Study of Muslim Civilisations and AKU-ISMC's Bibliographical Project

Over the last fourteen hundred years, histories, cultures and the religion of Muslim people have been an object of study both by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. This has led to the creation of an enormous corpus of literature encompassing a wide range of attitudes, approaches, languages, regions and disciplines. Along the way, there have been moments of soul searching within the scholarship with regard to its trends and directions. One resulting observation of this process has been that there is a linguistic divide in terms of access to scholarly resources on Islam. The works on Islam in European languages are hardly available in Muslim societies, and the works produced in Muslim societies remain largely unknown in Europe and America. Similarly, there is little communication between scholars within the Muslim world. Thus, scholarship on Muslim societies in various regions proceeds without taking much account of developments elsewhere. The Annotated Bibliographical Project (ABP) of AKU-ISMC was envisioned as a response to this situation, aiming to reduce this chasm through indexing and providing abstracts of works concerning Muslim civilisations, published in various languages.

The study of Islam and Muslim societies in modern times started in the nineteenth century in Europe. Methodologically, it was rooted in the disciplines of Biblical and Classical Studies. This twin influence contributed to making the study of Islam essentially a philological exercise. It consisted mainly of translations of manuscripts from Muslim societies, the study of doctrinal and theological developments, and the growth of institutions such as the Caliphate. During this time, scholarship on Islam by Muslims was largely informed by a tendency to highlight the relevance of Islamic tradition in modern times. These perspectives continued to guide the scholarship well into the twentieth century, and despite the criticism they later received, many works produced in this period continue to have influence.

In the twentieth century, scholarship on Muslim societies was shaped by several political as well as intellectual trends. For example, there was a more assertive tone of scholarship from scholars of the 'third world'. Among other things, this way of scholarship argued for the dismantling of established canons of scholarship which it saw as euro-centric. The growth of movements such as post-structuralism, post-modernism and feminism also influenced scholarship on Islam.

Since the 1970s, there has been a tremendous increase of scholarly interest in Muslim societies. Though partly a result of the prevailing political climate, it has also been an outcome of increasing interconnectivity between methodologies applied in Islamic Studies and those in the social sciences and the humanities. In addition to contributing to new and insightful   approaches to the study of Muslims, this intensification has led to a revival of self-reflection in the field, making scholarship on Islam itself an object of study. Publication of Edward Said's book Orientalism in 1979 is seen by many as a crucial juncture in this revival.

AKU-ISMC's Bibliography Project can be seen as a product of this on-going self-assessment. As a response to the issue of access to scholarship on Muslim societies, the Project is seeking to mobilise communication avenues (the Internet, in particular) in order to achieve dissemination of knowledge about scholarship on Muslim civilisations. In this regard, a meeting was organised in London in June 2003, which brought together highly qualified individuals familiar with the intellectual resources on Muslim Civilisations in various languages/ regions of the world. Their key recommendations were two fold. First, to approach the Project incrementally, possibly starting with well-conceived pilot projects and, secondly,    linking the initial phase of the Project to AKU-ISMC's educational programmes. AKU-ISMC is currently working on these proposals through its key works initiative that aims to create annotated bibliographies for its Master's programme. This initiative will ensure that AKU-ISMC's own graduates have access to key scholarly works from several languages.

For more information on ISMC, please visit: http://www.aku.edu/ismc/