Islamic studies
[4] In this multidisciplinary program, scholars from diverse areas (history, culture, literature, art) participate and exchange ideas pertaining to the particular field of study.
"[6] The study of Islam is part of a tradition that started in Western academia on a professional scale about two centuries ago, and has been previously linked to social concern.
[7] This academic tradition has not only led to an accumulation of knowledge, even if some of it is almost forgotten or badly neglected, but has also witnessed major changes in interests, questions, methods, aesthetics, and ethics of Islam.
A recent HEFCE report emphasises the increasing, strategic importance for Western governments since 9/11 of Islamic studies in higher education and also provides an international overview of the state of the field.
[11] The first attempt to understand Islam as a topic of modern scholarship (as opposed to a Christological heresy) was within the context of 19th-century Christian European Oriental studies.
Leading in the field were German researchers like Theodore Nöldeke with his Geschichte des Qorāns (History of the Quran), and Ignaz Goldziher 's work on hadith (Muslim Studies).
Themes of special interest are: The history of women and gender in Islamic studies experienced a surge of scholarly research during the early 1990's.
[15] The work from this era sparked a significant amount of academic research in that, in the subsequent twenty years, not only expanded and detailed the arguments put forth by these scholars, but also analyzed and improved upon their methodologies.
Recent years have seen a shift towards utilizing a broader range of sources and developing more intricate interpretive frameworks, some of which have even challenged the idea of a uniform Islamic gender discourse.
Following the impactful comprehensive syntheses of the early 1990's, more in-depth and context-specific studies have delved into social customs, religious beliefs, and the interplay between the two.
It also often includes other modern, classic or ancient languages of the Middle East and other areas that are or have been part of, or influenced by, Islamic culture, such as Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Azerbaijanian and Uzbek.
Hence the term encompasses religious buildings as well as secular ones, historic as well as modern expressions and the production of all places that have come under the varying levels of Islamic influence.
Despite such a prohibition, depictions of human beings do occur in Islamic art, such as that of the Mughals, demonstrating a strong diversity in popular interpretation over the pre-modern period.
