Utilising Muslim Scholarship in the West: Overcoming Orientalism in the Academy and Academic Imperialism

The social sciences and humanities as they are taught in Westernuniversities are predominantly comprised of Western scholarship. It has beenknown for a long time that a Westerncentric bias exists in almost alldisciplines which has disadvantaged scholarship produced by Muslim thinkersin particular for centuries. This is concerning because universities are oftenimagined as places of justice and ethical conduct, but in reality, it may be thecase that our institutions are involved in epistemic violence by marginalisingnon-Western figures from our teaching and research. In this paper, I will arguethat even though Western academics imagine ourselves to be enlightened andopen-minded, we regularly overlook the scholarship that is produced outsideof the West which is unfortunate because there are many lessons to learn fromnon-Western intellectuals and leaders throughout the ages. In particular,important Muslim figures throughout history have been ignored because of anunderlying Islamophobia that has wrongly imagined Muslims from the MiddleEast, Africa or Asia as having little original or meaningful ideas to offer. As anon-theologian and a non-expert in the Ahl ul Bayt , in this paper I will askwhether lessons can be learnt from Islam s holy Prophet and his respectedprogeny for the social sciences by way of drawing upon concepts or ideas thatthey introduced that may be helpful for understanding some of the trends andpatterns that characterise the contemporary global order. This sort ofexploration is rarely undertaken by Western academics which is regretablegiven that many millions of people around the world look up to such iminentfigures as some of the most inspirational and important figures to have everexplained social processes.

کلیدواژه ها:

Orientalism ، academy ، academic imperialism ، western academia ، ethics of knowledge