The Failure of Nomenclature

The Concept of “Orthodoxy” in the Study of Islam

Authors

  • M Brett Wilson Duke University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v3i2.169

Keywords:

Islamic orthodoxy, Talal Asad, terminology, categories in the study of religion

Abstract

In Euro-American Islamic Studies, the terms orthodox and orthodoxy have a history of imprecision and collusion in theological axe-grinding. Yet despite their oft-noted inadequacies, scholars continue to invoke and retool the terms with a perplexing persistence. The resilient reworking of the term has resulted in a marked indeterminacy which renders orthodoxy a liability rather than an asset in scholarly nomenclature. This paper examines the trajectory of orthodoxy in scholarly works on Islam, outlines its conceptual problems, and probes its place within the conceptual “religionization” of Islam. Special attention is paid to Talal Asad’s influential usage and revival of the term. Despite its newfound life, this paper concludes that orthodoxy remains as problematic as ever.

References

Anjum, Ovamir. “Islam as a Discursive Tradition: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors.” Journal of Religion 4 (1999): 4.

Asad, Talal. “Politics and Religion in Islamic Reform: A Critique of Kedourie’s Afghani and Abduh.” Review of Middle East Studies 2 (1976): 13–22.

Asad, Talal. The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Washington, D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1986.

Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Berlinerblau, Jacques. “Toward a Sociology of Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Doxa.” History of Religions 40 (2001): 327–51. doi:10.1086/463647.

Calder, Norman. “The Limits of Islamic Orthodoxy.” In Intellectual Traditions in Islam, ed. Farhad Daftary, 66–111. London/New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies; in the United States of America and Canada distributed by St. Martins Press, 2000.

cooke, miriam, and Bruce B. Lawrence. Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Denny, Frederick. Islam and the Muslim Community. Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1998.

Didier, Brian J. “When Disputes Turn Public: Heresy, the Common Good, and the State in South India.” In Public Islam and the Common Good, ed. Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004.

Didier, Brian J. “Conflict Self-Inflicted: Dispute, Incivility, and the Threat of Violence in an Indian Muslim Community.” The Journal of Asian Studies 63 (2007): 61–80.

Eickelman, D. F. “A Search for the Anthropology of Islam: Abdul Hamid El-Zein.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981): 361–65.

Eickelman, D. F. “The Study of Islam in Local Contexts.” Contributions to Asian Studies 17 (1982): 1–18.

el-Zein, Abu Hamid. “Beyond Ideology and Theology: The Search for the Anthropology of Islam.” Annual Review of Anthropology 6, no. 1 (1977): 227–54. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.06.100177.001303.

Ernst, Carl. The Shambhala Guide to Sufism. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997.

Geertz, Clifford. The Religion of Java. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Gellner, Ernest. Muslim Society. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Gibb, H. A. R. Mohammedanism. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Henderson, John B. The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: The Classical Age of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Jackson, Sherman A. On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid Al-Ghazâlî’s Faysal Al-Tafriqa Bayna Al-Islâm Wa Al-Zandaqa: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Karamustafa, Ahmet T. God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994.

Kassam, Tazim R. Songs of Wisdom and Circles of Dance: Hymns of the Satpanth Ismaili Muslim Saint, Pir Shams. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Kedourie, E. Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam. London: Cass, 1966.

Knysh, Alexander. “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Medieval Islam: An Essay in Reassessment.” Muslim World 83 (1993): 48–67. doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.1993.tb03565.x.

Lawrence, Bruce B. Shahrastani on the Indian Religions, trans. Bruce B. Lawrence. The Hague: Mouton, 1976.

Lawrence, Bruce B. Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Madelung, Wilfred. “Maturidiyya.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and Ch. Pellat, 4:847. Leiden: Brill, 1991.

Moosa, Ebrahim. Ghazâlî and the Poetics of Imagination. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Knowledge and the Sacred: The Gifford Lectures, 1981. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.

Rahman, Fazlur. Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958.

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966.

Reinhart, A. Kevin. Before Revelation: The Boundaries of Muslim Moral Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.

Safi, Omid. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism. Oxford: Oneworld, 2003.

Safi, Omid. The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Schmidtke, Sabine. “Creeds.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 1:480. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

Scott, David, and Charles Hirschkind. Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Swartz, Merlin L. Studies on Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Tweed, Thomas A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Watt, W. Montgomery. Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985.

Watt, W. Montgomery. Islamic Creeds: A Selection, Islamic Surveys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994.

Wheeler, Brannon, ed. Teaching Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Published

2007-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Wilson, M. B. (2007). The Failure of Nomenclature: The Concept of “Orthodoxy” in the Study of Islam. Comparative Islamic Studies, 3(2), 169-194. https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v3i2.169