Summary
Contents
Subject index
Islam is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the West. Myths and stereotypes surround it. This clear and penetrating volume helps readers to make sense of Islam. It offers a penetrating guide to the diversity and richness of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. Throughout, the emphasis is upon the value of pluralistic approaches to Islam, rather than condensing complexity with unifying concepts such as `Orientalism'. Interdisciplinary in scope and organization, the book cuts through the bewildering and seemingly anarchic diversity of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. The methodological difficulties and advantages of Western researchers focusing on Islam are fully documented. The book demonstrates how gender, age, status and `insider' / `outsider' status impacts upon research and inflects research findings.
Interpreting Interpretations of Islam
Interpreting Interpretations of Islam
Disciplinarity and Islam
Islam is known in a bewildering diversity of ways in an increasingly interconnected world. What one knows about Islam, one knows, inevitably and inescapably, with reference to the ways in which other people come to know about Islam. How one goes about constructing an argument, or articulating a point, about the Muslim world increasingly relies on a knowledge of how other people might use the same facts to construct another kind of argument, or articulate another kind of point. Islamist arguments thus increasingly demand familiarity with the terminologies and procedures of secularist arguments. The reverse is every bit as true, as many have noted with regard to secularism in Turkey (Gellner 1981: 60). Selves ...
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