Pre-Islamic Arabic Prose Literature & Its Growth

PG PROGRAMME
ISLAMIC STUDIES
Semester—III
IS18308DCE
(ISLAMIC STUDIES: APPROACHES AND METHODOLOGY)
DIRECTORATE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR
IS18308DCE
Copyright © Directorate of Distance Education, University of Kashmir
First Edition: 2020
ISBN:
Course Prepared by:

Dr. Mehraj-ud-Din Bhat
Assistant Professor, Islamic Studies
Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora
Content Editing by:
Prof. Manzoor Ahmad Bhat
Department of Islamic Studies, University of Kashmir
Format Editing by:
Dr. Mohammad Dawood Sofi
Assistant Professor, Islamic Studies (Contractual)
Directorate of Distance Education, University of Kashmir
Coordinated by:
1. Dr. Mohammad Altaf Ahanger
Sr. Assistant Professor (Urdu)
2. Dr. Mohammad Dawood Sofi
Published by:
Director
Directorate of Distance Education
University of Kashmir
Srinagar
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Table of Contents Page No
Unit I i) Origin and Development of Islamic Studies in the Islamic 8-19

Context (An Overview)
ii) Development of Islamic Studies in the Western Context 20-32

(An Overview)
iii) Approaches in Islamic Studies: Traditional, Modern 33-46

(Muslim and Orientalist)
Unit II i) Nature and Scope of Islamic Studies 47-60
ii) Islamic Studies as a Social Science and its Relationship 61-77

with other Social Sciences
iii) Inter-Disciplinary Approaches 78-87
iv) Relationship with Oriental Languages and their Literature 88-103
Unit III i) Project Report Writing and its Significance 106-114
ii) Selecting the Project Topic and Writing the Synopsis of 115-125
the Project
iii) Sources and Methods of Data Collection 126-135
Unit IV i) Examining and Using the Data 138-147
ii) Use of Chapterization, References, Tables and Appendices 148-161
iii) Transliteration
162-171
iv) Use of Introduction, Conclusion, Bibliography in the
Project Report 172-185
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A Note to the Students
Assalamu Alykum
Dear Students
It makes us ecstatic to welcome you to the first semester of PG Program in Islamic Studies. To
fulfill your academic requirements and to satisfy your learning interest and zeal, we are
presenting in your service some important words regarding PG Islamic Studies Program.
The adept and competent scholars of Islamic Studies have prepared the study material that is
commonly known by the title Self Learning Material in Open and Distance Learning (ODL)
system of Education. All the Self Learning Material has been prepared and compiled according
to the Syllabus. While compiling the material, serious and sincere efforts were taken to keep into
consideration your standard and interest. The Self Learning Material by no means can be a
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teacher. Each Course in the Self Learning Material consists of minimum two and maximum four
Units that are further divided into various topics and sub-topics. In order to minimize the
differences between the formal and distance learning, the Structure/contents of each lesson/topic
is as:
1. Introduction/Background
2. Aims and Objectives
3. Main Topic/Lesson
4. Let Us Sum Up
5. Check Your Progress
6. Suggested Readings
You may question the reason behind division of one topic into various sub topics. Herein lies its
answer. A teacher in formal mode of education first introduces the topic in classroom, presents
the aims and objectives and thereof ensures a conducive atmosphere for teaching learning
process. To proceed to the main body, the teacher touches the background of the topic and then
presents the subject matter in a comprehensive manner. Meanwhile, the teacher asks several
questions to the students in order to gain their attention and balance the teaching learning
process. The teacher finally concludes the lecture by recommending some relevant books to the
students.
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Now you may have understood the purpose behind division of a topic into various sub topics.
While going through the pages of study material, it is expected that the students will experience
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distance mode of learning.
Moreover, the Self Learning Material is an effort to enable you to use your spare time at home in
learning, besides getting prepared to face successfully the challenges of life. It is not argued that
the material is catering all the needs regarding your studies and course. However, in the process
of learning and while trying to grasp an idea, if you face any problem or get stuck somewhere, or
feel that something is out of your ingenuity and understanding, you just underline the point. To
clear the confusion and make the things understandable to you, a contact cum counseling
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then strongly insist your teachers to teach the whole course within 20 days of contact program. In
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Finally, regarding the standard and quality of the Self Learning Material, kindly suggest your
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Craving and praying for your success and ambitious for your intellectual pursuits.
Coordinators
1. Dr. Mohammad Altaf Ahanger
Sr. Assistant Professor (Urdu)
2. Dr. Mohammad Dawood Sofi
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Unit I
i) Origin and Development of Islamic Studies in the Islamic Context

(An Overview)
ii) Development of Islamic Studies in the Western Context (An
Overview)
iii) Approaches in Islamic Studies: Traditional, Modern (Muslim and
Orientalist)
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UNIT I
Lesson 1: Origin and Development of Islamic Studies in the Islamic Context (An Overview)
Lesson Structure
1.3.1 Introduction
1.3.2 Objectives
1.1.3 Islam and Islamic Studies
1.1.4 The idea of Religion
1.1.5 Definition of Islamic Studies
1.1.6 The Islamic Paradigm
1.1.7 Islamic approach to Islamic Studies
1.1.8 Educational Philosophy of Islamic Studies Discipline
1.1.9 Let Us Sum Up
1.1.10 Check Your Progress
1.1.11 Suggested Readings
1.1.1 Introduction
Islam is the most widely-diffused of the religious traditions and its study today is often highly-
segmented into forms of specialised historical and regional study. In a Muslim context, Islamic
studies is the umbrella term for the Islamic sciences ('Ulum al-Din) Islam can, however, claim a
core narrative, expressed in the most widely-influential literary works which sought to define the
correct understanding of the Muslim scriptural canon. The term “Islamic studies” as currently
used in professional journals, academic departments, and institutions of higher learning
encompasses a vast field of research, all of which has “Islam” as its common bond. Islamic
Studies is the discipline that engages with the world of Islam from Muhammad to the present on
the basis of knowledge of the languages of the Islamic civilisation. No-one would deny that in
recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the study of Islam worldwide, both within
the Muslim community and outside it. Such interest is contributing to significant changes in the
way that the study of Islam is both conceptualized and taught in the region. Once dominated by
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scriptural interpretation and exegesis, for some years there has been a growing trend towards the
use of new disciplinary approaches in the understanding of various religion-influenced
phenomena in Muslim societies. The field of Islamic Studies now encompasses a wide variety of
disciplines, including those of anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, and the
more interdisciplinary fields of gender studies and area studies. Outside of Islamic Studies
scholars in these disciplines are also turning their attention to the study of issues pertaining to
Muslims and Islam. The topics which such scholarship seeks to understand in Muslim societies
are also increasingly diverse, and include democracy and political pluralism, secularism,
gender, law, human rights, ethics, economic development, the environment, popular culture,
consumerism, Islamic finance, even management and organizational theory.
1.1.2 Objectives
 To understand the origin and development of Islamic Studies

 To highlight the key features and importance of this discipline
1.1.3 Islam and Islamic Studies
Islam first materialised within the Arabic language community, soon spreading from there to
peoples speaking non-Semitic languages. These peoples made a significant contribution to
Islamic civilisation. Today the Islamic world encompasses regions in Europe, Asia and Africa
from the Atlantic coast to the Philippines and the shores of East Africa to the great rivers of
Siberia. The historical core centres of the Islamic world, like the Arabian Peninsula, Greater
Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran and Afghanistan, Anatolia and parts of Central Asia are areas
where Arabic and Turkish/Persian are spoken. The field of Islamic Studies is both wide-reaching
and dynamic. It includes the range of foundational documents, traditions, institutions, and history
of Muslims in various countries and regions throughout the world from the origins of Islam to
the present day. This interdisciplinary field therefore includes history, religion, philosophy,
anthropology, Arabic language and literature, as well as literatures in other languages including
Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, and remains responsive to new discoveries, interpretations,
ideologies and theories. Islam has, from its inception, placed a high premium on education and
has enjoyed a long and rich intellectual tradition. Knowledge ('ilm) occupies a significant
position within Islam, as evidenced by the more than 800 references to it in Islam's most revered
book, the Quran. The importance of education is repeatedly emphasized in the Quran with
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frequent injunctions, such as “God will exalt those of you who believe and those who have
knowledge to high degrees” (58:11), “O my Lord! Increase me in knowledge” (20: 114) and “As
God has taught him, so let him write” (2: 282). Such verses provide a forceful stimulus for the
Islamic community to strive for education and learning.
Islamic education is uniquely different from other types of educational theory and practice
largely because of the all-encompassing influence of the Quran. The Quran serves as a
comprehensive blueprint for both the individual and society and as the primary source of
knowledge. The advent of the Quran in the seventh century was quite revolutionary for the
predominantly illiterate Arabian society. Arab society had enjoyed a rich oral tradition, but the
Quran was considered the word of God and needed to be organically interacted with by means of
reading and reciting its words. Hence, reading and writing for the purpose of accessing the full
blessings of the Quran was an aspiration for most Muslims. Thus, education in Islam
unequivocally derived its origins from a symbiotic relationship with religious instruction.
1.1.4 The idea of Religion

The comprehension of what ‘religion’ is determines the methods of understanding it. Currently,
there are various definitions of religion. Evidently, ‘specific definitions of religion express the
inclinations of their propagators’. Maxime Rodinson observes that there is a natural tendency
among Western intellectuals to view all religions along the lines of the model they are familiar
with, which is the Christian model. Therefore, it may be helpful to begin with how Islam defines
and explains religion.
The Arabic word for religion is din, which is a rich term that has several linguistic meanings.
Basically, it signifies the senses of: a) obedience and submission; b) custom, habit or course of
conduct; c) a law, a statute or an ordinance; d) judgement and requital. In a study in which the
usage of the word din in the Qur’an was surveyed it is found that it ‘has been used more or less
in the different senses in which the Arabs employed it before the advent of Islam’. When used in
a comprehensive sense, it denotes a whole way of life in which a person gives his submission
and obedience to someone whom he regards as having the ultimate authority, shapes his conduct
according to the bounds and laws and rules prescribed by that being, looks to him for
recognition, honour, and reward for loyal service, and fears the disgrace or punishment that
could follow any lack on his part.
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In this sense, the Qur’an applies the term din to all types of religious systems and excludes none
of them from its claim to religiosity (e.g. 3: 65; 42: 13; 21; 109: 6). In its theory of religion,
Islam holds that every human has inherent in his/her nature a natural inclination, called in Arabic
fitrah (The Qur’an 30: 30), to seek and understand God whether the perceived God is natural as
in Hinduism and Taoism or transcendent as in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is the natural
inner sense in all humans which has been recognised by the phenomenologist of religion as the
faculty to perceive the ‘religious’ as ‘religious’ and ‘sacred’. Muslim philosophers symbolised
the concept of a natural religious sense in the story of a boy called Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (The Living
Son of the Awake), who grew up in a remote island where there were no humans, no culture and
tradition and who was eventually able to seek and find God.
While Islam recognises the diversity of religions it also maintains their unity. According to its
theory of religion, all religions have evolved from one origin, which is the divine revelation
taught by the founders of those religions, the prophets, who are several according to the Qur’an,
which has only named a few of them (The Qur’an 4: 164). The original core and essence of all
religions is, therefore, the same (The Qur’an 42: 13). Diversity is the result of two causes: a) the
detailed laws of each religion have to be relevant to the particular conditions in which the
religion emerges (The Qur’an 5: 48) and b) the original perceptions may change due to human
add-ons in the form of interpretations, shifts in emphasis and alterations in space and time (The
Qur’an 9: 31; 42: 21). Consequently, any religion in the view of Islam has two forms: original
and historical. This applies to all religions including Islam itself. One of the aims of the study of
religion, the roots of which are found in the Qur’an, is to analyse critically the historical form in
order to discover the original. Judgement of truth claims in the study of religion is not only
desirable but one of its important objectives. ‘History of religions is an academic pursuit
composed of three disciplines: reportage, or the collection of data; construction of meaning-
wholes, or the systemization of data; and judgement or evaluation of meaning-wholes’.
1.1.5 Definition of Islamic Studies
The emergence of the modern academic study of Islam in the West was primarily ‘associated
with the general discipline of thought and expertise known as Oriental Studies or Orientalism’. It
centred on philological studies with a focus on the main languages of the Muslim world: Arabic,
Persian and Turkish as a key to the study of historical and cultural texts. ‘The pattern of
historical-linguistic scholarship on Islam remained general for a long time’, even though in due
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course there was a gradual shift from the study of the past to the study of modern Muslim
societies within specific regional settings leading eventually to the establishment of area studies
centres. The field of Islamic Studies witnessed two further major developments in the second
half of the twentieth century. The first was associated with the rise of the so-called scientific
study of the history of religion that was eventually consolidated in attempting to accommodate
the study of Islam within the discipline of religious studies. The second development came about
within the boundaries of the social sciences when more and more sociologists began to be
interested in the study of ‘other’ cultures and peoples. However, it is noticeable that the history
of Islamic Studies in the West reveals that ‘there never was at any time in the past, a fixed
paradigm that operated universally; the boundaries were constantly being revised’. It is possible
to conclude that ‘there is no generally accepted definition of the discipline of Islamic Studies,
that its boundaries are not clearly fixed, and that there are no uniform and generally accepted
programmes...It constitutes a field of studies employing various disciplines’.
In contrast, the study of Islam as a religion has a long tradition that started in the early periods of
Islamic history and is still alive today in the Muslim world. It constitutes various well-known
disciplines. In order to explore them, it would be helpful to examine first the classification of
knowledge in Islam and the place of religious studies in its scheme. Muslim scholars made
several attempts to classify the divisions of the academic disciplines that started as early as the
third/ninth century. These classifications grew immensely throughout the ages with numerous
contributions from scholars of diverse specialisations that represented the whole spectrum of the
Muslim intellectual tradition and included philosophers, historians, theologians, jurists and Sufis.
At each time, the earlier attempts were reflected upon and modified and elaborated as the various
fields of knowledge became more developed. ‘The most complete and detailed study of the
sciences and their classification, however, appears in the writings of the authors of the
eighth/fourteenth to the eleventh/seventeenth century’. Those classifications have ‘over the
centuries formed the matrix and background of the Muslim educational system’. They reflect a
summary of the curriculum studied in the various Muslim institutions of learning over the
centuries, one that lasted for a long period with very slight modifications up to the present time.
The general trend in most of those classifications is to include religious disciplines in one
distinctive class under the title ‘religious sciences’. In one of the most influential classifications
compiled by al-Ghazali in the fifth/eleventh century, religious sciences are defined as: ‘those
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which have been acquired from the prophets and are not arrived at either by reason, like
arithmetic, or by experimentation, like medicine, or by hearing, like language’. Prophets refer to
the founders of the major religions including Islam, Christianity, Judaism and the other faiths.
The definition implies a basic characteristic of religious disciplines in Islam, which is
transmission from the founder. They are termed in some other classifications as transmitted
sciences. The studies of language are also classified as transmitted sciences. The disciplines that
are arrived at by reason or experimentation are proper philosophical and natural sciences in the
modern usage. They are termed intellectual sciences as they originate from the human mind.
However, the distinction between transmitted sciences, either religious or linguistic, and
intellectual sciences should not lead one to the conclusion that the intellect or reason has no place
in the former. The authenticity and truths of the transmitted body of knowledge are undoubtedly
an intellectual endeavour. A number of Muslim scholars have drawn attention to the apparent
confusion implicit in the terminology of religious and intellectual sciences. Ibn Taymiyya, for
instance, claims that all knowledge, including religious sciences, is intellectual, in the sense that
the human mind proves its truths and apprehends them. In addition, any intellectual knowledge
of which Islam recommends its study and approves its findings, such as medicine, is in a sense a
religious science. The unity and hierarchy of the various disciplines of knowledge in Islam is a
characteristic observed by a number of scholars. In a sense, the various ‘sciences have come to
be regarded as so many branches of a single tree, which grows and sends forth leaves and fruit in
conformity with the nature of the tree itself’.
The purpose of looking to the past is so that we may gather from the tradition concepts that allow
us to reformulate form and content such that our message can be conveyed. This is important for
the creation of knowledge in a continuous manner is what indicates that we are still alive. In
conclusion, let me say that we are in dire need of creating methodologies form the tradition
which depend on Islamic texts as a source; and specifying the conditions, bases and formulations
so that we can then apply this to the human and physical sciences in a manner that corresponds to
Islamic notions of authority. The traditional fields of religious sciences are enumerated with
slight differences in most Muslim works on classifications of knowledge. It is possible to list
them as follows:
1. The sciences of the Qur’an: its readings, recitation, miraculous nature, exegesis and juristic
interpretations.
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2. The sciences of the Hadith and its methodologies including its transmission, ̇ collection,
commentaries and juristic interpretations.
3. Jurisprudence, comprising its methodologies and various branches that regulate every aspect
of human life from worship to politics.
4. Creed and theology including the study of various Muslim sects and the study of other
religions (milal).
5. Sufism.
6. History in its various forms such as biographies, chronologies and annals.
7. The science of Arabic language including its grammar, literature and lexicology, which is seen
as instrumental in understanding the religious textual sources.
8. Logic and philosophy, though strictly not part of religious sciences but included in many
religious curricula.
These religious sciences in Islam constitute what may be generally referred to as Islamic Studies
as developed within Islam. There are principles to proper understanding that must be followed in
any reading of the tradition of Islamic sciences. They are:
1. The Arabic language, which is a receptacle for Arabic logic, itself connected to Islamic
dispositions.
2. Consensus, which proper understanding must neither be oblivious to, nor contradict.
3. The Universal Objectives of the Shari’a. These are the protection of religion, self,
honour, lineage, reason, and private property.
4. The Intellectual Paradigm, which we may call also doctrine or a worldview.
5. The Juristic Principles and maxims. Examples include “Harm is not to be done, nor
reciprocated”, and “One will not bear the burden of another.”
What is most helpful in understanding the tradition is a focus on methodology and manners of
thinking: How did classical scholars come to understand the world. We are less interested in the
particulars and details they took up. The foundational texts of the Islamic tradition were
motivators to literature and sciences, and their point of origin. As such, it also stimulated the
generation of new knowledge, and was an important constituent of the Islamic civilization itself.
However, there was a decline in the seventh Islamic century after a cessation of knowledge
production. Ibn Khaldun (d. 808 AH) connected these two in his explanation of history.
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1.1.6 The Islamic Paradigm

