Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: I n sessions on Islam at the AAR conference this year, a recurring theme in our discussions has been that of making new spaces that did not exist previously.The plenary panel from which this essay emerged is just one of those opportunities.Amir Hussein's presidential address on "the work of our hands" reflected on fifty years of Islamic studies at the AAR, a space that had not existed for the study of Islam in the North American academic study of religion prior to that time.I have been around for thirty years or so of these developments in the AAR, such as by presenting my first work, serving on the steering committee for the Study of Islam unit, JAAR editorial boards, co-chairing the Qur'an unit, and co-founding the Southeast Asia unit (which also opened a new space for Islamic studies at the AAR).The story that I have to relate personally about constructive Muslim theology traces this same path that cuts straight through the heart of the AAR, and the academic study of religion as a colonial heritage.It now feels just as inevitable it all would lead right here as it was once would have seemed unimaginable.I was pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless, when I was invited to participate in the ongoing multi-year project on constructive Muslim thought at the AAR last year.This seminar was the inspiration for this presidential plenary panel.I have had time to reflect on why this was at first so striking.Back at the University of Chicago, back in Jonathan Z. Smith's day, nervousness about Christian pastors still pastoring meant that in the history of religions you could do any kind of construction -Marxian, feminist, you name it -but not theological.(That is, unless you called it "religious ethics," which is just what I did last year presenting on Islamic ethics as constructive Muslim theology.)This wasn't just another Chicago thing, however.At the start of the AAR's Section for the Study of Islam, 1 distrust over the commitments of the faithful combined with old-time Orientalism to energize a postcolonial insider-outsider dynamic that has since persisted long into the era of American progressive Islam.Like everybody else, naturally I have my own kind of split self with this.Ironically, however, trained chops for spotting Christian crypto-theology in a post-Eliadian 1 Sections are now referred to as units at the AAR.
Source: The Muslim World
DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12506
Author: Anna M. Gade
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,900
OpenAlex ID: W4411292027