The Study of Islam between University Theology and Lived Religion: Introductory Reflections

ABSTRACT

What do we understand by the study of Islamic theology within the European academic framework? In this issue of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, scholars of Christian and Islamic theology and of religious studies debate how to construct theoretical and empirical contexts around 'Islamic theology' as an academic discipline that is profoundly etic, and for doing theology as an emic praxis. The question concerns how we design course programmes, curricula and research projects. What are the implications of historical-critical or critical-hermeneutic approaches for the academic study of Islamic theology? What may be the consequences of integrating a critical gender perspective into inter-religious studies? If introducing Islamic theology at European universities turns Christian faculties into multi-religious institutions, will they make space for inter-religious ways of doing theology? May social contexts impact on how Islamic theology is taught and discussed in a Northern European university setting? Will Islamic theology be formatted as 'university theology' in interaction with the lived Islamic religion in the European context? These articles present an invitation to researchers, students and policy-makers, to continue responding to local needs in religiously plural societies and to further stimulate discussions about the study and practice of Islamic theology as a Western academic discipline.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamic theology at European universities
• religious pluralism
• doing theology
• studying theology
• multi-religious institutions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The conference ‘Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge’ took place at the University of Gröningen on 11–15 May 2014 under the auspices of the European Association for the Study of Religions.

2 Laurence distinguishes between two types of Embassy Islam: a general pattern of emigrant outreach (Algeria, Morocco and Turkey), and those who seek to promote Islamic institutions more broadly (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia).

3 Laurence (2012, 42–43) attempts to establish a ‘nationally oriented’ Islam and to limit the spread of ‘folk Islam’ and political opposition. In the 1920s and 1930s, Turkey (Kemalist) and Saudi Arabia (Wahhabi) consolidated their rule trough the institutionalized use of religion, followed by Egypt and Pakistan in the 1940s and 1950s. The countries in the Maghreb went through this phase between 1957 and 1962 (43). Official theological faculties were created in Cairo, Ankara, Tunisia and Morocco, and governments attempted to nationalize the networks of prayer spaces, sanctioned boards of official religious scholars (ulama), and centralized their issuing of religious rulings (fatwas) (43; see also 44–69).

4 Bowen (2004, 44), for example, shows how strategies of the French state to create ‘domesticated forms of Islam’ imply a set of dilemmas for the state to control transnational religious communities.

5 Cerić (2007, 45) reaches this conclusion after an examination of the theological foundation for authority in Islam (the three theological foundations being ʿaqīda, sharīʿa and imāma) and discussing the differences between Sunnism and Shiism. Cerić is a Bosniak imam who served as the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1999–2012) and is currently president of the World Bosniak Congress (since 2012).

6 The term ‘Euro-Islam’ was coined by Tibi in 1992 in an attempt to envision how to make Islam European in Europe, the way that it has become African in Senegal and South East Asian in Indonesia.

7 For an earlier attempt to discuss the anthropological study of Islam, see El-Zein (1977).

8 The anthropological literature critiquing Asad includes: Lukens-Bull (1999), Mahroof (1981), Varisco (2005) and Marranci (2008).

9 Here keeping in mind Varisco’s (2005, 144) suggestion that emic definitions should be the base of etic analysis.