Within the Islamic paradigm, there are some central questions surrounding God, existence, man,
the world, and life. These are fundamental questions in that there is no proceeding without
answers to them, whereas in the Western intellectual paradigm, though they are important, they
are considered “ultimate” questions, and things do not follow from them. There is no doubt that
these features have an effect at the levels of thought and behaviour. In the Islamic paradigm,
there is the concept of fitra (human nature), whereas in the Western paradigm, they speak
completely in terms of “nurture”, not “nature”. In terms of sacredness, we believe for example
places and areas may be sacred. So, the Qur’an, the Prophet and the Ka’ba are all sacred, while
they take this as a form of paganism. In the Islamic paradigm, the bases of behaviour and belief
are the notion of legal obligation and divine commands, whereas the Western intellectual
paradigm is based on interests that are apparent to people. This, to the extent that they may spend
on inanimate resources they do not spend on thousands of hungry and afflicted people in the
world. However, what is missing from the Islamic worldview today is a flexibility that allows for
addition. Therefore, what we need in the Islamic paradigm is a reformulation that can arrive at an
assimilation of these results to the paradigm, even if that is not logically entailed. This
reformulation is simply an act of discovery within the Islamic paradigm itself and not one of re-
creation.
The benefit of this is not apparent until we compare one with the other in an effort to have an
intellectual exchange. In formulating my own intellectual paradigm and attempting to understand
the dimensions of another, it allows the person to engage in dialogue and a give and take
encounter. It allows him to avoid incoherent thinking, and accept or reject based on standards
and valid criteria. It makes it incumbent on him to take both form and substance into equal
account, and not simply one or the other. There is also an important claim to take up here. It is
often said that the Islamic paradigm is based on values, while the Western paradigm is simply
materialistic. This is a false and misleading claim, because the Western paradigm is also based
on values. The difference between the two in reality is that that Islamic paradigm relies on
revelation as a source for knowledge, while the Western one does not. Or, put in another way,
Islamic knowledge is based on two sources: revelation and existence, whereas Western
knowledge takes into account only existence. The issue is not about the presence or absence of
values, for they are unavoidable in both. Rather, the question is, “Who specifies these values?”
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1.1.7 Islamic approach to Islamic Studies

In order to understand the tradition and the traditional Islamic sciences, we must first get a grasp
of their general worldview and the traditional mindset. Understanding a thing is an outgrowth of
conceptualizing it. Therefore, in order to arrive at a deep understanding of traditional knowledge,
we must first understand the elements that make up a traditional mindset that gives rise to this
intellectual production, or knowledge. We must come to know the foundations that constitute
this traditional mindset, the mindset that produces intellectual, literary, artistic and civilizational
products. When we take an example, we deduce from that that the elements of the traditional
mindset and their influence on civilizational output are not simply theoretical. We may take as an
example that music among classical Muslims was a living example, which connected art to
doctrine and the Islamic intellectual paradigm. Shaykh Tantawi Jawhari (d. 1940 CE) remarks in
his book, Bahjat al-Ulum, that the origin of music among the ancients is its alternation between
stillness and movement. These are two qualities which are mutually exclusive and exhaust the
phenomena of existence. That is to say, existents are either still or moving. So, music among the
Muslims – putting aside for the moment, its legal status—is a coordination of sorts. Just as it
rises, it falls. As such, there is a certain pairing, which indicates absoluteness. This means that
the producer of such knowledge believes in absoluteness, and the principles upon which his
investigations are based are “absolute”, that is external to one’s self. This is the basis of the
difference between our civilization and Western civilization. Our classical scholars spoke of the
necessity of existence, of understanding absoluteness which is the measure of our existence. In
the West, they say that “the absolute” is either non-existence or unlikely.
Theology: An Invitation to Revival
There are several new intellectual contributions which require our attention, so that we may fill
gaps in today’s Muslim mindset. Perhaps it can be said that the distinguishing characteristics of
the age may be dealt with through examining the traditional discipline of ‘ilm al-kalam
(theology). But, what is actually needed is a precise and appropriate framing. For example,
proponents of the historicity of texts, and using historical methodology to understand the Islamic
tradition, is a contemporary development associated with the likes of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d.
2010 CE), Sa’id Ashmawi, Muhammad Arkoun (d. 2010 CE). They believe that the Qur’an is a
temporal, historical document. As such, we are in dire need of reframing the debate in an
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appropriate manner, and uncovering new ways of dealing with the Islamic tradition that will
allow Muslim scholars to engage also with other disciplines outside the shari’a sciences.
Features of Islamic Studies tradition and methodologies for working with it
There are distinguishing features and methodologies of the tradition that include:
1. It is comprised of rational thought, scriptural texts, and gnosis.
2. It comprises sciences in a variety of domains: shari’a, natural science, literature, etc.
3. It has accumulated over a long period of time, over fourteen centuries.
4. It is of various levels in terms of authentication.
5. It is the human product of a specific time period, capable of being rejected or accepted.
6. It is global, encompassing Arab, Persian, Turkish, Indian, and other cultures.
7. It has a specific language and a terminology proper to it.
8. It represents a unique experience, namely the attempt to apply scripture to reality in all its
forms. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate its methodologies.
9. Our engagement with it must be a measured, balanced one.
Among the various ways of engaging with the tradition and the Islamic sciences are: a)
Publication, editing, and study b) abridging works and genres in a manner that introduces them
to the novice c) Serving knowledge d) Reviving knowledge.
1.1.8 Educational Philosophy of Islamic Studies Discipline
The Arabic language has three terms for education, representing the various dimensions of the
educational process as perceived by Islam. The most widely used word for education in a formal
sense is ta'līm, from the root 'alima (to know, to be aware, to perceive, to learn), which is used to
denote knowledge being sought or imparted through instruction and teaching. Tarbiyah, from the
root raba (to increase, to grow, to rear), implies a state of spiritual and ethical nurturing in
accordance with the will of God. Ta'dīb, from the root aduba (to be cultured, refined, well-
mannered), suggests a person's development of sound social behaviour. What is meant by sound
requires a deeper understanding of the Islamic conception of the human being.
Education in the context of Islam is regarded as a process that involves the complete person,
including the rational, spiritual, and social dimensions. As noted by Syed Muhammad al-Naquib
al-Attas in 1979, the comprehensive and integrated approach to education in Islam is directed
toward the “balanced growth of the total personality…through training Man's spirit, intellect,
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rational self, feelings and bodily senses…such that faith is infused into the whole of his
personality”. In Islamic educational theory knowledge is gained in order to actualize and perfect
all dimensions of the human being. From an Islamic perspective the highest and most useful
model of perfection is the prophet Muhammad, and the goal of Islamic education is that people
be able to live as he lived. Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote in 1984 that while education does prepare
humankind for happiness in this life, “its ultimate goal is the abode of permanence and all
education points to the permanent world of eternity”.
To ascertain truth by reason alone is restrictive, according to Islam, because spiritual and
temporal reality are two sides of the same sphere. Many Muslim educationists argue that
favouring reason at the expense of spirituality interferes with balanced growth. Exclusive
training of the intellect, for example, is inadequate in developing and refining elements of love,
kindness, compassion, and selflessness, which have an altogether spiritual ambiance and can be
engaged only by processes of spiritual training. Education in Islam is twofold: acquiring
intellectual knowledge (through the application of reason and logic) and developing spiritual
knowledge (derived from divine revelation and spiritual experience). According to the
worldview of Islam, provision in education must be made equally for both. Acquiring knowledge
in Islam is not intended as an end but as a means to stimulate a more elevated moral and spiritual
consciousness, leading to faith and righteous action.
1.1.9 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to understand the evolution of Islamic studies discipline, its place and
importance in the larger trajectory of Islamic worldview. We tried to understand the role of
Islamic studies and how Islamic civilization has undoubtedly played a major part in the
development and advancement of human civilization, which shows that classical Muslim
scholars and scientists were ahead of others in discovering many scientific theories, facts, and
methods from which modern civilization has immensely benefited. One who studies the Islamic
intellectual heritage realizes that it is like a beacon of light in scientific research and
methodology as well as of values, conduct and behaviour in research and thought. This treatise
aims to set out the principles, foundations, and start-points that the researcher must follow in
Islamic scholarship so that his work is in accordance with a scholarly methodology found in
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seminal works and crafted by geniuses of Islamic Scholarship in the span of Islamic Intellectual
history.
1. Write a brief note on the discipline of Islamic Studies?

