Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches

In recent decades, academic debates on how to conceptualize ‘Islam’ as an object of study and how to approach it theoretically have been revitalized. Not only has research on Islam grown enormously and become much more differentiated, but Islam is also being discussed more intensively in society and politics than ever before.

This reader, which brings together the perspectives of various disciplines, provides an overview of academic approaches to Islam against the backdrop of these, in some cases tense, entanglements. Through two contributions from scholars working on Buddhism and Hinduism, these debates are situated in the context of broader trajectories of research history. In sum, this book does not only offer its readers entry points to a more complex and refined understanding of Islam, but also to research processes within the study of Islam as well as religion in general.

Frank Peter is a Research Fellow at FAU Centre for Islam and Law in Europe in Erlangen. His current research examines articulations of Islam in contemporary France with a focus on digital media. He previously published Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France: Secularism without Religion (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Paula Schrode is a Professor of the Study of Religion specializing in contemporary Islam at the University of Bayreuth. Her current research focuses on the transnational entanglements of Turkish Islam and, in particular, the involvement of Turkish religious NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ricarda Stegmann is a Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and specializes in the fields of Islam in Europe and contemporary Sufism worldwide. Her particular research perspectives include discourse theory, colonial history, and a globally entangled history of religions.