Islamic studies remains exempt from scholarly norms applied to other fields
Evidence
It is still possible to say things about Islam that are simply unacceptable for Judaism, for other Asians, or for blacks, and it is still possible to write studies of Islamic history and society that blithely ignore every major advance in interpretative theory since Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 324
Categorization
- SHARE: Send to an academic friend in area studies or historiography — the claim about Islam studies’ lag behind interpretative theory is stark and testable.
Related
- Islamic studies’ marginality lets media spread racist caricatures unchecked (similarity 0.84)
- Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.83)
- The reified notion of Islam has hindered rather than helped understanding of Muslim societies (similarity 0.83)
- Islamic history resists any single coherent characterization (similarity 0.82)
- Arabist and Islamic studies resisted the revision that reformed other area studies (similarity 0.82)
- Western discourse reduces all Muslim societies to a single malevolent essence (similarity 0.82)
- Every portrayal of Islam is an act of willed interpretation, not a description. (similarity 0.81)
- Islamic studies’ guild tradition insulated scholars from methodological self-questioning (similarity 0.81)
- Pre-modern Islamic scholars trained across fields rather than within single disciplines (similarity 0.81)
- Academics are neutralized into status symbols by the coverage system (similarity 0.81)
- No era since the Middle Ages has discussed Islam outside prejudice and politics (similarity 0.80)
- Islamic doctrine has justified opposite political programs alike (similarity 0.80)
- Interfaith study should serve understanding rather than conversion or polemic (similarity 0.80)
- Medieval Christian knowledge of Islam served polemics, not understanding (similarity 0.80)
- Radical and subversive thought has always been integral to Islamic history (similarity 0.80)