2. Elaborate on the definition of Islamic Studies
3. What are the fundamental areas of Islamic studies discipline?
4. Explain the aims and objectives of Islamic education?
5. Critically evaluate the place of Islamic Studies in contemporary times?
1. Aziz, Nanji, Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, (Moutun De
Gruyter, 1997)
2. Branoon, Wheeler, Teaching Islam, (London: Oxford University Press, 2003)
3. Clinton, Bennett, Studying Islamic Studies: The Critical Issues, (Continuum International
Publishing group, 2010)
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UNIT I
Lesson 2: Development of Islamic Studies in the Western Context (An Overview)
Lesson Structure
1.2.1 Introduction
1.2.2 Objectives
1.2.3 Contextualizing Islamic Studies Discipline in Western Context
1.2.4 Theological Beginnings
1.2.5 Religious Polemics: 800–1100
1.2.6 Medieval Developments: 1100–1500
1.2.7 Islamic Studies Discipline and Era of Reformation: 1500–1650
1.2.8 Contemporary Discourse on Islamic Studies in Western Academics
1.2.9 Let Us Sum Up
1.2.1 Introduction
Islamic studies arose in the ninth century in Iraq, when the religious sciences of Islam began to
take their present shape and to develop within competing schools to form a literary tradition in
Middle Arabic. Rather than treating the study of Islam within Islamic civilization, however, the
focus of this discussion is Islam as a subject matter in the West. In a non-Muslim context,
Islamic Studies generally refers to the Historical Study of Islam, Islamic Civilization, Islamic
history and historiography, Islamic Law, Islamic Theology and Islamic Philosophy. Academics
from diverse disciplines participate and exchange ideas about Islamic societies, past and present,
although Western, academic Islamic studies itself is in many respects a self-conscious and self-
contained field. Specialists in the discipline apply methods adapted from several ancillary fields,
ranging from Biblical Studies and classical philology to modern history, legal history and
sociology. A recent trend, particularly since 9/11, has been the study of contemporary Islamist
groups and movements by academics from the social sciences or in many cases by journalists,
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although since such works tend to be written by non-Arabicists, they belong outside the field of
Islamic studies proper.
1.2.2 Objectives
 To trace the roots of Islamic studies in western context

 To see the development and approach towards Islamic studies from western premise
1.2.3 Contextualizing Islamic Studies Discipline in Western Context
The study of Islam in the West has a long history in Western intellectual tradition. Over the
centuries, scholars and thinkers worked to gain some understanding of Islam and Muslims. These
efforts were always shaped by the worldviews and perspectives of the Westerners engaged in the
study, as well as the historical and religious realities of Islam and actual Muslim experience. The
study of Islam in the West has a long history in Western intellectual tradition. Over the centuries,
scholars and thinkers worked to gain some understanding of Islam and Muslims. These efforts
were always shaped by the worldviews and perspectives of the Westerners engaged in the study.
When the western civilization extending towards the East it confronted Islamic civilization. The
western powers in order to understand, control and subjugate started studying Islam and Muslim
culture. The early Western scholars of Islam were mostly missionaries with an often open and
vocal opposition to Islam. It was this framework that produced Orientalism, the approach and
methodology of studying Islam that has been analysed so penetratingly by, among others,
Edward Said. The Orientalist approach to the study of Islam became the dominant perspective in
Western scholarship during the first half of the twentieth century. It primarily involved text-
based study and identified Islam with the “great tradition” of urban literate civilization in the
Muslim world. It paid little attention to what were viewed as the superstitions and perversions of
so-called “popular Islam.” In the West, the establishment of professorial chairs, journals, and
institutions like the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1917 reflected the
dominance of the Orientalist approach to the study of Islam in the West until the middle of the
twentieth century.
Islamic studies as a scholarly enterprise emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in the perspective
of the Enlightenment. In the Netherlands, it led to Reland’s two-volume scholarly work “On the
Muhammedan Religion”, published in Latin in 1705. Islamic studies understood as the study of
Islamic civilization and religion would probably not have existed in Europe without the
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background of 18th century Enlightenment thought and 19th century critical scholarship. Islamic
Studies is a subject that was introduced by the Western scholars (known as ‘Orientalists’,
‘Arabists’, and now as ‘Islamicists’: i.e., “those who engage in the academic study of Islam”. As
noted by Juan E. Campo, in his Encyclopedia of Islam, “The study of the East (‘the Orient’),
especially the ‘Islamic East’, by European and American scholars during the 19th and 20th
centuries is known as Orientalism”. Orientalism, in other words, is the cumulative tradition of
scholarly study of Islam and the peoples and cultures of Muslim lands. Some of the key
Orientalist scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who emerged in countries from
England and Germany to Netherlands and Hungary include Edward W. Lane (d. 1876), William
Muir (d. 1905), Ernest Renan (d. 1892), Julius Wellhausen (d. 1918), Theodor Noeldeke (d.
1930), Carl Becker (d. 1933), Carl Brockelman (d. 1956), Ignaz Goldziher (d. 1921), etc. By the
1950s the fields of Oriental and Islamic Studies had become firmly established in major
universities in Europe and North America: Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, London, Paris,
Leiden, Berlin, Leipzig, St. Petersburg, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
This “orientalist scholarship”, as pointed out, and made clear enough, by Mohammad Arkoun &
Andrew Rippin (in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam World), “has continued to evolve in its
scope, as well as in its understanding of itself”. Thus, it is now designated with various names—
from Divinity, Theology, Oriental Studies, Religious Studies, to Islamic Studies and
Arab/Middle Eastern Studies—and is not limited to study Islam as a religion, and its Scripture
and life of the last Messenger, but also “seeks to accommodate the study of Muslim world”, and
includes “contemporary political and social developments, as well as East-West relations” as
well. With the passage of time, developments and modifications took place, and at present, it is
taught throughout the world, and mostly in Western and European countries. Chief examples of
Oriental Studies Faculties/Departments include: ‘Faculty of Oriental Studies’, University of
Oxford (www.orinst.ox.ac.uk); ‘School of Oriental and African Studies’ (SOAS), University of
London (www.soas.ac.uk) founded in 1916; and ‘The Orient Institute’, University of Chicago
(www.oi.uchicago.edu), founded in 1919. Presently there are departments of Islamic Studies or
Arab/Middle East Studies throughout the world, including (besides above mentioned)
Cambridge, Harvard, Edinburgh, London, Paris, Leiden, Berlin, Leipzig, Georgetown, McGill,
Melbourne, Sorbonne, St. Petersburg, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.—these being
only a few names/places. The major courses taught/ studied/ researched in the subject of Islamic
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Studies, as an interdisciplinary subject, are related to Islamic Civilization, History, Philosophy

