Concordia Discors or Teach the Conflicts. Reflections on the Validity and Heuristics of Scholarly Conflict

Abstract

What kind of methodological and axiological lodestars would the academic community of Islam scholars do wise to observe in the current situation of intense political and medial ‘discursivization’ of Islam and Muslims? How are ‘we’ – our imagined scholarly community – to navigate in a field that over the past decades has moved from a fairly select and exclusive island to an increasingly deceitful and contested archipelago? Surely the first thing to do must be critical self-reflection, asking ourselves questions about our trade’s ideological and political implications and about the truths we hold selfevident. The second thing to do is also rather ‘self-centred’, albeit in a less meta-wise way, and that is to try to decide and spell out and commit oneself to some kind of research agenda.