Studies of Islam, Economics, and Governance A Survey of Some New Developments

Abstract

Introduction
This paper is a report on the state of research in two areas of Islamic
studies: Islam and economics and Islam and governance. I researched and
wrote it as part of my internship at the Ford Foundation during the summer
of 1992. On Discourse. The study of Islam in the United States has moved far beyond
the traditional historical and philological methods. This is perhaps
best explained by the development of analytically rigorous social science
methods that have contributed to a better balance between the humanistic
concerns of the more traditional approaches and efforts at systematizing
the study of Islam and classifying it across boundaries of communities,
religions, even epochs. This is said to have s t a d with the development
of irenic attitudes towards Islam, which changed the direction of westem
orientalist writings from indifference (at best) and often open hostility to
and contempt of Islamic values (however they were understood) to phenomenological
works by scholars who saw the study of Islam as something
to be taken seriously and for its own sake, which is best exemplified
by Clifford Geertz's Islam Observed.
The work of Edward Said contested this evolution, and the publication
of his Orientalism has been described as "a stick of dynamite"' that,
despite its impact in mobilizing a reevaluation of the field, was unwarranted
in its pessimism. In any case, the field has continued to evolve,
with the most powerful force moving it being the subject itself. The
phenomenological/orientalist approach, if we can point to one today, ...