and Ethics, Tasawwuf, Modern Muslim World, Islamic Law, Comparative Religions, as well as
the Muslims and Muslim societies, which are studied from different perspectives.
In a Western academic context, Islamic Studies generally refers to the historical study of Islam:
Islamic civilization, Islamic law, Islamic theology and Islamic Philosophy. Academics from
diverse disciplines participate and exchange ideas about Islamic societies, past and present,
although Western, academic Islamic studies itself is in many respects a self-conscious and self-
contained field. Specialists in the discipline apply methods adapted from several ancillary fields,
ranging from Biblical Studies and Classical Philology to modern history, legal history and
sociology. A recent trend, particularly since 9/11, has been the study of contemporary
Islamist groups and movements by academics from the social sciences or in many cases by
journalists, although since such works tend to be written by non-Arabists they belong outside the
field of Islamic studies proper.
Scholars in the field of academic Islamic studies are often referred to as "Islamicists" and the
discipline traditionally made up the bulk of what used to be called Oriental Studies In fact, some
of the more traditional Western universities still confer degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies
under the primary title of “Oriental studies”. This is the case, for example, at the University of
Oxford, where Classical Arabic and Islamic studies have been taught since as early as the 16th
century, originally as a sub-division of Divinity. This latter context gave early academic Islamic
studies its Biblical studies character and was also a consequence of the fact that throughout
Early-Modern Western Europe the discipline was developed by churchmen whose primary aim
had actually been to refute the tenets of Islam. Despite their now generally secular, academic
approach, many non-Muslim Islamic studies scholars have written works which are widely read
by Muslims, while in recent decades an increasing number of Muslim-born scholars have trained
and taught as academic Islamicists in Western universities. Many leading universities in Europe
and the US offer academic degrees at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in Islamic
studies, in which students can also study Arabic and therefore begin to read Islamic texts in the
original language. Because Arabic and Islamic studies are generally seen as inseparable in
academia, named undergraduate degrees that combine the two are usually still categorized as
single-subject degrees rather than as ‘joint’ or ‘combined’ degrees like, for example, those in
Arabic and Politics. This rationale explains why, because of their heavy emphasis on the detailed
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study of Islamic texts in Classical Arabic some institutions—such as the School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) in London and Georgetown University in Washington DC—only accept
graduates who already have degree-level Arabic and a strong background in the academic study
of Islam onto their Masters programmes in Islamic Studies. Such institutions will generally direct
students new to the field and with little or no Arabic to broader master’s degrees in Middle
Eastern Studies or Middle East politics, in which Arabic can be studied ab initio.
1.2.4 Theological Beginnings
The original distinction between the “West” and the “East” was crystallized in the Greco-Persian
Wars of the 5th century BC, when Athenian historians made a distinction between their
“Athenian democracy” and the Persian monarchy. An institutional distinction between East and
West did not exist as a defined polarity before the Oriens and Occidens divided administration of
the Emperor Diocletian’s Roman Empire at the end of the 3rd century AD, and the division of
the Empire into Latin and Greek-speaking portions. The classical world had intimate knowledge
of their Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies), but very imprecise knowledge of
most of the world further East, including the “Seres” (Chinese). However, there was substantial
direct Roman trade with India (unlike with China) in the Imperial period. Even before the rise of
Islam in the seventh century CE, the Arabs were known to the ancient Israelites, the Greeks, and
later to the church fathers. Arabic names appear in the Bible as well as in the Talmud. The
historian Herodotus of the fifth century B.C.E. knew of and wrote about the Arabs. After the rise
of Greek Hellenistic hegemony in the Middle East in the fourth century B.C.E., it was Arab
kingdoms such as the Nabateans with their capital at Petra that provided continuing Arab contact
with traders, travellers, and soldiers from the Seleucid and later the Roman Empire. In the early
centuries of the common era, some Arab tribes converted to Christianity and served as vassal
kingdoms to the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, thus providing cultural links between Eastern
Christendom and some Arab peoples.
The European view of Islam throughout the Middle Ages was derived from biblical and
theological constructs. Mythology, theology, and missionary evangelism provided the main
modes of formulating what the church knew about Muslims as well as its reasons for developing
an official discourse on Islam. Mythologically, Muslims were conceived as peoples (Arabs,
Saracens) descended from Abraham through his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael. In the
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Genesis legend, supplemented by passages in the Apocrypha and Talmud, Hagar and Ishmael are
turned out of Abraham’s home at Sarah’s insistence and, under God's direction, are taken by
Abraham to the wilderness of Beer-sheba, whence they later emigrate to Paran (Sinai). In the
Genesis account, God says to Abraham: “Do not be distressed over the boy or your slave;
whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued
for you. I shall make a nation of him, too, for he is your seed”.
1.2.5 Religious Polemics: 800–1100
Judeo-Christian myth and legend could account, then, for the appearance of non-Jewish, non-
Christian Arab monotheists in the seventh century. It was through theological polemics,
however, that the boundaries that separated Jews, Christians, and Muslims were worked out in
the eighth to eleventh centuries. Theological disputations (munāẓarāt) often took place in public
or in the audience of a caliph or other high official, conducted by spokespersons (mutakallimūn)
for the various confessional communities. The Nestorian, Monophysite, and Orthodox Christians
(as well as Samaritan, Karaite, and Rabbanite Jews) had little contact with the Holy Roman
Empire and Western Christendom in the early Middle Ages. Regarded as “protected” (dhimmī)
confessional communities, Eastern Christians and Jews participated in the social rituals of public
discourse and disputation with Muslims (and with each other); this required some knowledge of
Muslim doctrine, if only for the purpose of refuting it. European Christians and Jews, in contrast,
had to construct their own understandings of Islam, again as a theological enterprise. Lacking the
symbiotic experience among scriptural religions living under Islamic hegemony in the East, the
Roman church experienced Islam more as an alien “other,” a non-Christian enemy to be
converted or defeated. Whereas Eastern Christian communities could not mount successful
missionary and military campaigns against their Muslim rulers, Western Christendom lay outside
of the territory of Islamic rule (dār al-Islām).
For the next four centuries until the beginning of the Crusades, Europeans lived in virtual
ignorance of the religion and people thriving nearby in Spain. It was not until the time of the
Crusades, beginning in the eleventh century, that the name Muhammad was known among
Europeans, and then in a very pejorative way. Until the eleventh century the Bible provided for
Western, as it did for Eastern, Christendom the exegetical means for identifying the Saracens as
the Ishmaelite—descendants of Abraham through Hagar. This was the conclusion drawn by the
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Venerable Bede (672–735) in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People and in his biblical
commentaries. Before Bede and Isadora of Seville, Christian exegesis had seen Isaac as the
precursor of Christ and the Jews as the descendants of Ishmael. Now Islam replaced Judaism in
the Christian world view as the alien Ishmaelites.
1.2.6 Medieval Developments: 1100–1500
The study of Islam for missionary purposes began in the twelfth century in the time of Peter the
Venerable (c.1094–1156), abbot of Cluny in France. Indeed, both the Crusades and the scholarly
pursuits of the monks—translating the Qurʿān and other Muslim texts—served as offensive
measures against Islamic civilization, which formed the southern and eastern boundaries of
Western Christendom. In 1142, Peter undertook a journey to Spain, ostensibly to visit Cluniac
monasteries. Nonetheless, on the occasion of his journey he determined to undertake a wide-
ranging project, involving several translators and scholars, to begin a serious systematic study of
Islam. By the time Peter the Venerable had commissioned translations and interpretations of
Arabic Islamic texts, many salacious accounts of Muḥammad had long been in circulation,
presenting the Prophet as a god of the Muslims, an impostor, a licentious womanizer, an apostate
Christian, a magician, and so on. The “Cluniac corpus,” as the results of Peter the Venerable’s
efforts came to be known, was the beginning of a Western canon of scholarship on Islam. Peter
commissioned renowned translators like Robert of Ketton to translate such texts as the Qurʿān,
the ḥadīth, the biography of Muḥammad (sīrah), and other Arabic texts, particularly polemical
texts written against Muslims.
In letters to leaders of the First Crusade, Peter made it clear that the mission of the church was
his principal concern and that Christianity could and should triumph over Islam. Nonetheless,
like a few other scholars, he was critical of the blatantly false accounts by Christian authors of
Muhammad and the Qurʿān, and he was also critical of military campaigns and slaughter, even
of infidels, in the name of Christianity. Peter the Venerable’s attempts to provide Europeans with
authentic accounts of Islamic texts and doctrines were not well received by the church at a time
when Western Christendom was attempting to drive Islam out of the Holy Land.
One of the most influential translations of an apologetic text was that of the “Apology of al-
Kindī,” a contrived disputation between a Muslim and a Christian set in the days of the caliph al-
Maʿmūn (r. 813–833). Modern scholarship has not been able to reach consensus on when the text
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was actually composed; estimates range from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. The translator
of this famous text was Peter of Toledo, a Jew who converted to Christianity and who
contributed, along with other Jewish translators from Hebrew to Arabic into Latin, to the
compilation of the Cluniac corpus. Al-Kindī’s “Apology” gained circulation and popularity
among Christian scholars in the Middle Ages because it provided a model of argumentation
against Islam. These attacks focused in particular on the Qurʿān, the prophethood of Muḥammad,
and the spreading of the faith by conquest (jihād). These three themes formed the main topics of
Christian scholarship on Islam in the Middle Ages.
In this socio-political environment another kind of translation activity proved to be of much more
genuine scholarly interest in Christian Europe. By the late twelfth century and particularly in
Spain and Sicily, scientific and philosophical works began to be translated from Arabic to Latin
by Christian, Jewish, and sometimes Muslim scholars. The first Spanish translation of the Qur’an
appeared in 1456 thanks to joint efforts of the Spanish theologian Juan de Segovia and the
Muslim religious scholar Yça Gidelli. In the late Middle Ages, European scholars had started to
view the contemporary Muslim world as a civilization of savants and philosophers. Another way
in which the Islamic world commanded the respect of Europeans in the Middle Ages came from
the Crusades themselves. The military and diplomatic successes of the Ayyūbid sultan Saladin
(Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, 1138–1193) turned into legends that circulated in Europe. Even the religious
comportment of Muslims, observed by many European Christians to be simple and pious in the
practice of their religion, earned Islamic religion a certain respect among some Christian clerics
and scholars.
1.2.7 Islamic Studies Discipline and Era of Reformation: 1500–1650
As Europe entered the period of profound religious, political, and intellectual change sparked by
the sixteenth-century Reformation, the knowledge and study of Islam were also affected. In the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries eastern Europe had replaced Spain and Palestine as the main
front between Western Roman Christendom and Islam. At the battle of Kosovo in 1389 the
Ottomans took control of the western Balkans, driving a non-Christian wedge between Western
and Eastern Christendom. By 1453 the Ottomans had taken Constantinople, and by 1500 they
exercised rule over Greece, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Albania. Many Orthodox Christians in
these conquered territories were absorbed into the Ottoman military and administration, creating
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a religious pluralism dominated by Islam that was at once symbiotic and contentious. The
Orthodox churches, following longstanding practice in Islamic lands, were protected by Islamic
law, and the Ottomans put the hierarchy in charge of the church's local affairs in the Balkans.
Such measures in turn earned support for Ottoman rule from the church.
Western Christendom had a different relationship to the Ottomans. From their base in the
Balkans the Ottomans were able to contend militarily with Europe for two centuries. The
Ottoman challenge did not go unnoticed by Christian clergy and scholars in Europe. With
Sulaymān the Magnificent at the gates of Vienna, two humanist scholars, Bibliander (Theodor
Buchmann) and Oporinus (Johann Herbst), ran afoul of the Basel city council in 1542 for
clandestinely publishing a new edition of the Qurʿān. The matter was resolved in favour of
publishing the Qurʿān by no less a figure than Martin Luther. The Reformer said in a letter to the
Basel city council that no greater discredit to Islam could be presented to Christians than to make
available to them Muslim scripture and other texts in Latin and vernacular languages. The view
that a rational reading of Muslim texts would evoke self-evident indictments against the Muslim
faith did not contribute to a disinterested European tradition of scholarship in Islam. The
Reformed impetus to translate religious texts, Christian and Muslim, into vernacular languages,
however, was of far-reaching significance.
Reformers like Philip Melanchthon viewed the Turkish “Saracens,” along with the Church of
Rome, as the Antichrist of the Apocalypse; Bibliander saw Muḥammad as the head and Islam as
the body of the Antichrist. Protestant comparisons between Rome and Islam indicated a
tendency, found already in Catholicism in the Middle Ages, to see Islam as a heresy—as
Christianity gone astray, rather than as a distinct religion in its own right. It should be noted that
the Reformers produced little new actual scholarship on Islam. In the sixteenth century published
editions of the Qurʿān and other Muslim texts in Europe leaned heavily on the Cluniac corpus of
four centuries earlier.
New and original European scholarship on Islam was to develop in the late sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries for several reasons. First were the new political realities of Ottoman
aggression, which had diminished by the eighteenth century. Another factor that helped to raise
European consciousness about the world of Islam was the increase in navigation, the
accompanying expansion of trade beyond the Mediterranean, and conflict between Muslim and
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European merchants and sailors within it. The expansion of markets and of military interests was
a prelude to colonial ventures and imperial ambitions. Europe entered into treaties and alliances
with Muslim states—for example, the French and Ottomans against the Habsburgs. In sum, the
Protestant-Catholic separation within Western Christendom redirected much of the polemic to
doctrinal disputes within Western Christendom, and anti-Muslim polemic waned somewhat. On
the other side, European interest in Islamic lands went beyond the polemical interests of the
church to include state interest in the potential for trade, politics, and military ambitions.
European reasons for studying Islam were no longer confined to theological disputes about the
Qurʿān, the Prophet, and early Muslim conquests.
At the broadest level, religion was conceived differently during the Enlightenment in Europe.
The recognition that other peoples had religions that were not simply heresies or aberrations of
Christianity was an important aspect of the new concept of religion. The new theory of
“religions” of humankind called for new methods for the study of Islam and other religions that
went beyond theological polemic but did not replace it. Late in the sixteenth century the study of
Arabic was introduced at the Collège de France, and by 1635 it was taught at Leiden in the
Netherlands and at Cambridge and Oxford in England. It fell to the early Arabists to construct
grammars and dictionaries of the classical Arabic language—work that has long since been
superseded but that was essential to later progress and exemplary in its own time. An important
result of the changing conception of religion during the Enlightenment was a new concern with
the life and mission of the prophet Muhammad. By the late eighteenth century some scholars saw
in Muhammad a preacher of a religion that was more natural and rational than Christianity.
Others saw in him homiletical grist for the ongoing mill of Christian. Muhammad the man of
sexual and political extremes, some argued, was an example divinely provided in history to help
Christianity avoid such mistakes. This latter interpretation of Islam as serving divine purposes as
a lesson for Christians was a modern variant of the view that had prevailed from the eighth
century onward, that Islam had been sent as an apocalyptic scourge to punish Christians for
aberrations of faith and practice. The late-eighteenth-century variant, however, reflects the
growing importance of the study of history. The portion of Islamic history that interested
Enlightenment scholars most was still the life of Muhammad, the intrigues of the Rāshidūn
(Rightly Guided caliphs), and the conquests.
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Interest in the life of Muhammad and other aspects of Islamic history was not confined to
specialists. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) devoted
a chapter to the life of the Prophet and the early stages of Islamic history. Gibbon paid little heed
to the scurrilous medieval Christian biographies of the Prophet, relying instead on more recent
European scholarship and accounts by travellers. He presented Muhammad as a man of spiritual
genius who conceived an admirably pure form of monotheism; however, with the emigration
from Mecca to Medina came success and military power. The distinction between Muhammad in
Mecca and Muhammad in Medina was to become a familiar theme in later European scholarship.
So, too, was the attempt to credit Muhammad for his spiritual and leadership qualities without
going so far as to acknowledge him as a true prophet. The eighteenth century ended with a
European project to study Islam that was more thorough than any such attempt since the
compilation of the Cluniac corpus. In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt with a military force,
accompanied by a large team of scholars assigned to study and document the language, culture,
and religion of the Egyptian people. The transparent link between scholarly means and political
ends was to replace—some would say supplement—the evangelistic ends of Islamic studies in
Europe.
1.2.8 Contemporary Discourse on Islamic Studies in Western Academics
The remoteness of the Middle East and other parts of the Islamic world began to disappear in the
nineteenth century. With this came increased opportunity for European scholars, missionaries,
entrepreneurs, and travellers to encounter contemporary Islamic societies. Opportunities to
discuss Islam with Muslims still often took the form of disputations between Christian and
Muslim clerics and leaders, but the terms of these polemics had changed, reflecting new ideas
about religion and the evolution of scholarly inquiry into the “human sciences.”One important
development in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Islamic studies was historicism, the idea
that events like the rise of a new religion can be explained as being historically dependent on
previous events. One implication of historicism is the denial of absolute originality in the
historical phenomena under investigation. Another implication is that only Orientalists, Arabists
who specialize in Islamic texts, have the scholarly skills to study Islam. Islamic history, religion,
science, art, and other topics became the almost exclusive scholarly domain of Orientalists rather
than of historians or specialists in religion, science, and art.
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The prophet Muḥammad and the rise of Islam continued to be a chief preoccupation of Western
scholars, including, by the 1800s, Jewish scholars as well as more secular thinkers. Characteristic
of historicist scholarship on Islam was Abraham Geiger’s Was hat Mohammed aus dem
Judentum aufgenommen? (What Did Muḥammad Incorporate from Judaism?; translated
as Judaism and Islam, 1833). The counter thesis of Christian historicist scholarship on Islam—
that Islam was based on the model of Christianity—was epitomized a century later in Karl
Ahrens’s Muhammad als Religionsstifter (Muhammad as Founder of a Religion, 1935).
Although historicism has now mostly fallen out of favour, the charge of historicism is still
frequently made against those who discuss the rise of Islam against the background of pre-
Islamic Arabia and the Middle East. Quite different was the approach of William Muir, whose
four-volume Life of Mohamet (1858) reflected the growth of evangelicalism in Protestant
Christianity, with the expressed missionary claim that salvation is not attainable for Muslims
because they do not accept Christ as their saviour. Muir regarded Muhammad and the religion he
founded as dangerous to evangelical Christianity, because Islam had borrowed so many ideas
and locutions from Christianity as to be confused with some form of Christianity or a preparation
for it.
Expressing a different nineteenth-century conception of religion, the idea that religion is endemic
to human nature, was Thomas Carlyle. For Carlyle, as for many Western scholars since the
nineteenth century, a religion's authenticity must be judged in relation to its own intellectual and
cultural environment. In his widely influential lecture on Muḥammad, titled “The Hero as
Prophet” (published in 1841), Carlyle argued that Muḥammad was an authentic prophet on his
own terms, although he was less charitable in his analysis of the Qurʿān. The idea that human
beings are religious by their very nature was to have a profound effect on religious studies and
hence on the study of Islam. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and the first
half of the twentieth, various attempts were made to construct a science of the study of religion
(Religionswissenschaft). Characteristic of Religionswissenschaft was the dependence on
philology as the chief method of understanding another, particularly an ancient, civilization.
Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) held that “he who knows one, knows none,” meaning that
one does not really understand religion if he knows and acknowledges only his own. Müller
supervised the Sacred Books of the East series in the 1870s, some fifty volumes of texts and
translations of Asian scriptures in English. Volumes 6 and 9 contained E. H. Palmer’s translation
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of the Qurʿān. By placing an edition of the Qurʿān in a textual series on Asian religions,
Orientalism was linked with efforts at many European universities to found a scientific method
of studying religions.
1.2.9 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to understand the evolution of Islamic Studies in the Western world with
a distinct methodology of its own. Undoubtedly, the issues surrounding the study of Islam in
Western universities are several and complex. The above discussion is only a brief attempt to go
beyond the ‘Eurocentric’ view of the discipline and explore its paradigms and methodologies
provided within Islam itself. As a brief paper, it has not been possible to give detailed answers to
the many questions raised. It aims to initiate a thought-provoking debate on the nature of Islamic
Studies. The internal approach to the study of Islam advocated in this lesson may be the way
forward to bring about more understanding between the West and Islam. In summary, the lesson
has shown that western world looks at Islamic as an oriental commodity to understand, explain
and define for them their own civilization.
1. Define the origin of Islamic studies discipline in western context?

2. Explain the theological beginnings of Islamic studies and western academia?
3. Explain the evolution and approach towards Islamic Studies in western academia?
4. Write a note on the contemporary discourse on Islamic Studies in western scholarship?
5. Critically evaluate the approach of western scholarship on Islamic Studies?
1. Aziz, Nanji, Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, (Moutun De
Gruyter, 1997)
2. Clinton, Bennett, Studying Islamic Studies: The Critical Issues, (Continuum International
Publishing group, 2010)
3. Richard C., Martin, ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, (Tucson, Ariz, 1985)
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UNIT I
Lesson 3: Approaches in Islamic Studies Traditional, Modern (Muslim and Orientalist)
Lesson Structure
1.3.1 Introduction
1.3.2 Objectives
1.3.3 Contextualizing the Approaches: Traditional and Modern
1.3.4 Traditionalist Approach
1.3.5 Understanding the Tradition
1.3.6 Orientalism and Western Academia
1.3.7 Orientalism: The Twentieth Century and Beyond
1.3.8 Let Us Sum Up
1.3.1 Introduction
Islamic Studies discipline is one of the most widely known and opted areas of study across
territorial boundaries. The study of theology and/or religion has been shaped by many theories
and methods from traditional to modern and postmodern. There are many reflections on the
ongoing critique and anti-critique of these theories and methods. Conversely, the study of Islam
has also witnessed heated debates on traditional perspective towards Islamic Studies and the
criticism of Orientalism in which it was born. It is not the purpose of this lesson to delve into any
of these debates on theology, religion or Orientalism. Rather it aims to investigate the viewpoints
provided by Islam itself, during its long history of development, about the definition, content and
methods of Islamic Studies since these are either not widely known or over-looked. It is an
endeavour to look towards the Orientalist approach of Islamic Studies and to understand its own
reflections on itself. This lesson will discuss the traditional and orientalist approach towards
Islamic Studies and how it shaped two different narratives and methodologies shaped two
different perspectives on Islamic Studies.
1.3.2 Objectives
 To understand the discipline of Islamic studies from traditional (Muslim) perspective
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 To enquire about the Orientalist approach towards Islamic Studies

1.3.3 Contextualizing the Approaches: Traditional and Modern
Approaches, broadly conceived, refer to the techniques employed in the production and
dissemination of knowledge. An analysis of approaches, then, does not focus so much on the
results of the research or even the datasets employed but on those meta questions or meta issues
that govern the questions asked (or not asked) and the answers deemed satisfactory (or not
satisfactory). Since data do not always exist naturally in the world, methods are often intimately
involved in the actual creation of data by, for example, determining what is worthy of analysis in
the first place and subsequently separating it from cognate data. Different methodologies used to
interpret the same dataset thus often produce different results. To reduce bias, the methodologies
employed by scholars should be well documented, along with the data, and thus be available to
the scrutiny of other scholars. This practice, often referred to in the scientific community as full
disclosure, allows for the systematic study of the first principles employed within a discipline.
When applied to Islam, “methods” refers more specifically to a variety of approaches, often
derived from other disciplines (e.g., anthropology, religious studies, sociology), that seek to
analyse, explain, and interpret Islam and Islamic datasets. Taken together, these vast
methodological frameworks (which run the gamut from the apologetic to the critical) are
responsible for the production of the discipline known collectively as “Islamic studies.”
1.3.4 Traditionalist Approach
Islamic studies discipline has shaped the understanding about Islamic civilization and has
undoubtedly played a major part in the development and advancement of human civilization,
which shows that classical Muslim scholars and scientists were ahead of others in discovering
many scientific theories, facts, and methods from which modern civilization has immensely
benefited. One who studies the Islamic intellectual heritage realizes that it is like a beacon of
light in scientific research and methodology as well as of values, conduct and behaviour in
research and thought. This treatise aims to set out the principles, foundations, and start-points
that the researcher must follow in Islamic scholarship so that his work is in accordance with a
scholarly methodology found in seminal works and crafted by geniuses of Islamic Scholarship in
the span of Islamic Intellectual history.
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Islamic Studies is a broad field, encompassing a wide range of periods, places, and topics. As for
time, it encompasses fourteen centuries of history. As for place, minds from all across the world
have undertaken work in Islamic Studies. As for topic, many fields of study have been produced
on the vast subject of Islam and they continue to develop and grow. Haji Khalifah (d. 1675 CE)
enumerates in his book Kashf al-Zunun 300 sciences and fields of study. If we take the Quranic
sciences alone as an example, we find that it comprises 80 fields, according to what Suyuti (d.
911 H) has listed in his book, al-Itqan, and exegesis (tafsir) is one of the 80. If we consider
exegesis alone, and examine its various kinds, we find that it comprises approximately 10
branches, under each of which there have been a multitude of works produced. The kinds
include:
1. Exegesis written by scholars of hadith and transmitted reports.

