Lunch Lecture - Johanna Pink: From the study of Islam to the study of Muslims

For a long time, the discipline of Islamic Studies was based on the assumption that the „phenomenon of Islam“ can and should primarily be understood through the literature of the first four centuries, with a heavy focus on Arabic sources. Starting in the 1970s, that predominant view came under attack from several sides. Historians and anthropologists called into question the existence of an unchanging, monolithic Islam; Edward Said‘s „Orientalism“ forced scholars to discuss the legitimacy of their paradigms and even their discipline; and the Islamic Revolution in Iran brought about the realisation that the mastery of pre-modern religious literature is of little help in explaining contemporary political expressions of Islam. Since that time, nearly all of the former basic assumptions of Islamic Studies have been thoroughly deconstructed while new and vibrant areas of research have emerged, from the study of post-classical Muslim scholarship to the „anthropology of Islam“.