language groups have developed etymologically over time. Their meanings have
probably changed as a result of both internal and external developments,
however one defines the boundary delineating ‘internal’ from ‘external’. In other
words, the fluid nature of the meaning of d¥nover long periods of time, for
example, needs to be understood in terms of its relationship to other words
in Arabic as well as to other Semitic and non-Semitic terms with which Arabic
speakers came into contact over centuries. In addition to this oral process of
change must be added another layer of complexity with the introduction of a
literate Arabic culture, especially with the emergence of the Qur’Çn as a stable
and referential text that helped create centuries later an impression of
hermeneutic immobility in Qur’Çnic terminology, including the word d¥n. The
same can be said of the long process of change from oral to literate cultures
through which other language groups also passed, though not all at the same
time and in the same way. Persianate and Hebraic cultures, with later Aramaic
and Syriac developments, began their literatures much earlier than the Arabic
speaking world, while Turkic literatures developed much later. A thorough
history of the pre-modern study of religions would need to take all of these
historical developments into account.
Finally, many of these words are still in common use today, although their
meanings have often been affected by modern influences stemming from
European colonial languages. These changes also affect how one writes today
about this history, especially in a language other than those still actively alive
in the production of knowledge in NAWA. This chapter is one such case, using
English concepts to describe and analyze what stems from very different
language groups, whose key words relating to the modern study of religions
have definitely been affected by the influence of English words. The writing of
this chapter therefore cannot avoid taking place within this power dynamic,
linked to the use of the English language as part of the empire-building process
some call pax Americanawhich lies at the heart of a neo-liberal discourse that
currently propels a particular kind of globalization. This kind of globalization,
in turn, causes many reactions central to our topic today. In other words, we
can only write about the past in the present. I write this chapter in English,
within all the present power dynamics we know, to describe both a NAWA
present in which I do not live as well as a distant past stemming from a complex
set of linguistic interactions that were themselves part of power dynamics
unique to their periods, only fragments of which have survived in the form of
manuscripts useful for our present analytical purposes.
The best example of these complex power dynamics related to the pre-modern
study of religions for the region of NAWA—and beyond—is what European
Orientalists have called ‘heresiographical literature’, better named ‘literature
on religious others’ (Brodeur 1999, esp. intro. and ch. 1). It developed and
flourished from the second to the seventh centuries of Islamic history (8th to
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