Past / Current
PAST: PhD.My PhD research was on Western (six British Christian) images of Islam in the nineteenth century. (There is a picture of Birmingham University's Great Hall, where I graduated, below ). I argued that writers' a priori assumptions about the status of Islam tended to determine how they saw Islam. They constructed a self-se rving image. My own approach has been greatly influenced by the work of Edward Said (1935-2003) and Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916 - 2000). Said draws our attention to the relationship between the colonial enterprise, and how Western scholars constructed images of their colonial subjects. The scholars' constructs were used to give moral justification to imperialism's concept of the "white man's burden" - the West was intellectually and morally superior! See the Edward Said Archive Smith defined the task of the outsider scholar, writing about Others, as to write an account that will elicit their approval. Too often, insiders have failed to recognise themselves in these accounts. We all write, he said, for a global community. For Smith, see W. C. Smith. Of course, insiders as well as outsiders tell different stories, depending upon their status and interests - so no account is likely to attract everyone's consent. Nonetheless, fascinated by the degree to which outsiders can understand other religions, cultures, worldviews from an insider's perspective, I started to use ethnographic participant observation as my main research tool, striving towards collaborative insider-outsider research. | The test of a collaborative account is: are those involved in the research process willing to concede that it has an authority, a truthfulness, even if it conforms exactly to none of their individual stories? My interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue raises the problematic of rival theological truth claims. While I believe that people should enjoy the right to inform others about their beliefs, even to persuade people to change them, I am convinced that polemic and debate is bankrupt. I am interested in post-colonial literature, and debates about "multiculturalsm"/identity in the modern, pluralist world we inhabit. I have an on-going project, originally inspired by Salman Rushdie's fiction, working on themes addressing belonging, identity, the migrant condition. I also use film and literature (especially colonial and post-colonial) in my teaching. I would like to hear from other academics, or from anyone, who shares my interests. Email me. Current: editing a series on Studying Religion for Continuum, arguing that Religious Studies' bias towards insider sensitivity leads to reluctance to deal with controversial issues but that these can be discussed without giving gratuitous offense, preserving the field's claim to be a critical discipline. |
