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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
Everyone knows that the work of scholars in America is often considered to be irrelevant to the real issues of life. According to the mild anti-intellectualism that seems to be an endemic feature of American culture, anything that is “academic” is automatically impractical, complex, and impenetrable—in short, it is bad. This is a little hard for professors to live with; no one likes being called a pointy-headed intellectual or an egghead. The very skills and specializations that are the keys to academic success can be seen by the public as defects that remove scholars from the sphere of ordinary existence and disqualify their pronouncements. Here I would like to argue that the gap between academics and an unappreciative public is in good part a function of the language and style of communication that scholars commonly practice in all fields. But if in fact there are large segments of the public who are keenly interested in issues relating to subjects like Middle Eastern studies, or the study of Islam, it should be possible for academics to communicate the results of their labor in clear and meaningful ways. If qualified scholars do not respond to the demands of the public, we know what the alternative is: the public will remain content with the standard media sources of information and disinformation.
I would like to thank Fatemeh Keshavarz and Ahmet Karamustafa, of Washington University in St. Louis, for encouraging my initial public reflections on this topic, and likewise to Shafique Virani for organizing this collection of papers.
2 This translation was published as Baqli, Ruzbihan, The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master (Chapel Hill, NC: Parvardigar Press, 1997).Google Scholar
3 Strunk, William Jr. and White, E.B., The Elements of Style (New York: Penguin Press, 2007)Google Scholar; George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon (April 1946), available online at http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html.
4 Ernst, Carl W., Guide to Sufism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1997)Google Scholar; reprint ed., under the title Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition of Islam (Shambhala, 2011).
5 This book eventually became Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
6 See for instance the reports of the Imagining America Consortium, available online at http://www.imaginingamerica.org/, which aims to integrate “all the missions of higher education: research, teaching, service, and public engagement.” A similar effort is under way at the National Center for the Study of University Engagement (NCSUE), as seen on its web site at http://ncsue.msu.edu/default.aspx.
7 I have discussed some of these issues in “Changing Approaches to Islamic Studies in North American Universities,” in Islamic Studies Curricula, ed. Azizan Baharuddin (Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya, forthcoming).
8 For a dossier on the 2002 UNC Summer Reading Program controversy, including several articles plus press coverage, see http://www.unc.edu/~cernst/quran.htm.
9 In this respect, I am calling for a recognition of the importance of public scholarship as similar to the doctrine of fard kifaya in Islamic law, i.e., a duty that needs to be fulfilled by some but not all members of the community.