| Summary/Abstract |
In the wake of European colonization, Muslims across the globe have wrestled with the problem of intellectual dualism, or the bifurcation of knowledge into the distinct Islamic and modern Western spheres. This article examines the career of Pakistani intellectual and University of Chicago professor, Fazlur Rahman (1919–1988), who emerged as a particularly significant figure in this debate over intellectual dualism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Arguing that academic methodologies were integral for Muslim understandings of Islam, Rahman broke down the dichotomy between Western and Islamic knowledge in favour of a merging of the two, an approach I term ‘fusionism’. He propagated this fusionist vision, with mixed success, in his native Pakistan and across the Islamic world. In his position as a respected professor at the University of Chicago, Rahman furthermore re-imagined and utilized the Western university as a valuable space for modern Islamic thought, thereby challenging any sharp boundary between the two discourses and their respective institutions.
|