2. Exegesis written by scholars of theology and creed.
3. Exegesis written by jurists and scholars of legal theory.
4. Exegesis written by grammarians and linguists.
5. Exegesis written by literati and rhetoricians.
6. Exegesis by scholars of the art of recitation.
7. Exegesis written by Sufis and ascetics.
8. Exegesis written by historians and storytellers.
9. Exegesis written by social reformers.
10. Exegesis written by scientists in various fields.
11. Exegesis that combine two or more kinds mentioned above.
As for the sciences of the Sunna (Prophetic tradition), it consists of more than 90 fields, for
instance law and its sources, the history of Islamic law, principles of faith, the study of sects and
schools of thought, Prophetic biography, Islamic history, and Arabic language studies. All this,
and others, explain the wide scope of the field of Islamic studies with regard to time, place and
subject. However, these sciences focus on the Quran and the Sunna and all such studies exist for
the serve these two foundational sources and focus on them. We must undertake a journey into
the mind of a Muslim scholar, who understands his religion, and concentrates on it as a basis and
point of departure by which he may fill the globe with its knowledge and civilization. We must
understand how this Muslim scholar thinks, and how he undertakes investigations, mining for
that which is behind the sciences of his time. What nurtures his passion for knowledge? From an
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examination of these questions, we will be able to extract many research methodologies,

concepts, and summaries which exist in the pages of the Islamic tradition, itself gleaned from the
Qur’an. This will allow researchers and students in fields outside the shari’a sciences to gain a
footing within them, unlocking their concepts and methods.
A concern for discovering, or coming to know, the Islamic tradition gives us a foundation for
understanding the intellectual and methodological commitments of scholars in all specializations.
Upon these, they built their scholarly visions, as well as the principles of authority upon which
Muslim scholars relied in the natural, human and social sciences, metaphysics, and other fields
needed to conceptualize, evaluate, and authenticate matters. These allow them to attempt the
following questions: Are there fixed principles and variable ones? What is the extent of the
definitive matters and the probabilistic ones? How can we connect the reality of the world to the
texts? The methodologies of the Islamic tradition are crucial as a paradigm by which to
understand the way in which the Muslim scholars proceeded in a variety of sciences and fields.
We must understand the goal of this topic, which necessitates that we “possess the tools required
to understand the means for engaging with the Islamic tradition.” This means of course that we
understand first what the Islamic tradition itself is, and get at what is behind the Muslim
scholars’ differentiations between different arts and sciences. For example, astronomy is the
outcome of their desire to specify the timings of prayers, the direction of prayer, the days of
fasting and pilgrimage, etc. Similarly, Islamic ornamentation and design is a result of the
difficulty for the Muslim artist in drawing living things. Because of this, he took to depicting
geometrical patterns, vegetation designs, and calligraphy. Finally, he joined all these together
giving us the art of arabesque. As such, he brought into existence a specific artistic philosophy,
which was an outgrowth of his Islamic culture. As well, it is incumbent on us to understand what
we may call the “Islamic paradigm.” What are its landmark signs? And how may we reformulate
this paradigm such that it is amenable to a worthwhile dialogue with others? This latter is
something of which are in dire need in this time. We must also understand the elements of a
traditional mind-set. How did the Muslim scholar see the world? What is his opinion on a variety
of philosophical matters, such as the problem of circularity, being and non-existence, and the
question of infinity?
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We must come to understand the sources of knowledge from the Islamic viewpoint. How do the
Qur’an and the Sunna form the basis of Islamic civilization? And, a question which occupies
many minds: Why has this traditional mind-set disappeared today? Representative of this
problem is the fact that a person who has mastered this Islamic paradigm of knowledge and
authority is not exposed to the problems of today’s reality, its roots and background reasons.
This is what has occurred in Egypt since the period of Muhammad ‘Ali, who first divided
between two types of education: civil and religious. At this time, it was said to the person of
shari’a learning, “You are a person of religion, not the world. Therefore, you must stay out of
current affairs.” And today, it is said, “Why don’t you perform ijtihad to come up with the
Islamic ruling, the Islamic solution to these problems?” But they simply have been excluded
from learning such things. We must appreciate the importance of the Arabic language and
linguistics, which have a great impact on understanding the tradition itself, and the degree to
which classical Muslims placed emphasis on the issue of the meanings of words.
1.3.5 Understanding the Tradition
The representatives and ideologues of the Islamic paradigm are important participants in
bringing to fruition the great renaissance of the modern period. This clarifies the importance of
the understanding of Muslim scholars in a variety of sciences—the humanities, physical
sciences, metaphysics, and other aspects related to it for the Islamic intellectual paradigm. For,
renaissance and development in our time require the realization of an intellectual paradigm for
leadership, just as they do for the human and shari’a sciences. The Islamic tradition is human
production transmitted verbally and in writing to the Islamic nation before the past hundred
years. We exclude the last hundred years based on the example of laws on relics and antiques in
some countries, which define antiques as that which is at least a hundred years old. This tradition
has developed from one period to another, based on the demands of the time. In order to satisfy
these demands, we must understand properly the Islamic tradition, and extract from it its theories
and methodologies. Particularly important here is understanding the importance of the Islamic
tradition, a knowledge which necessitates that we possess the proper tools required to engage
with the tradition itself.
This tradition, in sum, refers to two things: intellectual production, and historical reality.
As for the former, the place for the beginning of thought is the Qur’an and the Sunna, the two
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fundamental sources of knowledge for Muslims since they are revelatory. Intellectual production
is that which comes about from humans interacting with these two sources via worldviews,
thoughts, sciences, methodologies, judgments and practices. This is because these texts are the
basis for Islamic civilization. The science of jurisprudence, for example, is in general taken from
the Qur’an, even though very little of it is directly from the Qur’an: there are in fact 1.2 million
questions taken up in jurisprudence, while the verses of the Qur’an are drastically fewer than
that. However, the point of departure is the Qur’an itself.
Historical reality is the counterpart to intellectual production, and is made up of five realms:
things, people, symbols, ideas, and events. The traditional scholar would be zealous to maintain
an intellectual engagement with these worlds within the context and authority of the text. That is
to say, in confirming that the text is the basis of civilization, he kept it before him when
interacting with these five worlds. For example, the ancient Muslim astronomer took up the
science in order to serve his religion. As such, the field of astronomy among Muslims was a
result of his desire to specify the timings of prayer, the direction of the qibla, and the days for
fasting and pilgrimage. Similarly, Islamic ornamentation and design is a result of the difficulty
for the Muslim artist in drawing living things. Because of this, he took to depicting geometrical
patterns, vegetation designs, and calligraphy. Finally, he joined all these together giving us the
art of arabesque. As such, he brought into existence a specific artistic philosophy, which was an
outgrowth of his Islamic culture. This is with respect to his interaction with the realm of things,
of which reality is itself a part. In terms of the interaction of the text with the realm of ideas, we
find that it has been the motivator for literature and sciences, and their point of origin. In the
realm of events, we are able through history, as Ibn Khaldun (d. 808 H) explained, to explain the
weakness and fall of civilization and its connection to the lack of new science. This is an
indication of the connection that the fall of nations is contemporaneous with their inability to
develop knowledge.
On the other hand, one only gains scholarly access to Islam through a variety of pre-existent
methods. Many of these methods were developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries and are now
frequently referred to, both monolithically and sometimes pejoratively, as “Orientalist.” Fück
1955 conveniently charts the rise of Orientalism in Germany during this period, and the essays
collected in Nanji 1997 provide a good overview of the rise of Islamic Studies in various
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Western countries, including America, during the same time period. Orientalism, as both a
discipline and an ideology, increasingly came under attack during the 1970s, culminating in the
publication of Edward W. Said’s classic critique in 1978, which in turn gave way to the
discipline of postcolonial studies. Hodgson 1974 provides one of the most articulate approaches,
which seeks to steer between the methods developed by Orientalism and those who criticize such
methods. Humphreys 1991 provides the best survey of approaches, topics, and desiderata for the
modern historian of Islam. Rippin affords a rich collection of materials—both primary and
secondary—that provide reflection on how Islam has been constructed and contested both
historically and in the modern period. Hughes 2007 and Lockman 2009 chart the recent manifold
political and issues of identity surrounding the presentation of Islam in the current geopolitical
moment (given events such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and so on) that impinge on all scholarship dealing with Islam and the Middle East. The essays
in Wheeler 2002 chart the repercussions of all these debates in the undergraduate classroom.
1.3.6 Orientalism and Western Academia

The dominant feature of the scholarly study of religion in academic institutions in the West is
that it does not concern itself with the question of the truth or falsity of the religion under study.
It ‘concerns itself only with the truth about religion, with true accurate descriptions of the beliefs,
hopes, desires, events, rituals, etc. of religious people and the mutual interaction of religious and
other social institutions’. In this sense, it applies only a mere ‘descriptive’ approach as it involves
itself with the question of what religion is and avoids the ‘truth question’. In most cases, the
underlying assumptions are either sceptical or relativistic. The former assumes that all religions
are mythical or false, and the latter assumes that all religions are equally valid, each in its own
way. In contrast, the study of religion in Islam addresses primarily the truth question. It concerns
itself with the question of what religion ought to be and not only what religion is. It uses a
normative approach in addition to the descriptive approach. The descriptive approach examines
the truths about religion and its followers, whereas the normative approach explores the truth or
falsity of religion. The two approaches are used in varying degrees in the differing academic
studies. Whilst historiography, for instance, uses a descriptive approach, law, theology, ethics
and Sufism apply a normative approach.
The term “Orientalism,” later known as “Oriental Studies,” began in reference to the study of
languages and cultures of the so-called Orient. Although initially focused on the ancient and
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modern Near East, the term “Orient” was indiscriminately used for all of the Asian civilizations
encountered by Europeans in their eastward imperial and colonial expansion. The term is derived
from the Latin oriens, in reference to the direction of the rising sun or the east. The study of
Islam and Muslim cultures during the medieval period in Europe was primarily apologetic. By
the 17th century, Arabic and other Oriental languages began to be taught in universities. The
Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic, for example, was established at Cambridge University in 1632.
Orientalist scholars translated religious, historical and literary texts from Arabic, Persian,
Sanskrit, and Chinese, but most of these translations are not considered critical editions. Modern
Orientalism in an academic sense begins at the end of the 18th century. Napoleon’s
expeditionary force that invaded Egypt in 1797 included scholars who recorded ancient Egyptian
texts and monuments as well as contemporary Islamic architecture. The British presence in India,
most notably in the work of the philologist William James, led to a field of study formally called
“Orientalism.” The first academic society devoted to the study of the Orient was the French
Société Asiatique, founded in 1821. This was followed by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland (1823) and the American Oriental Society (1842). In 1873 the first
International Congress of Orientalists was held in Paris. With a few notable exceptions, most
Orientalist scholars held negative views of Islam until the middle of the 20th century. By 1973
the term “Orientalist” was abandoned by the International Congress of Orientalists, recognizing
that specialty disciplines were more significant than the vague geographical notion of an
“Orient.”
The Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said’s powerful polemic, Orientalism,

