Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

Neo-Orientalism and the Study of Religion

Abstract

This essay is written by Aaron Hughes, whose book Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry Into Disciplinary Apologetics (Equinox 2016) served as a model for all participants in the conference “Hijacked: A Critical Treatment of the Public Rhetoric of Good and Bad Religion” as we considered what shape rigorous analysis of this good/bad religion dichotomy might take. In his contribution, Hughes demonstrates how such rhetoric is highly operative in much of the subfield of Islamic religious studies and brings to light that its primary function is almost certainly to protect a specifically progressive view of Islam rather than generate and analyse historically critical data about the religion across time.