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Presidential Address—MESA 1983: Our Rôles as Scholars and Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Richard T. Antoun*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Binghamton

Extract

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

I wish to speak to you tonight about common dilemmas we face as scholars, citizens, and human beings. Each of these rôles involves distinctive obligations and at the same time casts a shadow on the others. Let me begin by discussing a subject that has enthralled or distracted (depending on your point of view) many members of our association over the last few years, the subject of religious resurgence. I shall confine my remarks to Islamic resurgence, since my own research in Jordan and Iran makes me somewhat more familiar with the phenomenon as it works in local contexts there, although the questions raised may quite possibly apply to the phenomena of Jewish and Christian resurgence.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1984

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References

1 See Said, Edward W., Orientaktm (Vintage Books, New York 1979).Google Scholar

2 See Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1962).Google Scholar

3 See Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, “The True Meaning of Scripture: An Empirical Historian’s Nonreductionist Interpretation of the Quran,” IJMES 11 (1980).Google Scholar

4 See Nadel, Sigmund F., The Foundations of Social Anthropology (Cohen and West, London 1953).Google Scholar

5 See Daniel, Norman,Islam and the Wert: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1962), and Mam, Europe and Empire (Aldine-Atherton Press, Chicago 1966).Google Scholar

6 Whorf, Benjamin L., “Science and Linguistics,” in Carroll, J. B. ed., Language, Thought and Reality (John Wiley and Sons, New York 1956).Google Scholar

7 Faris, J., “Pax Britannica and the Sudan: S. F. Nadel,” in Asad, T. ed., Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (Ithaca Press, London 1973).Google Scholar

8 See Nadel, S. F., “Witchcraft in Four African Societies: An Essay in Comparison,” American Anthropologist 54 (Jan.-March 1952), and Nupe Religion (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See Fischer, M. J., Iran From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1980).Google Scholar