Understanding Islamic ethical formation would chiefly benefit modern Western scholarship itself.

Evidence

One utilitarian trend is to study Islamic attitudes in order to be able to live in a Muslim country without causing offence. This sort of study is generally pursued at an elementary level; its purpose is to avoid trouble for some commercial or government undertaking with a quick turnover of employees in Muslim countries. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1715 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Thus far I have been referring to culture as the logic of practices by which a notion of unity is created. These practices depend on a performative sense of ourselves and of Others that has to be created and constantly reiterated. For example, the othering of Muslims as terrorists and irrational people requires certain mechanisms to allow it to spread and be internalized. Talal Asad writes of modernity as a project aimed at institutionalizing certain principles—“constitutionalism, moral autonomy, democracy, human rights, … consumerism, freedom of the market—and secularism. It employs proliferating technologies (of production, warfare, travel entertainment, medicine) that generate new experiences of space and time, of cruelty and health, of consumption and knowledge.” Against each of these principles, “the Muslim” is positioned as aberration or threat. Such an undertaking involves the aesthetic realm, too—that other, narrower kind of “culture” usually taken to mean the arts, media, and sometimes science and often having class connotations. Literature, for all the claims made for its independence, is one of these technologies. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 80 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Western scholars equated Islamic morality with the possibility of Islamic self-critique — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2455; Islamic scholarship functions as an arm of state power, not disinterested learning — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 865; Modern Western scholarship on Islam still rests largely on Goldziher’s foundation (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The study of Islam’s legal origins covertly justifies Westernizing its law #complicates (0.75)
• Utilitarian study of Islam serves commercial and government interests abroad. #complicates (0.74) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1715
• Literature functions as a technology sanctifying Western modernity against the Muslim Other #complicates (0.72) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 80