A
NY DISCUSSION OF THE ACADEMIC STUDYof religions in North Africa
and West Asia confronts two fundamental issues: the name of the region
and the intricate ways in which it is linked to the so-called ‘West’.^1 The first
issue will be discussed immediately below. The second will emerge in various
sections of this chapter, which follows a stipulated order in the interests of
giving coherence to this book, whose impetus stems from a particular Western
academic moment of concern for matters of globalization and its effects on
the academic discipline of the study of religions. This point of departure is
linked to contemporary geopolitical realities that link the West to North Africa
and West Asia in particular ways that affect how this chapter can be written
and with what degree of historical consciousness, for the very development of
an academic study of religions would not have been possible without two
developments: the development of academic institutions called universities and
of a positivistic scientific discourse within that of modernity. While the first
owes much to Islamic history in North Africa and West Asia, the second owes
little at all. Yet both are today intertwined symbiotically to such a degree that
a chapter on the topic of the academic study of religions in North Africa and
West Asia necessitates raising this central point from the beginning. In fact, I
would suggest that this interconnection between the history and politics of the
on-going growth of universities and the presence of positivistic discourses both
within and without, on the one hand, Western and, on the other, Islamic,
Jewish, or Christian institutions of higher learning probably represents one of
North Africa and West Asia’s distinguishing particularities in comparison to
the other regions of the world.Geographical parametersThe definitions for this region in existence today often reflect ideological
dimensions embedded in the processes of constructing nomenclature. These
choices, in turn, may reify assumptions that are part of the challenges faced
by contemporary scholars who seek to develop language and categories of
interpretation that are less ideologically based. Such efforts are particularly
important in a book focused on mapping the development of the study of
religions worldwide, in light of the hegemony of the English language and neo-
liberal values that so often accompany the current processes of globalization.
Hidden in these processes is the very use of the word ‘religion’, and thus ‘study
of religions’, as well as the title that was originally proposed for this chapter:
‘North Africa and the Middle East’.
The term ‘North Africa’ causes little debate as far as the region from
Morocco to Libya is concerned, at least in the present context. Many scholars
also include Egypt, a country that is more often included in the term ‘Middle76
PATRICE BRODEUR