appeared in 1978 and challenged the objectivity of previous academic discourse on an imagined
Orient. As will be noted below, Said’s criticism of Orientalism stimulated an ongoing debate on
the ability of Western observers to properly analyse Islam and cultures formerly labelled
“Oriental.” The breadth of Orientalism extends far beyond Islam, although the majority of
scholarship on “Oriental” others has focused on Muslim cultures more than other groups. In
Western academia we come across two trends of writing on Islam and Muslim societies. One is
the orientalist trend and the other non-orientalist. Orientalist trend is dominated by western
discourse on Islam and Arabs saturated with pre-conceived biases and ideological distortions,
whereas non-orientalist scholarship is grounded firmly in sound methods of research, is non-
biased, non-polemical and is instrumental in promoting academic honesty. The scholarship
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which reflects bias about the Muslim world in the East is termed as Islamic Orientalist
scholarship. To understand the objectives behind this trend of scholarship a word on Orientalism
is in order. For this Edward Said is referred to who in his ground breaking publication
Orientalism (1979) gives three fold definition of Orientalism; a general definition, an academic
definition and a historical definition. In its general meaning Orientalism is ‘a style of thought
based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between the ‘Orient’ and the
‘Occident’’. Academically it means, ‘Anyone who teaches, writes about or researches the Orient-
and it applies whether a person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian or a philologist-either
in its specific or its general aspects, is an orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism.’
Historically speaking Said defines it as, ‘a corporate institution for dealing with the Orient- by
making statements about it, authorizing views about it, describing it, teaching it, settling it, ruling
over it: in short, Orientalism is a western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority
over the Orient.’
In 1994, Edward Said wrote an afterword for his book ‘Orientalism’. In this afterword he says
that Orientalism is a study of ways in which power, scholarship and imagination of a two
hundred years old tradition in Europe and America viewed the Middle-Eastern Arabs and Islam.
It would not be wrong to say that knowledge about Islam and the Orient used by colonial powers
to justify their colonialism was derived from orientalist scholarship. By stating so, Said
established strong parallels between colonialism and modern orientalist scholarship. Edward
Said further writes in his seminal work that ‘Orientalism is a politically constructed binary, a
category of interpretation rooted in pre-conceived and historically constituted ideas about the
‘Orient’ as an ‘Other’. According to Sachadina “Orientalism” is an academic methodology
which uses classical heritage of Islamic civilization, mostly textual, to analyse it philologically
emphasizing “evolution” of ideas through borrowing and syncretic endeavours and prove that
nothing is “original” in Islamic civilization. It was Greek thought and Hellenism, as well as the
Jahiliya literature that played a role in giving rise to Islamic culture. This lesson underscores the
political and colonial dimensions of the whole movement of the orientalist methodology that still
dominates research in the departments of Near Eastern and Middle Eastern Studies in European
and American universities. In the contemporary or post-modern world this relationship of
scholarship with political hegemony continues between the Area Studies scholars and
government departments of Foreign Affairs. According to Said the aim of this scholarship is
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exploitation and aggression in Muslim world. This makes sense of the opposition demonstrated
by non-western scholars towards Orientalism because they perceive it as a scholarship
originating in an era of colonialism aimed at establishing power and control in the Orient.
There were three fundamental problems with the resultant academia. Firstly, European scholars
engaged in limited and selective reading of the original Arabic texts. Secondly their studies
focused on essentialzing the cultural differences rather than minimizing it. Lastly the framework
which guided these readings contained heavy bias against Arabs, Asians and Muslims. Britain
and France produced leading orientalists during colonial era. Later this tradition was passed to
the Germans and finally to Americans. An Egyptian scholar Anwer Abdul Malek sees a close
connection between the colonizers and orientalists and Abdullah Laroui (b. 1933), one of
Morocco’s leading intellectuals in contemporary era is well known for his critique on orientalist
scholarship. He criticized orientalists for showing sympathy for Muslim tradition. He criticizes
leading orientalists Lewis (b.1916), Gibb (d.1971) and Smith (d.1894) and those who followed
them. Abdullah Laroui’s first critique on Orientalism, ‘The Ideology of Contemporary Arabs’
explains that Orientalism is not Western because it predominates countries of the West, but
because it shares common epistemological assumptions. The main divide in Laroui’s view is
neither religious affiliation nor mother tongue but the perspective chosen by the scholar. This is
expressed in following words:
Many Easterners will share Western values and therefore will be counted among
Western Orientalists, while many Westerners will be doubtful of their own heritage
and will be excluded from the congregation. Nationality, religion and mother tongue
do not count as much as the perspective chosen by the writer.
Michael Edwards says that politics of knowledge is ‘how ideas are created, used and
disseminated’. Western interest in the field of Islamic studies and Muslim societies is closely
linked with politics of knowledge. The dilemma is that the politics of knowledge in the field of
Islamic Studies has always been shadowed by prejudice, racism stereotyping and biases. This
trend is observed in the writings of seemingly learned scholars of the West when they write
about Islam and the Muslim world. Professor Abdul Latif Tibawi (20) (1887- 1973) in his
critique on English Speaking Orientalists writes that contemporary orientalists in their desire to
understand Islam in order to combat Muslims made it impossible for their indoctrinated students
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to have a positive view of Islam. He contends that it is actually western bias against Islamic
societies which bars them from understanding of the Muslims.
1.3.7 Orientalism: The Twentieth Century and Beyond
The study of Islam as a separate discipline, like so many disciplines of the modern university,
also emerged in the nineteenth century. The discipline was called Orientalism. Classical
humanism, with its interest in recovering the richness of past human achievement through the
textual record, along with the lingering spirit of the Enlightenment, deeply influenced
Orientalism. Nineteenth-century philology was moreover imbued with the worldview of
Romanticism and its search for what is noble in the past and in the exotic “other.”Arabic
manuscript work was undertaken mainly by scholars who were broadly erudite in biblical and
classical philology. Medieval Islam left one of the richest legacies of written works in
manuscript form among major world civilizations. Thousands of manuscripts in collections
throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North America have yet to be edited critically and
studied seriously. The task of producing scholarly editions of ancient texts surviving in
manuscript form was an important achievement of nineteenth-century Orientalists. The training
of scholars in the Muslim world as well as in the West to carry on this important work remains
an important project for at least a segment of the scholarly community. As in biblical criticism
and historical work on the origins and early periods of Judaism and Christianity, Orientalists had
set about reconstructing a critical account of the origins and rise of Islam. Some historians of
Islamic studies have noted that Western Orientalists and orthodox Muslim scholars have tended
to share a common trait of conservatism in their approaches to historiography.
Orientalism has by and large accepted the traditional account of Muḥammad’s life, the
articulation of the Qurʿān in Mecca and Medina, and the early formation of the Muslim
community. While the age, exact provenance, and authenticity of many of the sayings (ḥadīths)
attributed to Muḥammad have been disputed between Orientalists and modern Muslim scholars,
radical source criticism of the Qurʿān and other early Islamic texts has been attempted by very
few scholars. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Orientalist scholarship
has continued to evolve in its scope, as well as in its understanding of itself. This has occurred in
response to criticism coming from both inside and outside the field of Islamic studies, and it is
also an attempt to meet the demands and challenges of the modern Western academy, as well as
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those of contemporary geopolitics. The best-articulated and most influential—albeit not the
first—critique of the Orientalist enterprise was formulated by the Arab-American literary critic
Edward Said (d. 2003) in his work Orientalism. Said sought to chart the history of Europe’s
construction of a fictional “Orient” situated outside of the West, and therefore vulnerable to its
colonial ambitions and romanticized or sometimes wilfully misleading representations by
European, and later American, scholars and artists. Said and others have also passionately argued
that Orientalism knowingly supported Western political, economic, and intellectual hegemony
over the Muslim world. Although Said's work itself has been criticized for its lack of historical
depth, it has nevertheless served as an empowering starting point for scholars wishing to
reconstruct and revise many of the outdated paradigms into which Muslim civilization has been
cast.
Gradually, and perhaps less comprehensively than the postcolonial ethos of Orientalism, Islamic
studies has also come to familiarize itself with the body of postmodern theory that has so
influenced the rest of the Western academy. If scholars of Islam have tried to reassess the limits
of their objectivity with regard to their subject, so too have they begun to rethink the very
epistemological bases on which they ground their historical and literary studies. Added to this is
an increasing interest in interdisciplinarity, highlighting the methodological usefulness of
disciplines such as literary criticism and anthropology for the study of Islam. This is no doubt
indicative of a wider aim to end the former isolation of Orientalism and better incorporate the
study of the Muslim world into the various branches of the humanities and social sciences. An
important example of these trends has been the growth and success of women's and gender
studies within Islamic studies, with more and more scholars and academic publications focused
on the diverse roles of women in Islam. Another promising trend has been to look at the Muslim
world less as a geographical entity in its own right, but rather in relation to, for example, the
broader history of the Mediterranean basin, or to attempt to assess its role in the emerging field
of global history. Nevertheless, as Islamic studies engages with other disciplines, new paradigms
and methodologies will have to evolve, a process already well underway in the field of religious
studies, to name but one.
Area studies departments and centers, which gained popularity in the U.S. during the Cold War,
advocate an interdisciplinary framework, which, often under the designation “Middle East
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studies,” also seeks to accommodate the study of the Muslim world within the Western academy.
Language training and an emphasis on contemporary political and social developments, as well
as East-West relations, are characteristic of—although not exclusive to—the study of Islam
within area studies programs. Middle Eastern studies has been critiqued both by those who see it
as a continuation of the Orientalist alliance with imperialism and by those who feel that it has not
fulfilled its purpose of protecting American interests in the face of mounting tensions between
the U.S. and the Muslim world. Nevertheless, there has been a significant rise in the funding
given to and the creation of Middle East and Islamic studies programs following the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Likewise, there has also been a distinct increase in
the number of popular studies on Islam by non-specialist historians and members of the mass
media. In the future, Islamic studies is unlikely to stray from its traditional goals of training
specialists in the languages, creeds, literatures, and pre- and postmodern histories of the diverse
peoples who make up the Muslim world. Collaboration between Muslim and non-Muslim
scholars will be imperative to this enterprise, as will a commitment to scholarly vigour and
creativity.
1.3.8 Let Us Sum Up

In this lesson, we tried to undertake the task of understanding the traditionalist and modern i.e.
orientalist approach towards Islamic Studies. The concern for the truth question in Islamic
Studies necessitates combining a normative approach in addition to the prevalent descriptive
approach. The normative approach seeks to evaluate the claims of Islam to the truth and to
critically analyse historical Islam in order to discover its original form. In addition, the modern
study of Islam needs to combine a critique of its traditional heritage as well as a critique of
modernity. Therefore, mastery of the Islamic legacy is an essential component of Islamic Studies
because it is a natural prerequisite to enable the evaluation of the success of any modern
reconstructions of traditional Islam. Similar to the original faith of Christianity, the Islamic
understanding of life combines both spiritual and material elements. The Islamic understanding
of human behaviour is not entirely subject to the same rules and principles that may be employed
in interpreting natural phenomena. Today in Islamic Studies in the West, Western scholars need
to appreciate the Islamic methodology of research which by definition includes the spiritual
dimension as well as the scientific one. The understanding of Islam accepts reality and deals with
it not only as an abstract concept but also utilises it in the real application of daily life. In the
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study of Islam, sometimes there is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of reliance on God to mean
the nullification of the role of cause in the creation and its effect. Islam is a major world religion
and ought to be studied within departments of theology and religious studies. If it is a curricular
part of departments of Middle Eastern Studies, Islam runs the risk of losing its religious
dimension.
1. Contextualize the discipline of Islamic Studies in academia?
2. Explain the place of Islamic Studies from traditional perspective?
3. Evaluate the idea of Islamic studies discipline from Modern Orientalist perspective?
4. Critically evaluate the Muslim critique of western methodology?
5. Explain the problem of western methodological approach towards Islamic Studies
discipline?
1. Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York, 1978)

2. Malcolm H., Kerr, ed., Islamic Studies: A Tradition and Its Problems, (Malibu, Calif., 1980)
3. Richard C., Martin, ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, (Tucson, Ariz., 1985)
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Unit II
i) Nature and Scope of Islamic Studies
ii) Islamic Studies as a Social Science and its Relationship with other Social
Sciences
iii) Inter-Disciplinary Approaches
iv) Relationship with Oriental Languages and their Literature
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UNIT II
Lesson 1: Nature and Scope of Islamic Studies
Lesson Structure
2.1.1 Introduction
2.1.2 Objectives
2.1.3 Contextualizing Islamic Studies Discipline
2.1.4 Islamic Education and Islamic Studies
2.1.5 Antagonistic and Revisionist Approaches to the Study of Islam
2.1.6 Particular Challenges for Islamic Studies and Muslims
2.1.7 Let Us Sum Up
2.1.1 Introduction
All known civilizations, cultures and nations have been deeply influenced by religion. Religions
have variously shaped peoples’ ideas of what is real and important about themselves and the
world; created institutions such as temples, schools, synagogues and churches; produced
literature in which they have recalled their history, instructed their followers and poured out their
devotion; organized rites and rituals for the ordering of both the continuities and the changes of
individual and communal life; crowned kings and queens and inspired revolutions. The study of
religion, then, is one of the most comprehensive ways of understanding humankind and human
visions of reality. As an academic discipline the emphasis of Islamic Studies is on the study of
religion as divine phenomenon. It sets out to examine the religious dimension of human
existence in all its diversity objectively, systematically, and yet sympathetically. Most people
have experienced, to a greater or lesser degree, the influence of religious thinking, religious
practices, and religious institutions. In the contemporary world Islam continues to be a
significant, if not major factor, in the shaping of people's lives and the determining of political
and social outcomes. To study Islam is to facilitate a broader understanding of human history and
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a deeper understanding of human life. This lesson will try to focus on the nature and scope of
Islamic Studies discipline and how it plays an important role in shaping a cohesive discourse
across territorial boundaries.
2.1.2 Objectives
 To understand the nature of Islamic Studies discipline

