New Methods in the Study of Islam - (Advances in the Study of Islam) by Abbas Aghdassi & Aaron W Hughes (Paperback)

About the Book

Offers an innovative study of traditional and new methodologies used to study Islam

Book Synopsis

Methods play a key role in how we access and subsequently organise data. There is a tendency, however, for scholars to focus primarily on their data at the expense of the methodological acts that bring such data into existence in the first place. The academic study of Islam is certainly no different in this regard. Indeed, many continue to employ established or classic methods that often echo (neo-)orientalist and other political inclinations. This collection, in contrast, offers an alternative, providing a set of multi-disciplinary approaches that focus on how we create, study and disseminate "Islamic data."

From the Back Cover

Provides a set of multi-disciplinary approaches that focus on how 'Islamic data' is created, studied and disseminated New Methods in the Study of Islam offers an international perspective on the field of Islamic studies. It seeks to push the study of Islam to the forefront of methodological considerations by revisiting classical topics - for example the Qur'an, hadith and kalam - using new lenses, as well as new subjects, such as lived Islam and Islamic critiques of the West. Taken as a whole, the collection provides new perspectives on the role and place of the academic study of Islam in contemporary scholarship. Key Features  Brings together a set of international voices from a variety of disciplines and fields, including religious studies, theology, philosophy, law and history  Offers a large picture of what methods and methodologies are, how they have been used in the study of Islam, and how new ones can be introduced to sharpen our understanding of Islam, both historically and in the contemporary period  Challenges existing paradigms by providing alternative systems for the study of Islam  Revisits understandings and misunderstandings in long-established academic traditions in the study of Islam Abbas Aghdassi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Civilisation of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Iran. Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean's Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Rochester, USA.

About the Author

Abbas Aghdassi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Civilisation of Muslim Societies at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Iran. He is the author of Persian Academic Reading (2019, Routledge) and editor of Perspectives on Academic Persian (forthcoming, Springer Nature).

Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean's Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Rochester, USA. He is the author of many books, including most recently From Seminary to University: An Institutional History of the Study of Religion in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2020), Muslim and Jew: Origins, Growth, Resentment (Routledge, 2019) and Shared Identities: Medieval and Modern Imaginings of Judeo-Islam (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Method & Theory in the Study of Religion (Journal of the North American Association for the Study of Religion).