The making of Islamic reform (iṣlāḥ) in Colonial Algeria (1882–1938): Ibadi scholars, French officials and the conceptual foundations of modern Islamic studies
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Among the conceptual foundations on which scholars of modern Islam have built their narratives for decades, ideas such as “reform” and “reformism” have been singled out for charges of Eurocentricism and Orientalism. At the same time, research on early modern Islam leads us to question the specificities of these nineteenth and twentieth-century concepts. Building on this scholarship, this article examines the case of Algerian Ibadi reform (iṣlāḥ) in order to reassert the specificity of the early twentieth century as a moment when Islamic concepts acquired new meanings, but also as a moment of deep entanglements between Islamic and colonial knowledge production. It shows that a systematic understanding of iṣlāḥ as social and religious reform linked to the idea of progress developed only during the interwar period. It also demonstrates that the emic and etic uses of iṣlāḥ and “reform” developed together, a result of the confluence between modern Islamic scholarship and scholarship about Islam in the early twentieth-century Algerian colonial public sphere. Thus, the conceptual history of iṣlāḥ warns us against approaches that consider emic and etic categories bounded entities and invites us instead to unravel their complexities.
期刊介绍:
Die Welt des Islams focuses on the history and culture of the people of Islam from the end of the eighteenth century until present times. Special attention is given to literature from this period. Over the last 40 years, Die Welt des Islams has established itself as a journal unrivalled by any other in its field. Its presence in both the major research libraries of the world and in the private libraries of professors, scholars and students shows this journal to be an easy way of staying on top of your discipline. Boasting a large international circulation, Die Welt des Islams takes care to supply its readers with articles in English, French and German.