Introduction: Islam and Religious Studies Post-9/11

Summary

When one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will be understood, suspends one's interest in the temporal and the contingent, or fails to distinguish between “truths,” “truth-claims,” and “regimes of truth,” one has ceased to function as a historian or scholar. In that moment, a variety of roles are available: some perfectly respectable (amanuensis, collector, friend and advocate), and some less appealing (cheerleader, voyeur, retailer of import goods). None, however, should be confused with scholarship.

(Lincoln 1996: 227)

For much of the past forty years, scholars of religion have largely tended to look upon their departmental colleagues who specialize in Islamic data with some degree of bewilderment and bemusement. Their sparse numbers (often one scholar of Islam per department) and their highly technical philological training in other fields (e.g., Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, or Islamic studies) have often generated a set of methodological and theoretical interests perceived to be far removed from the academic study of religion. This has, at least historically, resulted in a rather tenuous and complicated relationship between the study of Islam and religious studies.

All of this, however, radically changed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Islam's involvement in the attacks of that day (whether this was real or perceived is certainly not the issue here) suddenly thrust this religion into the spotlight.