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About the author
Majid Daneshgar, Ph.D. is a Research Associate at the Orientalisches Seminar, University of Freiburg, Germany. He is also an alumnus of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), where he worked on textual censorship in Islamic literature. He is interested in method and theory in the study of religion, critical thinking theories, and Islamic intellectual and exegetical progress, as well as Malay Islamic studies. His publications include Islamic Studies Today (2016), The Qur'an in the Malay Indonesian World (2016), and Tantawi Jawhari and the Qur'an (2017).
Summary
Studying the Qur'an in the Muslim Academy examines what it is like to study and teach the Qur'an at academic institutions in the Muslim world, and how politics affect scholarly interpretations of the text. Guided by the author's own journey as a student, university lecturer, and researcher in Iran, Malaysia, and New Zealand, this book provides vivid accounts of the complex academic politics he encountered. Majid Daneshgar describes the selective translation and editing of Edward Said's classic work Orientalism into various Islamic languages, and the way Said's work is weaponized to question the credibility of contemporary Western-produced scholarship in Islamic studies. Daneshgar also examines networks of journals, research centers, and universities in both Sunni and Shia contexts, and looks at examples of Quranic interpretation there. Ultimately, he offers a constructive program for enriching Islamic studies by fusing the best of Western theories with the best philological practices developed in Muslim academic contexts, aimed at encouraging respectful but critical engagement with the Qur'an.
Additional text
This insightful analysis of 'Islamic apologetics,' from a first-hand witness, is an invaluable testimony on the current intellectual debates in the Islamic world, particularly in South-East Asia and Iran.
