Abdal Hakim Murad - How Islamic is "Islamic Studies"?

About this lecture

In this inaugural professorial lecture, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad — the Aziz Foundation Professor of Islamic Studies — surveys the troubled state of Islamic education across the Muslim world and the Western academy, tracing the historical richness of pre-modern Islamic intellectual culture and contrasting it with the curricular heteronomy imposed by modern states in countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Bangladesh, and Singapore. Using the metaphor of a spiritual seeker (Majnun) on a Rihla in search of authentic sacred knowledge, he examines how state control, political Islam, and the ambiguity-intolerant strands of modern Salafism have eroded the diverse, cosmopolitan tradition of classical Islamic scholarship. The lecture also critically evaluates the terminology used in Western discourse on Islam — including "Islamism," "jihadist," and "Salafi" — and asks whether Western universities might now offer a more authentic engagement with pre-modern Islamic intellectual heritage than institutions in the Muslim world itself.