 To contextualize the scope of Islamic Studies
2.1.3 Contextualizing Islamic Studies Discipline
Even a cursory glance at the ever-increasing literature on Islam, and the emergence and
expansion of educational programs and institutes concerned with the study of Islam would seem
to indicate that there is a definite upsurge of interest in Islamic studies both within and outside
the Muslim world. There are probably many reasons for this development, but it would suffice to
suggest that this growing interest in Islamic studies is significantly related to the same human
conditions of contemporary life which have given rise to an unprecedented interest in the study
of historical, cultural and religious traditions of many societies. Given this interest in the study of
Islam, this paper will attempt to argue that nevertheless there is a lag between the prevalent
concept of ‘Islamic Studies’ and the relationship of Islam to contemporary life, and that hence
there is a pressing need for expanding the concept.
Traditionally the concept of ‘Islamic Studies’ has been associated both in the popular mind and
in the implicit view of most students of Islam largely with the study of classical and medieval
Islam. Although a few general works in modern times and even fewer the contemporary period
have appeared on Islam, the great bulk of the literature is still historical. The reasons underlying
this insufficient attention to research on contemporary Islam are numerous, but a few may be
suggested here. First, a large number of non-Muslim and modern-educated Muslim scholars
being historians, there is a general reluctance to treat the contemporary period for such well-
known reasons as the historians’ concern with ‘historical perspective’ and the availability of
materials, which most often means documentary materials, as contrasted with other kinds of data
collected through questionnaires, interviews and other techniques commonly used by social
scientists, economists and political scientists.
What is most important to recognize, though, as Ebrahim Moosa articulates, is that:
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Whatever Islam is, the closest we can come to whatever “it” is or is not, is through its
embodiment in concrete forms, practices, beliefs, traditions, values, prejudices, tastes,
forms of power that emanate from human beings who profess and claim to be Muslim
or profess belonging to a community that calls itself Muslims.
Second, the concept of ‘Islamic Studies’ in the Muslim world is closely related to the conception
of Islamic history. Some Muslim scholars tend to confine their research and writing to classical
Islam not so much as a matter of scholarly specialization but because of the feeling that in the
classical period alone may ‘true Islam’ be seen. This rather romantic conception of Islamic
history has produced many consequences, including an exceptionally narrow concept of ‘Islamic
Studies.’ The narrowness of the concept not only places serious limitations on the notion of the
continuity of the Islamic experience, but also tends to perpetuate an almost exclusive concern
with the shar’ia in terms of a rather formalistic, idealistic and mechanical study of the usul and
madhahib.
Third, many scholars in the Muslim world, like their counterparts in other areas of the world,
including the West, are inclined to bypass the role that religious and cultural traditions continue
to play in the contemporary world. This is not simply because the modern-educated Muslim
scholars have ‘sold their soul to the West,’ as is sometimes uncharitably charged by fellow-
Muslims, but is more significantly a reflection of the extremely difficult intellectual problem of
our times, both in the Muslim world and the West, to meaningfully delineate the place of these
traditions in human life in the thermonuclear age.
No matter how the narrowness of the traditional concept of ‘Islamic Studies’ may be explained,
there is no serious doubt that it should be expanded to include the study of Islam in
contemporary life as well. Islam is today involved in a world-wide process of cultural diffusion.
It is involved in a world culture that is based “on advanced technology and the spirit of science,
on a rational view of life, a secular approach to social relations, a feeling for justice in public
affairs, and, above all else, on the acceptance in the political realm of the belief that the prime
unit on the polity should be the nation-state.” The history of Islam’s involvement in the processes
of such a culture is generally known, as is the striving of many Muslim scholars from
Muhammad Abduh to Allal al-Fasi over the past century or so to address themselves to the
formidable problems of Islam’s relationship to the ethos of the dynamic modem world. But what
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seems to receive less attention is the fact that Islam’s involvement in the processes of such a
world culture in the post-war period is not quite the same as that of earlier times.
2.1.4 Islamic Education and Islamic Studies
Islamic education is uniquely different from other types of educational theory and practice
largely because of the all-encompassing influence of the Quran. The Quran serves as a
comprehensive blueprint for both the individual and society and as the primary source of
knowledge. The advent of the Quran in the seventh century was quite revolutionary for the
predominantly illiterate Arabian society. Arab society had enjoyed a rich oral tradition, but the
Koran was considered the word of God and needed to be organically interacted with by means of
reading and reciting its words. Hence, reading and writing for the purpose of accessing the full
blessings of the Koran was an aspiration for most Muslims. Thus, education in Islam
unequivocally derived its origins from a symbiotic relationship with religious instruction. Islam
has, from its inception, placed a high premium on education and has enjoyed a long and rich
intellectual tradition. Knowledge ('ilm) occupies a significant position within Islam, as evidenced
by the more than 800 references to it in Islam's most revered book, the Koran. The importance of
education is repeatedly emphasized in the Koran with frequent injunctions, such as “God will
exalt those of you who believe and those who have knowledge to high degrees” (58: 11), “O my
Lord! Increase me in knowledge” (20:114), and “As God has taught him, so let him write” (2:
282). Such verses provide a forceful stimulus for the Islamic community to strive for education
and learning.
The semantics of the term “Islamic Studies” provides scope for interpretations at once infinite
and challenging. The expansion of Islam, it must be remembered, led the way, on the one hand,
to a unique integration of peoples and cultures and, on the other, to a wide range of intense
intellectual activity which embraced the classical Muslim achievements in historiography,
philology, belles-lettres, medicine, mathematics and that supreme science geography which
blossomed in all its aspects-political, organic, mathematical, astronomical, natural science and
travel. These are but a few of the land- marks in the historical development of Islam and its
civilization. The geographical area of Islam as eventually built up bore the impress of a truly
heterogeneous belt of adherents-Arabs, Persians, Berbers, Caucasians, Copts, Slavs, Turks,
Kurds, Tartars, Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, Malays, Africans and comprised ethnic and
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linguistic groups of widely differing tastes and attainments.
As the study of Islam has developed, the study of religion likewise has both changed
significantly and remains indebted to its origins. In the United States, the study of religion
emerged as an academic study of Christian traditions, to which other traditions were added at
first in a comparative model of inquiry, and later alongside a development of critical theory and
methods. In their essay on rethinking the physical and intellectual location of Islamic Studies in
the academy, Carl Ernst and Richard Martin explain that in large part, the study of Islam still
stands isolated from the discipline of religious studies (at the time of their study, they estimated
that just above 10% of Religion departments in the United States house Islamic Studies).
The other broader definition for Islamic Studies is based on the presupposition that Islam needs
to be studied within the context of the ‘puzzling evolution of modern Islam’. Also there is a need
to understand what the texts mean to the way people experience and live their lives. Confining
the field to textual studies alone would risk giving the wrong impression of a unified set of
practices, thus masking a more complex reality. Islam should be taught both as a textual tradition
and as a social reality. Islamic Studies should have a defined core of key areas and texts;
essentially, this should consist of the classical Islamic sciences. However, surrounding this core,
other areas could be included, such as anthropology and social sciences.
In What is Islam? Shahab Ahmed suggested “how Islam should be conceptualized as a means to
a more meaningful understanding both of Islam in the human experience, and thus of human
experience at large.” In the second essay, Caleb Elfenbein similarly posits that
conceptualizations of Islam might tell us about both Islam and human experience. Comparing
Indiana with Egypt, Elfenbein asks what scholars have to gain by cross-cultural analysis of
value. His contribution, “Debating the Common Good: Islam, Social Theory, and the Ethics of
Cross-cultural Analysis,” weaves social theory about “the common good” and definitions of
publics with conceptualizations of Islam, and how scholars (ethically) frame questions of
universality, particularity, and modern life. Elfenbein argues that utilitarian and communitarian
perspectives imagine the common good in ways that are at odds, but this conflict, even across
disparate contexts, itself demonstrates a shared condition of modern life.
It goes without saying that institutions of higher learning and education and the search for
knowledge in a spirit of inquiry and sustained devotion were stable traditions cherished and
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freely fostered in the early history of Islam. But under the stimulus of changing political and
economic patterns of the twentieth century and the accompanying release of fresh energy and
intellectual vigour, the subject appears as a new star in an old firmament. A project of the scope
and purpose of that envisaged in the setting up of a school of Islamic studies in a modern
university is, therefore, fraught with questions of immense interest to educationalists the world
over. This brief essay is not an analysis of the specific recommendations of the Carr-Saunders
Commission, but rather an attempt to capture something of the range of the issues involved in the
emergence of the present drive towards constituting “Islamic Studies” or “Islamics,” as some
would call it, in a university grouping.
Notwithstanding the breadth of its political, cultural and linguistic domain, the nomenclature
“Islamic Studies” appeared in the eyes of the non-specialists-this includes Muslims and others,
particularly of Western Christian persuasion-as essentially a term grouping theological studies of
defined purpose and content. They who have this impression are not entirely unimaginative.
After all, Islam arose and matured into one of the great monotheistic religions of the world with a
revealed Scripture and a chosen Prophet. It was a dominant religious force of world-wide
consequences. All forms of human thought and activity, whether in the political, cultural,
intellectual, economic, legal or scientific fields, were ultimately subordinated to the dictates of
religion, and efforts were not spared by the ablest of the Muslim thinkers to rationalize apparent
inconsistencies into a real unity. But those who were nurtured in the political and religious
climate of the West, with its established traditions of the Church and the State, Christianity and
Christendom, saw in Islam the parallel of Christianity in its relation to Christendom and nothing
more. To them it was solely a religious phenomenon. To Muslims Islam meant not merely a faith
but a civilization, not simply, as in the West, a system of belief and worship divorced from
political, cultural and national interests but a whole ideology. In short, it is a 9erm that
corresponds to Christendom as well as Christianity in the West.”
For many centuries, Muslim studies apparently preserved a certain freedom in the curriculum,
which included the theological, linguistic and legal subjects given at the mosques, and also
supplementary courses in philosophy and science. Well known scholars like al-Farabi, Ibn Sina
(Avicenna), al-Razi, al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi, who rose to international levels of scholarship,
were splendid examples of the products of classical Muslim education. With the gradual
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breakup of the Muslim empire and the emergence of subsequent provincialism, the intellectual
horizon became narrower and narrower until it was reduced, in the name of Muslim education, to
one of theological definition in which the study of alien subjects was discarded and even viewed
with grave suspicion. Western penetration of the Muslim countries, which began from about the
eighteenth century with its entire machinery of confrontation, at last sealed the fate of Islamic
education. Henceforth it was to embrace only traditional religious topics and to be geared only to
the needs of practical religion and family life.
From about the middle of the eighteenth century, mankind as a whole was challenged by new
economic, political and intellectual concepts. It was the age of machinery, democracy and free
thought. Round the steam engine, the factory and the industrial town grew powerful economic
thought. On the political plane arose ideas concerning the cosmopolitan world-state. In
intellectual and spiritual spheres, a deep faith in reason, which brushed aside the authority of
tradition, inspired humanity into dependence on the discoveries of science. These enormous
forces stretched out to the very heartlands of Islam. New concepts and norms of education arose
and were embodied in the curricula of modem universities. These stood in sharp contrast with the
institutes of traditional Islamic learning which carried the names of modrasah and ma’had. That
rift in classical Islam earlier confined to the realm of political attitudes, at last found its way into
the educational system. The result was a duality of the educational streams with an astonishing
disparity of standards between them. The ultimate practical outcome of this calamity is the
juxtaposition of two categories of scholastic enclaves. One is the modem university, aided and
recognized by the State, whose graduates represent the cream of the intelligentsia and are assured
reasonable economic rewards. The other is the Muslim theological seminary, mostly maintained
by private endowments, which produces scholars with a definite religious bias and provides no
comparable guarantee of economic security.
This is not the place to discuss the ethics of the role of the West in its domination of Muslim
countries. Here I may refer the reader to an admirable chapter on this theme written with
profound and candid scholarship by Professor Bernard Lewis in his recent work The Middle East
and the West. That the West brought many benefits to the conquered lands of Islam is
incontrovertible, but that they also deeply damaged institutions of Muslim polity and society is
now an acknowledged fact. Referring to the Middle East, Professor Bernard Lewis sets out his
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observations with great lucidity: “From time to time in recent years Middle Eastern thinkers have
put the question: what is the result of all this Westernization? It is a question which we of the
West may well ask ourselves too. It is our complacent habit in the Western world-the more so the
further west one goes-to make ourselves the model of virtue and progress. To be like us is to be
good; to be unlike us is to be bad. T o become more like us is to improve; to become less like us
is to deteriorate. It is not necessarily so. When civilizations dash there is one that prevails and
one that is shattered. Idealists and ideologues may talk glibly of ‘a marriage of the best elements’
from both sides, but the usual result of such an encounter is a cohabitation of the worst.” It was
with the dawn of the awareness that a civilization had been put on trial by corrosive forces that
Muslims began to respond to the challenge with firm conviction, except perhaps in Turkey where
the Kemalist revolution, failing to create fresh stimulus to invigorate the flagging energies of a
deformed civilization, translated a military defeatism into abject surrender on all fronts to the
forces of disruption. But the position has greatly improved in recent years, especially with the
constitution in 1958 of the National In the field of higher education, however, this response
expressed itself in three types of development in all Muslim countries, as shown in the table
drawn elsewhere. First, new departments or whole faculties of Islamic and Arabic Studies came
to be established within the framework of modem national universities. At the start this trend was
more pronounced in the universities of India which thenceforth provided for the award of
degrees in Islamic and Arabic Studies. “Islamic Studies” thus received their first academic,
though somewhat inarticulate, formulations as a university grouping. In our times, with the rapid
expansion of universities and the birth of a new consciousness, the concept of “Islamic Studies”
as a University course is beginning to provide new avenues of knowledge and research. The
universities of Aligarh, Decca, Karachi, Punjab, Sind, Cairo, and the Universitet Islam in
Jogjakarta provide evidence of this category of development, while the newly founded
universities of Malaya, Northern Nigeria, Ibadan, King Saud University of al-Riyadh, and the
remoulded university of al-Azhar stand as examples of recent origin symptomatic of new trends.
Second, there arose universities like those of Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, Rabat, Baghdad and
Indonesia, in which certain courses on Islam were integrated and assigned within the
organization of existing departments in the realm of Arts covering the usual disciplines of
language, literature, history, law, and so on, without the establishment of an independent
department of Islamic Studies. In the University of Cairo, Islamic Studies found a place of their
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own under the aegis of a faculty which went by the name of Dar al-Ulum, the title of an institute
founded in 1871 for studies related to religion, language, literature and engineering science. In
1946 this institute was brought within the University with the full rank of a faculty after some
reorganization and changes.
Third, in a few universities of the Middle East, like those of Ankara and Tehran, and in the
Muslim University of Aligarh, studies in Islam were incorporated within the university structure
under a more specific classification as faculties or departments of theology based on Western
models of the faculties of divinity and theology found in the major universities of Europe to this
day. As a result of the gradual recovery from the shock of its banishment by Kemal Ataturk,
Turkish ideology has of recent years found healthy outlets in the sphere of education, especially
with an Islamic bias. The School of Divinity created in 1949 “to study religious principles in the
light of scholarly principles,” and the Advanced Islamic Institute founded in 1959 in Istanbul for
“furthering the understanding of Islam in the light of contemporary science and social
principles,” are two institutions born out of necessity.
2.1.5 Antagonistic and Revisionist Approaches to the Study of Islam
Although there is no shortage of openly non-Muslim Islamic Studies scholars working in

