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Hermeneutics and the Future of Islam in America Call for Papers Deadline for Abstract Submission: January 15, 2007
One of the most pressing questions facing Muslims today is the interpretive direction that Muslim communities and societies choose to adopt in the 21st century. The future is often presented as a struggle between competing hermeneutical approaches to foundational texts and praxis labeled ‘traditional,’ ‘Salafi,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘Sufi,’ ‘indigenous,’ and so on. Debate over the merits of each approach takes place in public forums, from the popular press and academic publications to blogs and list-serves and carries on in cafés, mosques, classrooms, and living-rooms. This year's CIR conference invites papers that carefully examine the terminology, assumptions and methodologies that underlie the prevailing or emerging approaches to Islam in America. We welcome papers that speak to any of the following:
What are the origins and semantic fields of terms like ‘traditional,’ ‘Salafi,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘Sufi,’ ‘indigenous,’ and so on? (We mention only a few designations to serve as examples, but all such terms are open to examination.) What connotations do they carry? Who are the key players, institutions, and movements that define these terms, and do they rep-resent disparate segments of society with competing interests? Are there consequences for the American-Muslim community if any one of these approaches takes a front seat in the public arena? II) The Methodology Do these approaches privilege the same foundational textual sources and spiritual and intellectual figures? Is each approach accompanied by a different set of core assump-tions? What is the difference in their interpretive methodologies? How do these ap-proaches differ with regard to their respective emphases on religious law, theology, and ethics? III) Case Study: Pluralism By employing any one methodology, papers in this panel should demonstrate the herme-neutic at play as applied to the issue of pluralism. As opposed to other panels that are ex-pected to be descriptive, this panel encourages papers that argue from within a particular methodological framework, adopting the perspective of an ‘insider.’ IV) Rapprochement Are the different approaches mutually exclusive or do they share common ground? If they are mutually exclusive, where do the fault lines lie? Is there an intellectual barzakh, or a threshold space, that could serve to bridge or transcend the perceived divides? Can we locate figures in Muslim intellectual history whose methods could be viewed as paradigms for reconciliation?
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION Please submit abstracts of no more than 500 words that address any aspect of this theme by 15 January 2007. Successful candidates will be informed of their selection by 1 February 2007. Submissions of abstracts and papers will only be accepted electronically. Please submit your abstract, a recent resume/CV and short biographical sketch as MS Word or PDF attachments to yaleCIR@gmail.com. Further inquiries may also be made at the same email address. Additional details about the program and past conferences are available at www.yale.edu/cir. Please forward this call for papers to anyone interested in contributing a paper or attending the conference.
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