I want to become an orientalist not a colonizer or a “de-colonizer”

Abstract

Writing Studying the Qur'an in the Muslim Academy emerged out of my personal and academic concerns, which have not been relieved since its publication. Now, my trepidations have become more serious and I am becoming more disappointed about the future of religious and Islamic studies. Such concerns have not disappeared, and all we can do is remind the next generation that their field of study as well as their worldview was shaped in accordance with the proclivity of seniors, superiors, job-givers and policy-makers. The current symposium dedicated to my book, to which this is a response, includes essays by well-versed scholars with Muslim backgrounds. They all draw my attention to the diversity, complexity and importance of the notions we use regularly in the study of Islam. Each of the essays suggests how the discourse on method and theory in the study of Islam has changed within the last decade.