University of South Carolina Press Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism (Studies in Comparative Religion)

This is a groundbreaking response to the challenges of interpreting Islamic religion in the post-9/11 and post-Orientalist era. ""Rethinking Islamic Studies"" upends scholarly roadblocks in post-Orientalist discourse within contemporary Islamic studies and carves fresh inroads toward a robust new understanding of the discipline, one that includes religious studies and other politically infused fields of inquiry. Editors Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, along with a distinguished group of scholars, map the trajectory of the study of Islam and offer innovative approaches to the theoretical and methodological frameworks that have traditionally dominated the field. In the volume's first section, the contributors reexamine the underlying notions of modernity in the East and West and allow for the possibility of multiple and incongruent modernities. This opens a discussion of fundamentalism as a manifestation of the tensions of modernity in Muslim cultures. The second section addresses the volatile character of Islamic religious identity as expressed in religious and political movements at national and local levels. In the third section, contributors focus on Muslim communities in Asia and examine the formation of religious models and concepts as they appear in this region. This study concludes with an afterword by accomplished Islamic studies scholar Bruce B. Lawrence reflecting on the evolution of this post-Orientalist approach to Islam and placing the volume within existing and emerging scholarship. ""Rethinking Islamic Studies"" offers original perspectives for the discipline, each utilizing the tools of modern academic inquiry, to help illuminate contemporary incarnations of Islam for a growing audience of those invested in a sharper understanding of the Muslim world. Review "The essays of this volume have taken up precisely the challenge to redefine Islam apart from both fundamentalists/Islamists and their statist/nationalist opponents. Collectively, the contributors try to project a larger cosmopolitan canopy for Islam beyond the iterations, at once local and ideological, of several Muslim actors." - Bruce B. Lawrence, Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion, Duke University, from the Afterword" From the Inside Flap Rethinking Islamic Studies offers original perspectives for the discipline, each utilizing the tools of modern academic inquiry, to help illuminate contemporary incarnations of Islam for a growing audience of those invested in a sharper understanding of the Muslim world. From the Back Cover Rethinking Islamic Studies offers original perspectives for the discipline, each utilizing the tools of modern academic inquiry, to help illuminate contemporary incarnations of Islam for a growing audience of those invested in a sharper understanding of the Muslim world. About the Author Bruce B. Lawrence is Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor and professor of Islamic studies at Duke University. He is author of <i>New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life</i>