Decentering Islam: Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy & Heresy in the Middle Ages
Abstract:
The academic study of religion in the medieval period is a problematic one precisely because of the widespread practice in modern academia to think of religion according to Eurocentric models, definitions and conceptualizations. In other words, when we study a medieval religious tradition like Islam, we often bring to our exercise tools, meanings and expectations developed by scholars in the Global North and saturated with Euro-American experiences, fantasies, idealizations, theories and categorizations. We impose them and ask our sources to answer to them, thus we essentialize what we study rather than carefully listen to the sources and learn what they tell us about Islam.
In my talk, I will engage the problematic nature of the question of decentering/destabilizing Islam according to modern academic criteria. I will also examine examples where we can identify individuals or groups who challenged the hegemony of dominant religious trends (be it orthopraxic or orthodoxic) and proposed alternative worldviews that some labeled as heresy.
Suleiman A. Mourad is a historian of Islam and the Middle East and Professor of Religion at Smith College. His research focuses on Muslims as makers and interpreters of their religious, historical and legal traditions, with a special focus on quranic exegesis, Islamic law, Jerusalem, Jihad ideology, Muslim reactions to the Crusades, and on the challenges of modernity that led to major changes in Muslims’ perception of and attitude towards their own history and classical thought. His most recent publications include Ibn ʿAsakir of Damascus: Champion of Sunni Islam in the Time of the Crusades (Oneworld 2021), Muslim Sources of the Crusader Period: An Anthology (Hackett Publishing 2021), Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem (Routledge 2019), and The Mosaic of Islam (Verso 2016). He is the recipient of a number of grants and awards, such as the fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He appeared and served as historical consultant on several film documentaries, most recently the CNN series Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury (2021). He is also an op-ed writer on historical and current issues, and has a weekly column in 180Post (Lebanon).