Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (Religion in Culture: Studies in Social Contest & Construction) [Paperback]

Aaron Hughes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1845532600 | ISBN-13: 978-1845532604 | Publication Date: December 30, 2007

The formation of any scholarly discourse is contingent upon the creation of a vocabulary and a set of categories responsible for manufacturing the data that it deems "significant" or not. The discovery of raw data, the manufacture of theoretical or interpretive frameworks that make sense of such data, and subsequent scholarly conventions responsible for its dissemination are always mediated by particular social, ideological, and political contexts. This book documents these contexts in the creation of the discipline known as Islamic Studies and demonstrates how they have been instrumental in shaping how we think about Islam in both the academy and, especially post 9/11, in the media. This volume argues that knowledge of Islam has never been innocent or about the simple collection of facts, but that the interpretive lenses used to study Islam have always been and continue to be caught up with larger forces (e.g., the reform of Judaism, Orientalism, identity politics of the 1960s, 9/11, the fight against terrorism, the creation of a liberal Islam). Whereas previous work is content to show the nefarious influence of Orientalism in the creation of Islamic data and the formation of an essentialized Islam, Situating Islam argues that the opposite approach - the construction of an authentic Islam that coincides effortlessly with Western values - is equally problematic. The work concludes by examining how Islamic data has the potential to help us better understand how we construct and contest "religion."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aaron W. Hughes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he is the author of The Texture of the Divine: Imagination in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Thought (Indiana UP 2004) and Jewish Philosophy A-Z (Edinburgh UP, 2005). He is also the Managing Editor of Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses, the main Canadian journal devoted to the academic study of religion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Equinox Publishing (December 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845532600
• ISBN-13: 978-1845532604
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,796,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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