Summary: Islam

Read the summary and the most important questions on Islam

• 1: Study of Islam & Rituals

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• Is there a ‘true Islam’?

  We do not seek to answer this question. The closest we come is to note that certain beliefs and practices are more common or agreed upon.

• Two problematic pairs problematic because..

  1. This language suggests that all of these are more monolithic and unchanging than is the case
  2. This language suggests a certain picture of history:
     - Islam and the West have mainly been in conflict
      - Modernity (associated with the West)  is now displacing tradition
      (associated with Islam)
  3. This language obscures the degree to which terms of each pair interpenetrate each other

• Central believes (Pilars of Imaan)

  • God, his scriptures, angels, messengers, the Last Day, his determination of good and ill

• Why do we study Islam? In the past

  In the past:
  - polemics (‘dialogue’)
  - Peter the Venerable
  Translating Qur’an, ‘If I know the words, I can show them they are wrong.’
  - Gijsbert Voetius
  Studied Arabic and Islam for the same reasons. Talk ABOUT Muslims, ABOUT Islam and never WITH.

• Why do we study Islam? colonialism

  Snoeck Hurgronje went to Mecca, lived there and wrote thesis. 

• How do we study Islam? Past

  No instruction into the faith.
  European/Western academic tradition:
  

  • Philology (texts): ‘Orientalism’
    Including approaches of theology and history
  • Anthropology (people)

  Islamic Studies (religion)

• How do we study Islam? Presence of Muslims

  • New dimension:

  Presence of Muslims
  Islamic Studies: Islamic culture and civilization
  Islamic theology: Believe system, quite technical

• How do we study Islam? Person of the Instructor

  ‘Uncertainty principle’
  How objective am I?
  How can I have a good relation with a research object?
  (Example clothing when meeting an Imam)
  
  New dimension:
  Person of the instructor

• How do we study Islam? religion

  • Religion
    Religionization across the world since 1970’s
    Two countries as an interesting measure stick: Israel and Pakistan (Jews and British Indian Muslims). Jews were not nessecarily very religious, for Pakistanis the same. After the 1970’s the world CARED.
    
    [ Founding fathers:
    Mohammed Jinnah
    David Ben Gurion ]

• Relation to Christianity and Judaism

  • Same Revelation, same ‘book’

            Same genealogy