Ode to Islamic Studies: Its Allure, Its Danger, Its Power
Issued Date: 2 Dec 2014
Abstract
Islamic studies is more than a specialized field of academic study; it is a series of discourses that play important educational, social, and political roles in multiple settings both within and beyond the academy. No one party, especially not its chief academic practitioners, controls its scope or outcomes. Offering outlines multiple examples of institutional growth and discursive strength, this essay contends that any narrow definition of the field, especially polemical ones, ignores the power, the allure, and the danger of Islamic studies--and its centrality to contests over what it means to be human in the contemporary world.
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References
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Ahmed, Leila. 2012. The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ali, Kecia. 2010. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cam-
birdge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Rea-
sons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Bowen, John R. 2008. Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves:
Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Catlin-Jairazbhoy, Amy. 2012.“Sacred Pleasure, Pain, and
Transformation in African Indian Sufi Sidi Ritual and
Performance.” Performing Islam 1 (1): 73-101.
Donner, Fred McGraw. 2010. Muhammad and the Believers at the Origin of Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
Ernst, Carl W., ed. 2013. Islamophobia in America: The Anato-
my of Intolerance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Geertz, Clifford. 1971. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press.
Gilliat-Ray, Sophie, Mansur Ali, and Stephen Pattison.
2013. Understanding Muslim Chaplaincy. Burlington,
VT: Ashgate.
Hughes, Aaron. 2014. Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Decon-
struction and Reconstruction. Durham: Acumen. Jankowsky, Richard. 2010. Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Al- terity in Tunisia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kidd, Thomas S. 2008. American Christians and Islam Evan- gelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Kurzman, Charles, and Carl W. Ernst. 2009. “Islamic Studies
in U.S. Universities.” http://www.unc.edu/~cernst/
pdf/Kurzman_Ernst_Islamic_Studies.pdf.
Lean, Nathan. 2012. The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right
Manufactures Fear of Muslims. London: Pluto Press. Lockman, Zachary. 2004. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Mahmoud, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival
and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Martin, Craig. 2014. “Genealogies of Religion, Twenty
Years On: An Interview with Talal Asad.” Bulletin for
the Study of Religion 43 (1): 12–17.
Martin, Richard C. 2010. “Islamic Studies in the American
Academy: A Personal Reflection,” Journal of the Ameri-
can Academy of Religion 78896–920.
McAlister, Melani. 2005. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media,
and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
National Endowment for the Humanities. 2014. “Muslim
Journeys Bookshelf Impact Summary.” http://www. neh.gov/divisions/bridging-cultures/muslim-jour- neys-bookshelf-impact-summary
Price, John. 2013. The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America. 4th ed. N.p.: Christians House Publishers.
Rasmussen, Anne. 2010. Women, the Recited Qur’an, and Is- lamic Music in Indonesia. Berkely: University of Califor- nia Press.
Safi, Omid. 2014. “Reflections on the State of Islamic Stud- ies,” Jadaliyya. Available at http://www.jadaliyya. com/pages/index/16269/reflections-on-the-state-of- islamic-studies
Said, Edward W. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage.
Schubel, Vernon. 2014. “Some Thoughts on Navigating the Normative/Descriptive Divide,” Religion Bulletin. http://www.equinoxpub.com/blog/2014/03/some-thoughts-on-navigating-the-normative-descriptive-
divide-reflections-on-islamic-studies/
Scott, Joan Wallach. 2007. The Politics of the Veil. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Scourfield, Jonathan, Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Asma Khan, and
Sameh Otri. 2013 Muslim Childhood: Religious Nurture in
a European Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shoebat, Walid, with Joel Richardson. 2008. God’s War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy, and the Bible. N.p: Top Execu-
tive Media.
Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith.
Oxford: Berg.
Wadud, Amina. 1999. Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sa-
cred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
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