Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity - An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception - Aaron W. Hughes
Islamic Religious Studies and the Politics of Identity
Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity - An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception - Aaron W. Hughes
Aaron W. Hughes [+]
University of Rochester
Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. His research and publications focus on both Jewish philosophy and Islamic Studies. He has authored numerous books, including Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (Equinox, 2007); Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (Equinox, 2012); Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam (Columbia, 2012); and Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford, 2012). He currently serves as the editor of the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.
Description
Chapter 1 defines in detail the characteristics of “Islamic religious studies.” Here, we see the manifestation of the worst traits of identity politics wherein critical and historical scholarship can be simply dismissed as the stuff of “Orientalism,” an increasingly amorphous and meaningless term.