Islamic studies as a university discipline: origin and development

Abstract

Islamic Studies as an academic discipline is a contemporary approach of studying Islam. It is an umbrella term and draws on a variety of fields that include Islamic civilization, culture, religion, Islamic history, Islamic social sciences, Islamic scientific heritage, Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Islamic Jurisprudence, Comparative Religions, Interfaith Dialogue, Gender studies, Islamic Economics and Finance, and Human Rights. With the tools of interdisciplinarity and comparative approach it sheds light on the multiple expressions of Islam as a spiritual tradition, the role of Islamic civilization in global history and importance of Islamic discourses in the contemporary world. The idea of Islamic Studies, in its present form as a university discipline, is of recent origin. It has roots in the history of interaction and interface between the western civilization and Islam, and in the intellectual and reformative history of Muslims in the modern world. Today it is one of the most well developed disciplines not only in the subcontinent but also in Europe and USA. The present paper aims to highlight the origin, nature and development of Islamic studies as a distinct and separate-though interdisciplinary, university discipline in its present evolution across the globe. It will follow the desk and descriptive method. The paper will follow historical and analytical methodology.The discipline of Islamic studies has evolved as an independent, multidimensional and global subject shedding its early orientalist influences and presenting Islam as a religion, culture and civilization. It, as an interdisciplinary subject, has enlarged its landscape for it takes on the continuously emerging contemporary issues, Islam and Muslims are confronting, by presenting alternative/s—discourse and solutions. It has great scope to present Islam as a universal message and bringing closer the 2 cultures and civilizations— Islamic and Western.