Islamic Studies Archives | Contending Modernities

The Idea of Progress and Its Discontents in Islamic Thought

Ebrahim Moosa
January 10, 2023February 1, 2024

We do know one thing taught by experience: the dominant paradigms need to be continuously contested with alternative ways of knowing, different types of knowledge, and novel models for society-building.

The Historian’s “Unloved Stepchild” No More: The Case for Intellectual Biography as Historical Method in Islamic Studies

Series: Symposium on Law and Politics under the Abbasids

Mariam Sheibani
August 5, 2021January 27, 2024

Siddiqui’s study makes a persuasive case for why intellectual biography can best demonstrate the interaction between political, social, and intersecting lines of intellectual inquiry at a given point in history.

Sovereignty and its Afterlives in Muslim South Asia: A Response

Series: Book Symposium on Defending Muḥammad in Modernity

SherAli Tareen
March 9, 2021March 12, 2021

With the loss of Muslim political sovereignty in nineteenth-century South Asia, the pioneers of the Barelvī and Deobandī orientations and their predecessors articulated and avidly fought for two rival visions of the relationship between divine sovereignty, prophetic authority, and the practice of everyday life.

Theology and the Ironies of History

Series: Book Symposium on Defending Muḥammad in Modernity

Ebrahim Moosa
February 16, 2021March 2, 2021

Most theological disputes have an afterlife, and some of these intricate and subtle debates about the authority of Islam’s messenger and prophet still percolate in the hearts and minds of the faithful to this very day.

Rejoining the Ottoman and South Asian Worlds

Series: Book Symposium on Defending Muḥammad in Modernity

Jonathan Brown
February 15, 2021February 16, 2021

One cannot read the landscape of Islamic thought and practice in British India through a lens ground to catch binaries like tradition/reform, law/mysticism, Arab/indigenous, extremist/tolerant, Salafi/Madhhabi-Sufi.

Towards a Decolonial Approach to the Qur’an

Asad Dandia
January 15, 2021February 1, 2024

A decolonial approach to the Qur’an also means de-Christianizing how we understand it as a text and its relationship to Muslims.

Articles tagged as "Islamic Studies"

The Idea of Progress and Its Discontents in Islamic Thought

The Historian’s “Unloved Stepchild” No More: The Case for Intellectual Biography as Historical Method in Islamic Studies

Sovereignty and its Afterlives in Muslim South Asia: A Response

Theology and the Ironies of History

Rejoining the Ottoman and South Asian Worlds

Towards a Decolonial Approach to the Qur’an