In the academic study of religion in North American (and perhaps European) settings, theoretical frameworks conceived by modern and pre-modern European and American thinkers are employed to study religious traditions and phenomena from all over the world.
Why can we not use Islamic (or Chinese or Indian) theories of religion as our points of departure in the study of religious phenomena?
What advantage do Western theories of religion have over theories conceived in non-Western contexts (assuming that the latter is a real category) other than the fact that the North American academy identifies with the European tradition?
The North American discourse is clearly Eurocentric. Yet the academics in this part of the world present their analyses in the most universal terms. They pretend that speculative thought with potential explanatory power does not exist outside of Euro-American tradition.
Let's put aside the European bias of the American academy for a moment, and ask another question: Does speculative thought with explanatory power that we would call “theory” of religion exist in recent or contemporary Islamic thought? Do the works of Ali Shariati, Maudoodi, Bennabi, Ismail Faruqi, or al-Attas, for example, have the potential to serve as theoretical frameworks for the study of religion? Going back further: What is the potential of classical Islamic thought (Ibn Khuldūn, al-Bīrūnī, and possibly others) in terms of religious theory? I cannot answer these questions at this point.
Qur'an, the foundational text in the Islamic tradition, does offer substrate for a theory of religion. I wonder if the works of classical or modern Islamic thinkers could be viewed as advancing Qur'anic theory of religion.
There is no doubt that we need to explore the theoretical potential of pre-modern and modern Islamic writings. However, the advancement of Qur'anic theory of religion should be viewed as a continuing pursuit. No past or present thinkers can possibly exhaust the theoretical potential of the Qur'anic text.
Unless we can identify and further Islamic theoretical works, we cannot expect them to be utilized in the North American academy, or any other settings for that matter.
