What is Islamic Studies?

Leif Stenberg is Professor in Islamic Studies at the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) and a visiting professor at Karlstad University. He is the co-editor of What is Islamic Studies? European and North American Approaches to a Contested Field, also in the Exploring Muslim Contexts series at Edinburgh University Press. Philip Wood is Professor of History, Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. His research focuses on Christians and Muslims in the Middle East c500-1000 and he is particularly interested the role of history-writing and hagiography in reflecting and asserting social boundaries. Wood is the author of The Chronicle of Seert: Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq (OUP, 2013) and editor of the volume History and Identity in the Late Antique East (OUP, 2013). His next monograph, The Imam of the Christians: The World of Dionysius of Tel-Mahre c.750-850, is under contract for 2021 with Princeton University Press.

• IntroductionLeif Stenberg and Philip WoodThere is No Data for Islam: Testing the Utility of a CategoryAaron HughesCritics as Caretakers, Religion as CritiqueCarool KerstenTalal Asad and the Question of Islamic SecularitiesHadi EnayatTerritory at Stake! In Defence of ‘Religion’ and ‘Islam’Susanne Olsson and Leif StenbergPower Practices and Pop: The Islam of Zain BhikhaJonas OtterbeckHistory and Contemporary Discourses on Islam, the Quran and Modern ScienceLeif StenbergParadigms of Religion and the Swift Birth of Islam: William Cantwell Smith RevisitedPhilip WoodProspects for a New Idiom for Islamic HistoryShahzad BashirConstructing Islamic Studies: Gender, Power and Critique as Ethical ToolsJuliane Hammer