A response to Andrew Rippin’s review of The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾan​

University of Victoria Professor Emeritus of Islamic History and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London Andrew Rippin’s review of the first volume of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾan (IEQ) describes it as “sumptuous and carefully produced,” “an impressive beginning”, and “a considerable contribution to the study of the Quran” (p. 222 par. 1). His review goes downhill from there. In the process he appeals to a purported shared understanding of the nature of academic scholarship on Islam and makes serious charges that give pause and warrant scrutiny, which this response is meant to be.
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Rippin asserts that IEQ “does not participate in all the norms of academic work” (p. 222 par. 1) and “does not partake of the cumulative nature of the academic enterprise” (p. 223 par. 4). This critique is alarming because of the assumption on which it is based: that serious scholarship on Islam is defined by Orientalism sine qua non. That is, the historical tradition of knowledge- production is primarily vested in the culture of Western institutions of higher education. Such a bias shows lack of awareness of another view that considers Orientalism an elaborate syllabus of errors in which are occasionally found pearls. There is unquestionably another, independent and older scholarly tradition on Islam that is arguably more authoritative, and that it should have been the focus of every academe to study and convey with utmost transparency, because it has its own unexplored trove of insights. However, while Orientalism has vastly capitalized on that tradition, it has also actively occulted it in order to pass itself off as original knowledge; worse, it has distorted it in order to make it say the opposite of what it actually says, for a variety of reasons. This is what projects like IEQ are good at debunking and this is why the tightly held industry is expected to chafe.

Journal of Islamic Sciences, Vol. 14 (Summer 2016) No. 1

Gibril Haddad

Gibril Fouad Haddad is Assistant Professor at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies, University Brunei Darussalam.