ReOrienting the Global Study of Religion - Dyala Hamzah
January 7, 2021, 1:30 PM EST (UTC -5).
Dr. Dyala Hamzah, Université de Montréal, will speak on:
“(De)commissioning Ibn Khaldun? Sufis, Statesmen and Publicists during the Long Nineteenth century”
Hosted on Zoom: Meeting ID: 89033587339,
Passcode: 1234
The Keenan Chair of Interfaith Studies and the James McGill Professor of Islamic Philosophy are collaborating in a reflection on religion, Islam, and cosmopolitanism associated with McGill’s academic tradition of Islamic Studies, and epitomized by scholars such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Fazlur Rahman, and Toshihiko Izutsu. In preparation for the Keenan Conference on World Religions and Globalization, to be held in Montreal in Spring 2022, we are hosting an online lecture series titled ReOrienting the Global Study of Religion: History, Theory, and Society.
Abstract: The Ibn Khaldun of the long 19th century is usually either conjured as a theoretical framework in order to make sense of the venture of Islamic reform or broken down to a cluster of atomized concepts which then one attempts to trace in the thought of said Islamic reformers. Both these readings partake in the uneasy assumption of a “European discovery” of Ibn Khaldun, and both obfuscate the fact that while the 14th century historian did not advocate reform, reformists had no vested interest in the discipline of history.
Taking a step back from the usual genealogies of Islamic reform, this lecture explores the impact of such disjunctive readings on our reconstructions of individual trajectories that made up this long 19th century. It posits that the significance of their Khaldunian engagements by such Islamic entrepreneurs as the mystic Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Sanusi (1787-1859), the statesman Khayreddine Pasha (1822-1890) and the publicist Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935) can only accrue if we problematize the extent to which Ibn Khaldun had become naturalized by the time of the Tanzimat and the Nahda, within the so-called Ottoman center and its peripheries, in sufi networks, bureaucratic practice and the public sphere.
Dyala Hamzah is Associate Professor of Arab History, Université de Montréal. She is the author of the forthcoming Muhammad Rashid Rida ou le tournant salafiste (CNRS Éditions, 2021) and editor of The Making of the Arab Intellectual (Routledge, 2013).