist and other political inclinations. This collection, in contrast, offers an alternative, providing a set of multi-disciplinary approaches that focus on how we create, study and disseminate "Islamic data."

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Why New Methods in the Study of Islam? - Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes I Methods: Old and New 2. New Methods, Old Methods in the Study of Islam: On the Importance of Translation - Aaron W. Hughes 3. The Reception of al-Andalus (1821-2021): Two Hundred Years of Study and Debate - Maribel Fierro and Alejandro García-Sanjuán II Textual Studies 4. Subversive Philology? Prosopography as a Relational and Corpus-Based Approach to Early Islamic History - Georg Leube 5. Juxtaposition, Tension, Play: The Development of Islamic Law and Legal Theory - Ateeb Gul 6. New Theoretical Approaches to the Qur’an and Qur’anic Studies: An Analysis of the Qur’anic (Disabled) Body in Light of Conceptual Metaphor and Conceptual Blending Theory - Johanne Louise Christiansen III Islam and/as Critique 7. On the Relationship between Culture/Religion and Politics: A Critique of the Culturalist Approach to Islam - Housamedden Darwish IV New Comparisons 8. Can Comparative Theology Help Muslims to a Better Understanding of Religious Diversity? - Esra Akay Dağ V Local Islams 9. Eastern or Western Paradigm: The Struggle for Methodological Dominance in the Study of Islam in Universities in Northern Nigeria - Dauda Abubakar 10. Narratives from the Peripheries: An Indian Ocean Perspective for the Study of Islam - Abdul Jaleel P.K.M. 11. Including Localized Islamic Concepts in the Study of Islam - Claudia Seise 12. Bodies, Things, Doings: A Practice Theory Approach to the Study of Islam - Ayşe Almıla Akca, Eyad Abuali, and Aydın Süer Index

About the Author :
Abbas Aghdassi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Civilisation of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Iran. He is the author of Persian Academic Reading (2019, Routledge) and editor of Perspectives on Academic Persian (forthcoming, Springer Nature). Aaron W. Hughes is Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. Hughes specialises in three fields: Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies and Theory and Method in the Study of Religion, and has written numerous books in all three. He is co-editor of the book series Advances in the Study of Islam at Edinburgh University Press and of the Journal of Religious Minorities Under Muslim Rule.