Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? as Disciplinary Critique Charting a Way Forward for Islamic Studies Michael Pregill | January 24, 2017 Critical Approaches / Pedagogy, Visual Culture About Critical Approaches Perhaps the main takeaway students and scholars of Islam should derive from Shahab Ahmed's What Is Islam? is that instead of avoiding definitions of Islam, blithely insisting that the sheer diversity of Muslim thought, practice, and experience makes such an enterprise impossible, we should tackle the question head-on and consider what that diversity really means for the problem of definition. But how to move forward? How best to explore the implications of such an argument, operationalizing the consequences of his observations in practical terms? Read the rest of this entry