Islamic Thought Beyond Denominational Borders Challenges and Perspectives for a Comprehensive Approach IASInstitute for Advanced Study

T he disciplines of Arabic and Islamic Studies have undergone a major paradigm shift over the past two decades. For most of the twentieth century, the majority of scholars in these fields focused primarily on the limited materials available in print, taking manuscript materials into consideration only by way of exception. During the latter part of the twentieth century, methodological considerations were often at the forefront of the discussion, in an attempt to relate to and catch up with the theoretical discussions in other disciplines such as history, sociology, or anthropology. Today, there is a growing awareness among scholars of Near Eastern Studies of the vast and mostly still unexplored manuscript collections in countless public and private libraries in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Eastern and Western Europe, and North America, and, therefore, of the many glaring lacunae in research. We can say without any exaggeration that the number of so far untapped textual sources can be estimated at several hundred thousand works and fragments of works. Other than was still the case some twenty or thirty years ago, philology, which can be broadly defined as the study of literary texts, the establishment of their original form, and the analysis of their meaning in their respective intellectual contexts, is again on the rise, with a growing number of specialists engaging in producing critical text editions and covering entirely new ground on the basis of so far neglected manuscript treasures. There are many causes that prompted this shift. A major factor was no doubt the growing importance of religion evoking an increasing awareness for religio-cultural heritage in defining one's own identity. The Islamic Revolution of 1979/80, for example, resulted in a growing interest among the scholars of Iran in their own religious heritage, including its vast collections of Arabic and Persian manuscripts. Over the past thirty years, hundreds of catalogues have been produced covering by now all major Iranian collections. The Shii Zaydis of Yemen also undertook enormous efforts to save their own religious heritage through catalogues and editions. A similar observation can be made for Turkish scholarship, whose representatives increasingly value, rediscover, and study their own Islamic heritage— this after nearly a century of almost complete neglect of the Ottoman past. The rise of Salafi Islam had a similar effect, generating an ever-growing appreciation of the Islamic religious heritage, including manuscripts (of the right sort only, of course). Another important factor to completely change the fields of Arabic and Islamic Studies is the digital revolution and the new technological possibilities it offers to preserve, disseminate, and explore manuscript sources. The unprecedented accessibility of completely new primary materials in nearly unlimited quantities now allows scholars to enter unexplored fields of research—and in many cases to define such fields from scratch. In all disciplines of learning, scholars are acutely aware that what we possess now represents only a fraction of the Islamic literature that has been preserved. Against the background of this new awareness of what remains to be done and the increased availability of primary materials, a growing number of scholars of Islam are nowadays returning to basic research and solid philological work in its widest sense. As a result of these developments, we are witnessing a period of extraordinary and constant discoveries and breakthroughs in all disciplines of Near Eastern Studies. The paradigm shift I just described, therefore, started primarily within the Islamic world and was partly prompted by the political developments in the region and the ensuing rise of religious consciousness over the previous decades. However, the resulting scholarly awareness often stops short at religious borders, disregarding non-Islamic sources and even non-orthodox Islamic sources: scholarly engagement embedded in a predefined cultural-religious context rarely comes without narrowly defined ideological objectives and constraints. The fact that the disciplinary borders in Western, especially European, academia between Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, and the study of Eastern Christianity are traditionally rigorous is an additional obstacle. Scholars still normally opt for a onedimensional approach with an (often exclusive) focus on either Islamic Thought Beyond Denominational Borders Challenges and Perspectives for a Comprehensive Approach IAS Institute for Advanced Study