Scholarly independence from institutional power enables critical insights into Islam

Evidence

The interesting thing about this group of antithetical writers on Islam is that they cannot be reduced to a methodological and ideological characterization that does them any sort of justice. Nevertheless, it is a striking fact that almost none of them belongs to the establishment in Middle East studies. This is not to say that they are not distinguished and respected figures; they are, but few if any of them have been actively and institutionally involved as consultants to governments or to corporations. Perhaps this fact has freed them from obligation to the status quo and enabled them to see things that conventional writers on Islam have bypassed. Yet it must be said about them, and about the group of younger scholars referred to above, that in order for their work to have the effect it potentially can have, they must become more political in this society. It is not enough for them to have views that distinguish them from orthodox experts; they must try to give their views currency, and because such an effort will have to go considerably beyond writing things and getting them published, they have a long political and organizational struggle ahead of them. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 344

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a piece on how institutional consultancy obligations constrain academic critique — the outsider position as a precondition for seeing past the status quo.

Related

• Scholars who pursue advisory roles forfeit credibility with both state and academy (similarity 0.79)
• Islamic scholarship functions as an arm of state power, not disinterested learning (similarity 0.79)
• Antithetical scholars replace methodological silence with politicized explicitness (similarity 0.79)
• Islamic studies remains exempt from scholarly norms applied to other fields (similarity 0.79)
• A lucrative market for expertise erases methodological self-questioning in a field (similarity 0.79)
• Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections (similarity 0.78)
• Academics are neutralized into status symbols by the coverage system (similarity 0.78)