One reason for backwardness: prohibiting comparative religion
TO ILLUSTRATE THIS, let us take one example: Is the study of comparative religion allowed in our universities? Religious phenomenology…
Glorification tendencies in the teaching of Islamic history
THE QUESTION we must pose here is this: Do we teach our Islamic history to our youth according to an…
Separating the Islam of Faith from the Islam of History – 2
THE IDEAL MEANS to achieve this is through the comparative history of religions, which by itself can illustrate religious phenomenology…
Problems in Arab Muslim historiography – 2
A STILL LARGER problem looms related to the arrangement of the suras of the Qur’an: the verses in the current…
Problems in Arab Muslim historiography – 1
WHAT ARE THE problematic points raised in the subject of Islamic studies or research on the beginnings of Islam? Firstly:…
Competing readings of Islamic history
THE LEGITIMACY OF this reading derives solely from its status as successor to the rule of the Prophet. History is,…
Orientalism and the historicization of the Islamic heritage – 2
HEREIN LIES the basic difference between ourselves and the Orientalists; it is a difference of an epistemological basis not an…
Orientalism and the historicization of the Islamic heritage – 1
THE CONFLICT WITH the Orientalists should be one of methodology or epistemology, in contrast to the conflict waged against them…
In praise of Orientalism! – 2
AT THIS STAGE there appeared a translation of the Qur’ān into German by Gustav Fluegel in 1834. These early Orientalists…
In praise of Orientalism! – 1
I MEAN OF COURSE academic Orientalism, not the superficial, politicised Orientalism associated with colonial administration from the 19th century to…