Plotting the Future of Islamic Studies – Teaching and research in the current political climate – Interest in Islamic Studies has grown rapidly in recent years, but not always for the best of reasons. Oxford University’s Tariq Ramadan calls for a more serious and less ideological approach to university Islamic studies in the West
OXFORD, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM — Plotting the Future of Islamic Studies – Teaching and research in the current political climate – Interest in Islamic Studies has grown rapidly in recent years, but not always for the best of reasons. Oxford University’s Tariq Ramadan calls for a more serious and less ideological approach to university Islamic studies in the West.
Interest in IslamicStudies has grown rapidly in recent years, but not always for the best of reasons. The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed an upsurge of similar disciplines at a time when the colonial powers (specifically Great Britain and France) were attempting to understand the religious references and practical motivations of their colonized subjects. Research then was oriented toward a specific need: to determine the values and practices of the newly colonized. Acquiring knowledge of “the other” (a rare pursuit in any event) was a lesser consideration. The colonial powers’ need to gain full mastery of the tools that would optimize colonial management, that would advance the “civilizing mission,” and that would allow them to derive maximum advantage from the knowledge they acquired— directly from certain scholars (ulamâ)—with the intention of using religion and religious dignitaries to legitimize their power, were the dominant concerns.
Orientalist studies unencumbered by political considerations were the exception. What flourished for decades was a self-interested study of and research into the question of Islam. From a political perspective, such a trend was as understandable as it was natural.
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