It's Not Just Academic!Essays on Sufism and Islamic Studies

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This volume, It's not Just Academic: Essays on l I Sufism Islamic Studies and is a collection of essays produced over the past three decades, and it is a companion to Refractions of Islam in India, also published by Yoda Press with SAGE Publications. Unlike the other volume, this book is not dominated by the problem of understanding Islam in the prism of a particular regional culture. Instead, it addresses basic and critical issues relating to the study of Islam, and it contains a wide range of particular examinations of Sufism, the tradition of spiritual and ethical practice that is so prominent in Muslim societies. As with Refractions, collecting these essays furnishes the occasion to reflect on the trajectory of inquiry which they illustrate.

Above all else, as the title indicates, these studies are animated by the conviction that scholarship in the humanities matters, and that it is important to communicate its conclusions clearly to the reading public. There are plenty of reasons to acknowledge these points when it comes to the study of Islam. During the years when I was completing my graduate studies at Harvard University (1975-81), two significant events highlighted the political relevance of Islamic studies in unprecedented ways. One was the outbreak of the Iranian revolution in 1978-79, which inspired intense and ongoing debates about Islam, politics, and violence. Suddenly scholars who specialized in the study of medieval manuscripts were being called upon to explain to journalists the raging ideological battles of contemporary Iran. The other event was the 1978 publication of Edward Said's Orientalism, with its critique of the colonialist engagements of Islamic studies. Academics accustomed to considering themselves as neutral observers now had to defend themselves from the suspicion of being supporters of imperialism. Scholars of Islamic studies now faced a much wider set of demands than their Orientalist predecessors had imagined.

The field of Islamic studies scholarship remained small despite the controversies of the late 1970s, and even the first Gulf War, in 1990-91, created only a temporary jump in publications relating to Islam, and very little increase in the number of trained specialists in Islamic studies in American colleges and universities. During the 1990s, however, the field began to grow perceptibly, and then the shock of the 2001 terrorist attacks on American targets led to more extensive development of academic Islamic studies, now increasingly integrated into the humanities and social sciences instead of being isolated as a foreign subject, although narrower specialized philology persists in some institutional frameworks.¹

Permission is gratefully acknowledged for the reprint of these articles and book chapters, as indicated below.

"Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism: Problematizing the Teaching of Sufism." In Teaching Islam, ed. Brannon Wheeler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 108-23. Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press.

"Reading Strategies for Introducing the Qur'an as Literature in an American Public University." Islamic Studies (Islamabad) 45:3 (2006), pp. 333-44. Reprinted with permission of the Islamic

Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad. ""The West and Islam? Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism." Ishraq: Islamic Philosophy Yearbook (Moscow/ Tehran), vol. 1 (2010), pp. 23-34. Reprinted with permission of LRC Publishing.

"Muhammad as the Pole of Existence." In The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad, ed. Jonathan Brockopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 123-38. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press. "It's Not Just Academic - Writing Public Scholarship in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies." Review of Middle East Studies 45/2 (Winter 2011 [published 2012]), pp. 164-71. Reprinted with per- mission of Cambridge University Press.

"The Global Significance of Arabic Language and Literature." Religion Compass 7/6 (2013), pp. 191-200. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons.

"Mystical and Esoteric Aspects of Religious Knowledge in Sufism." The Journal of Religious Studies XIII (1984), pp. 93-100. Reprinted with permission of The Journal of Religious Studies.