Rethinking Islam Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism

344 Pages·2010·1.07 MB·English

by  Carl W. Ernst

Rethinking Islamic Studies
Studies in Comparative Religion
Frederick M. Denny, Series Editor
+ +
Rethinking
Islamic Studies
From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism
Edited by
Carl W. Ernst and
RichardC.Martin
The University of South Carolina Press
© 2010 University of South Carolina
Cloth and paperback editions published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print editions as follows:
Rethinking Islamic studies : from orientalism to cosmopolitanism /
edited by Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin.
p. cm. — (Studies in comparative religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57003-892-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-57003-893-8
(pbk : alk. paper)
1. Islam—Study and teaching. 2. Orientalism. I. Ernst, Carl W., 1950–
II. Martin, Richard C.
BP42.R48 2010
297.09—dc22
2009051152
ISBN 978-1-61117-231-7 (ebook)
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface vii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Toward a Post-Orientalist Approach to
Islamic Religious Studies 1
Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin
Part 1
Rethinking Modernity
Islamic Perspectives
(cid:1)
Reasons Public and Divine: Liberal Democracy, Sharia
Fundamentalism, and the Epistemological Crisis of Islam 23
Vincent J. Cornell
The Misrecognition of a Modern Islamist Organization: Germany
Faces “Fundamentalism” 52
Katherine Pratt Ewing
Between “Ijtihadof the Presupposition” and Gender Equality:
Cross-Pollination between Progressive Islam and Iranian Reform 72
Omid Safi
(cid:2)
Fundamentalism and the Transparency of the Arabic Quran 97
A. Kevin Reinhart
Can We Define “True” Islam? African American Muslim Women
Respond to Transnational Muslim Identities 114
Jamillah Karim
Part 2
Rethinking Religion
Social Scientific and Humanistic Perspectives
Who Are the Islamists? 133
Charles Kurzman and Ijlal Naqvi
vi Contents
Sufism, Exemplary Lives, and Social Science in Pakistan 159
David Gilmartin
Formations of Orthodoxy: Authority, Power, and Networks in
Muslim Societies 179
Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar
Caught between Enlightenment and Romanticism: On the Complex
Relation of Religious, Ethnic, and Civic Identity in a Modern
“Museum Culture” 203
Louis A. Ruprecht Jr.
Part 3
Rethinking the Subject
Asian Perspectives
The Subject and the Ostensible Subject: Mapping the Genre of
Hagiography among South Asian Chishtis 227
Tony K. Stewart
Dancing with Khusro: Gender Ambiguities and Poetic Performance
in a Delhi Dargah245
Scott Kugle
The Perils of Civilizational Islam in Malaysia 266
Carl W. Ernst
History and Nor(cid:1)mativity in Traditional Indian Muslim Thought:
Reading Sharia in the Hermeneutics of Qari Muhammad Tayyab
(d. 1983) 281
Ebrahim Moosa
Afterword: Competing Genealogies of Muslim Cosmopolitanism 302
Bruce B. Lawrence
Contributors325
Index 329
Series Editor’s Preface
Over the past four decades the rethinking of Islamic studies has encouraged the
energetic cooperation and the engaged collaborative attention of scholars of
Islam and religious studies in exciting and productive new ways. During that
period the study of Islam and of Muslim peoples has increasingly merged with
theory and method in religious studies, which itself has increasingly developed
its discourses in interdisciplinary relation with the humanities and social sciences.
Rethinking Islamic Studies is indeed, as editors Carl W. Ernst and Richard C.
Martin assert, a collection of essays “envisaged as a generational sequel and
advance upon” 1985’s innovative and influential Approaches to Islam in Religious
Studies, which was also edited by Martin.
The Studies in Comparative Religion series also published its first work in
1985. Nothing could be finer for the twenty-fifth anniversary of this scholarly
series than a fresh array of essays on Islam and Muslims focusing on Islamic per-
spectives for rethinking modernity, on social scientific and humanistic perspec-
tives for rethinking religion, and on Asian perspectives for rethinking the whole
subject, as this book does. The collection ends with a stimulating and respon-
sive essay by Bruce B. Lawrence, one of the most influential scholars in the
rethinking of Islamic religious studies to date.
Frederick M. Denny
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Preface and
Acknowledgments
The papers in this volume are part of a long-ranging project in the field of reli-
gious studies, with special reference to the study of Islam. We as editors look
back on the last three decades as a period of extraordinary growth and creativ-
ity in this area. This period has been a liberating experience for us as scholars
initially trained in narrowly textual “Orientalist” approaches, as we have been
forced by circumstance to address many issues of contemporary political and
social relevance, not to mention the numerous theoretical developments that
have taken place in the humanities in recent years. While we still deeply appre-
ciate the discipline of the philological study of medieval Islamic texts, we have
also welcomed the opportunity to engage with interdisciplinary research, new
social-scientific methodologies, and transregional approaches to Islamic studies
in the contemporary world. This volume harks back to previous benchmarks in
Islamic studies, going back to essays by Charles Adams from the late 1960s and
early 1970s, and at the same time it charts new courses for future research.
In particular we recall the pathbreaking collection of papers edited by Rich-
ard C. Martin, Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies(Tucson: University of Ari-
zona Press, 1985). That volume, based on a 1980 conference, signaled a major
transition from unself-conscious forms of Oriental studies to a more reflexive
application of religious studies approaches. The essays in the current volume
are envisaged as a generational sequel and advance upon that earlier effort, tak-
ing full account of the critical developments in the understanding of Islam in
recent years.
Earlier versions of these papers were presented in a symposium, “Islam in
Theory and Practice,” held at Duke University in January 2006. We would like
to express our thanks to Emory University, Duke University, and the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their support of our efforts. In partic-
ular it is a pleasure to thank Emory graduate students Abbas Barzegar and
Anthony R. Byrd for their many valuable contributions to editing the papers
in this volume in 2009. We are also grateful for the support of series editor
Frederick Denny, acquisitions editor Jim Denton, and other staff at the Univer-
sity of South Carolina Press for their visionary support of this project. Finally
we commend the efforts of all the contributors to this volume, which we hope
will serve as a benchmark for the future development of Islamic studies.