Western academies, a portion of them engage in sometimes antagonistic studies of Islam,
perhaps confessional in their own right, at times means to disprove various normative claims. For
example, in the 1977 publication, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Michael Cooke
and Patricia Crone maintain that the book is written by infidels for infidels, and it is based on
what from any Muslim perspective must appear an inordinate regard for the testimony of infidel
sources. Our account is not merely unacceptable; it is also one which any Muslim whose faith is
as a grain of a mustard seed should find no difficulty in rejecting.
A main thread in Hagarism is that Islamic historical sources are unreliable, which prompted the
authors to construct early Islamic history on the basis of non- Islamic, non-Arabic sources. Even
at the time of publication, the book met with firm criticisms and scholars generally continue to
dismiss its main conclusions today The issue of polemical intentions aside, telling the Muslim
reader what her faith should dictate ironically presents the same type of normative rhetoric that
the authors sought to escape while producing the text. Moreover, much of Religious Studies and
Islamic Studies scholarship that claims to work from a phenomenological or descriptive
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framework ends up advocating normative claims in many regards, for it is of course

presumptuous if nonetheless strategic to attempt to engage religion solely as a thing to be
studied. Crone and Cook published Hagarism several decades back, but methodologically weak
and inflammatory texts continue to be published today, sometimes by first-rate academic
publishers.
Efraim Karsh, for example, has managed to publish several books through Harvard and Yale
University presses—books that make untenable claims and have received steady criticism from
the scholarly community. One must surely wonder how this can be, as Richard Bulliet calls
Karsh’s Empire’s of the Sand “a tendentious and unreliable piece of scholarship that should have
been vetted more thoroughly by the publisher.” Of course, just because a piece of scholarship
challenges normative claims about history, or critiques social or political systems does not
automatically render the piece as antagonistic.
John Wansbrough, Luxenberg, and others have critiqued the commonly held belief that the
Qur'an was codified in the seventh century, but what is scholarship if not an arena to challenge
assumptions? There is, moreover, a difference between texts that are overtly antagonistic and
those that are more tacit in their assertions. Edward Said’s Orientalism and the responses to that
publication by Bernard Lewis and others offer insight into this debate. Whether they like it or
not, authors writing about Islam must be sensitive and attuned to the political implications of
their work. This is not simply a post-9/11 issue, either. In Contending Visions of the Middle East:
the History and Politics of Orientalism, Zachary Lockman details the complex history of
Muslim/non-Muslim relations with particular attention to power dynamics and intercultural
exchange. Without duly acknowledging this history, scholars will fail to produce truly honest
work.
2.1.6 Particular Challenges for Islamic Studies and Muslims
As we expand offerings in Islamic studies, there are numerous urgent demands in the context of
Islam and Muslims in the public sphere, especially in an era of increased divisiveness,
Islamophobia, daily negative news stories about Islam and Muslims. The world in which we find
ourselves today demands constant engagement, and ready, thoughtful responses to increased
academic queries and public requests for explanation. Serious and pressing questions from media
and the public must be addressed in a timely manner, and this puts us in a crisis management
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mode. This takes an extraordinary amount of time, energy, skill and patience, as well as taking
an emotional toll. There are also risks in scholarship such as research topics (for example
security and terrorism), and travel for research, which can make a scholar a target for particular
kinds of scrutiny in the West and elsewhere, especially if one is a scholar who happens to be
Muslim. This has had a huge impact on academic freedom for such scholars in the US and
abroad. Much needed critical scholarship on the Islamic classical tradition is too often eclipsed,
while focus is centred on Islam and Muslims in contemporary political and media contexts. The
ongoing global situation distinguishes the challenges faced by those in Islamic Studies from
those in other disciplines and areas of study, for whom there is less political scrutiny of
professional and personal engagements, and it considerably diminishes the time available for
scholarship and publications.
The presence of Islamic studies and Muslims is critical today in theological schools and
seminaries not only for reasons of historical exclusion, but also to acknowledge profound
contributions to Western civilization. Islam is also an American religion here right from the time
African Muslims were enslaved in the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade, and has a long
struggle and rich history of African-American Muslims who have upheld the faith. Islam and
Muslims make significant contributions to how we collectively reflect upon ourselves in
profoundly new ways in interreligious and interdisciplinary contexts, where we study and live
our faiths. Islamic Studies is not just an add-on to how we think about, teach, and practice
interreligious studies; it is integral to it. We need to study and reflect on the Islamic tradition in
its own specificity and history, and we need to do so in the context of mutually constitutive
histories—histories of overlap, entanglement, and messiness, but also histories of shared
intellectual and spiritual learning.
Islamic studies should be able to respond the challenges brought by the modernity at the level of
theory and application. Therefore, teaching and learning Islamic studies should be developed as
the relevant subject to cope the contemporary needs of the modern world in light of the
principles as stated in al-Quran and al-Sunnah. Indeed, Islam should become part of global
modernity and should be brought into line with the age. Proud with the glory of the past Islamic
civilization but stagnancy with innovating new ideas at the practical level do not help Islam to
be seen as the relevant subject in this modern world. Islamic studies have to retain all principles
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of Islam and to inspire all human beings on the ways to live in this modern world in coexistence
and peace. Unfortunately, the current situation of the Muslim Ummah indicates the failure of
Islamic Studies to address these challenges comprehensively that leads Muslims linked to
backwardness and stagnation. Every effort to describe the characteristics and the scope of an
academic field is challenging, given that most disciplines look back on a centuries-old history
that allowed them to branch out and develop a large range of highly diverse sub-fields. This is
also the case with the field of research defined here as “Islamic studies.”
2.1.7 Let Us Sum Up
Islamic Studies is an overarching discipline and one of the most read subjects across the world.
This discipline is holistic in its approach where knowledge is produced by revelation and human
experience, the knowledge could transform through various human faculties such as mind, heart
and soul. Based on this holistic view of education, Islamic studies, its curriculum, transformation
of knowledge and learning process should be determined. The existing models of teaching
Islamic studies are supplemented with modern science teaching methods. A scientific research is
needed in order to measure the success of an eclectic approach in teaching Islamic Studies ,
which gives options the students to select a Major in Islamic studies and a minor in social
sciences or other way. The lived practice method also is required a study to understand its
practicality and the success. The modern educational parameters to measure the success
of teaching which is known as taxonomy can be applied to evaluate the success of knowledge,
cognitive and affective domains. The development of soft skills also can be determined
through taxonomy. However, spiritual and emotional developments are needed to be evaluated
in their practical life and their commitment to Islam. It goes without saying that institutions of
higher learning and education and the search for knowledge in a spirit of inquiry and sustained
devotion were stable traditions cherished and freely fostered in the early history of Islam. But
under the stimulus of changing political and economic patterns of the twentieth century and the
accompanying release of fresh energy and intellectual vigour, the subject appears as a new star in
an old firmament. A project of the scope and purpose of that envisaged in the setting up of a
school of Islamic studies in a modern university is, therefore, fraught with questions of immense
interest to educationalists the world over. This lesson is an attempt to capture something of the
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range of the issues involved in the emergence of the present drive towards constituting “Islamic
Studies” or “Islamics,” as some would call it, in a university grouping.
1. Define the discipline of Islamic Studies?

2. Write a brief note on the importance of Islamic Studies Discipline in contemporary
times?
3. How is Islamic Education dependent on the Discipline of Islamic Studies?
4. Write a brief note on the modern approaches of studying Islam?
5. Briefly elaborate the scope of Islamic Studies discipline?
1. Martin, R. C., ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, (Oxford: Oneworld,

2001)
2. Nanji, A., ed., Mapping Islamic studies: genealogy, continuity and change, (Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1997)
3. Sardar, Z. U, Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, (London and New York:
Mansell, 1985)
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UNIT II
Lesson 2: Islamic Studies as a Social Science and its Relationship with Other Social
Sciences
Lesson Structure
2.2.1 Introduction
2.2.2 Objectives
2.2.3 Contextualizing the Islamic Studies as Social Science Discipline
2.2.4 Islamic Studies and Larger Framework of Social Sciences
2.2.5 Social Scientific Studies on Muslim Societies in 20th Century
2.2.6 Objectives of Social Science Research
2.2.7 An Overview of Contemporary Social Sciences
2.2.8 Methodology of Islamic Social Sciences
2.2.9 Incorporating Social Sciences with Islamic Epistemology
2.2.10 Let Us Sum Up
2.2.1 Introduction
The study of Islam as a religion has a long tradition that started in the early periods of Islamic
history and is still alive today in the Muslim world. It constitutes various well-known disciplines.
Muslim scholars made several attempts to classify the divisions of the academic disciplines that
started as early as the third/ninth century. The sources of Islam—Quran and Sunnah not only
talked about theology and jurisprudence but equally discussed the socio-psychological, politico-
economic structure of the society. The intellectual history of Islam visibly manifests this
argument where political theorists like Farabi and sociologist like Ibn Khaldun represent the
social scientific approach of Islam. Three avenues in Islamic studies are distinguished. The
humanities study the languages, texts and history of Islam as a civilisation and religion. The
main difficulty confronting them is to understand properly the texts studied. Anthropology,
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sociology and political science constitute the main contribution of the social sciences. Focusing
on the people’s intentions, which make Islam a religion rather than a social system or ideology
enables Islam to be understood from the perspective of religious studies. This lesson will try to
place Islamic Studies in the larger category of social science discipline and how it engaged with
different aspects of social sciences.
2.2.2 Objectives
 To understand the role of Islamic Studies discipline

 To contextualize Islamic Studies discipline in the larger paradigm of social sciences
2.2.3 Contextualizing the Islamic Studies as Social Science Discipline
Islamic Studies is an interdisciplinary program that focuses on the diverse range of lived
experiences and textual traditions of Muslims as they are articulated in various countries and
regions throughout the world. It draws on a variety of fields, including Religion, Anthropology,
History, and Arabic language and literature to shed light on the multiple expressions of Islam as
a religious tradition, the role of Islamic civilization as a force in global history, and the
importance of Islamic discourses in the contemporary world. The interdisciplinary program in
Islamic Studies serves a crucial function in the liberal arts curriculum by providing a framework
for students to develop a meaningful understanding of the multiple ways in which Islam has
shaped human experience both past and present.
In fact, Qur’an itself encourages human beings to study on our own both physical and social
phenomena. Allah said in the Qur’an, “Soon We will show them Our signs in the (furthest)
regions (of the earth), and in their own souls/selves until it becomes clear to them that this is the
Truth.” (41: 53). The word “afaq” which literally means horizons mean anything that can be
perceived by our senses and it is in the realm of physical, natural, and exact sciences such as
physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, botany, and physical geography. The word “anfus/nafs”
which literally means souls/selves mean anything that relates to human being and it is in the
realm of social or human sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, political
science, communication, economics, laws, and human geography. The same encouragement can
be found in another Qur’anic verse, “On the earth are signs for those of assured faith. As also in
your own souls/selves, will you not then see?” (51: 20-21). The study of “earth” is referring to
the natural sciences whereas the word “souls/selves” is referring to the social sciences.
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2.2.4 Islamic Studies and Larger Framework of Social Sciences
For those familiar with the social sciences and more or less accustomed to view, explain, and
interpret religious data in sociological or anthropological terms, there is no real need to
demonstrate that the social sciences make an important contribution to Islamic studies. The
question is rather which kind of contribution they can make. If in scholarly research, the key to
interpreting and explaining data lies in their context, for the social sciences this key is to be
found in the social context. There are, of course, other contexts within which religious data can
be studied: a physical and technological context, the context of a given culture and given trends
of religious thought. A religious experience can be studied in the psychological context of a
particular life-history and of similar experiences at a given time. Structuralism, linguistic
analysis and semiotics have developed their own concepts of context, and the notion of context
has proved to be essential in any scholarly research; this holds true in particular for the concept
of social context. Within this context it is the general constituents of a datum and the general
conditions under which it exists, which make it scientifically explainable, since what is general
can be expressed in terms of rules and what is unique cannot. It is to these general conditions, as
far as they are of a social nature, that the social sciences address themselves in particular.
It is sometimes asked whether the social sciences can do justice to the religious aspects of Islam
and if they do not necessarily reduce a religion to something not religious, such as society or
culture. Leaving aside the so-called reductionism of the social as well as the natural sciences as a
research technique, it is fair to say that even as a 'religion' Islam presents a challenge to our
current definitions in both the humanities and the social sciences. It is true that Islam is a religion
according to all current definitions of the term, but this does not mean that it is only a religion or
a faith. I would say that, in the first place, it is a civilization, a social structure, a certain way of
life, a cultural tradition in the widest sense of the word, articulated in different ways in different
contexts. This is widely recognized, but many researchers stop short here. Some of them, for
instance some historians of religion, neglect its social aspects but many of them, for instance
many social scientists, neglect its religious aspects. The reasons why they tend to stop short may
vary, but the unavoidable result is a one-sided representation of Islam. For instance, at present
the western public has a strongly politicized image of Islam.
Before the Second World War interest in Muslim societies existed, but it had not yet reached a
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scholarly level, measured by present-day norms. Travellers visiting Muslim countries from the
sixteenth century onwards were sometimes very interested in Muslim traditions and customs, and
Muslim communal life and society generally, but their interest was often of a highly personal
nature. The colonial administrators, of course, had a vested interest in knowing the social and
political structure of Muslim societies, their composition and leadership. However, here too, the
attention devoted to the societies in question served chiefly what can now be called the typically
colonial interest of expanding a particular country's influence and power outside the West. The
starting-point here was political and economic rather than scientific. Yet some remarkably
objective studies of Muslim societies were made by independent researchers like the Finnish
scholar Edvard A. Westermarck (1862-1939) in this period.
Admittedly, the interest in economic resources and political structures—not to speak of matters
touching military interests—could not but be extremely ethnocentric and egocentric at the time.
Because of western political and economic strategies and public opinion, such sectors were so
sensitive that they could hardly be studied for their own sake or for the benefit of the members of
the Muslim society concerned. Most anthropological research took place on the assumption that
the colonial situation would continue, and sometimes even with the rather short-sighted aim of
strengthening the domination over Muslim and other territories and peoples. The western public
was not only interested in the exotic aspects of Islam and the Orient, but also keen to find new
jobs and economic opportunities outside the now confined borders of the European countries.
Yet again, when looking back one cannot dismiss all that was published as ‘unscientific’. An
enormous amount of new data on the Muslim regions of the world was assembled and, from time
to time, researchers and other authors expressed a moral protest against the prevailing lust for
exploitation of what we are now used to calling the Third World.
In a way, the humanities with their study of texts and history were less affected politically and
better protected against the negative prejudices prevailing in western societies at the time. After
all, they had been solidly established since the Renaissance. Before the Second World War,
however, we can hardly speak of social scientific studies of Muslim societies and Islam which
are up to present-day standards, although some remarkable work was produced.
2.2.5 Social Scientific Studies on Muslim Societies in 20th Century
Fazlur Rahman asserted, the first book marking a breakthrough in the study of Islam in recent
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history in the direction of the social sciences was Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis by
the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith, which appeared in 1943 and has been re-edited
several times. Its genius was that it related the presentation of Islam by Muslim authors in India
during the last hundred years to their economic, social and political context, both in the country
itself and in relation to Great Britain during the period under consideration.
The awareness of the importance of the social context of religious data for their proper study did
not come, of course, all of a sudden. In the broad field of historical studies, it had existed for a
long time, but some time passed before it gained a foothold in religious history, one of the
reasons being that acquiring access to the available documents about this context and
deciphering them correctly was a time-consuming work.
A very good example of such a contextual approach in religious history are the two volumes
Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammed at Medina by W. Montgomery Watt, which appeared in
1953 and 1956 and opened a new period in the historiography of the prophet. So new was the
approach that G. H. Bousquet without further ado spoke of a 'Marxist' interpretation of
Muhammad. By the way, reproaches of being under Marxist influence (for scholars in the West)
or under bourgeois liberal capitalist influence (for scholars in East European countries) in the
years of the Cold War were very serious obstacles to scholarly progress, even in a field which
seems to be as remote as that of Islamics. In any case, most western scholars of Islam who had
received their training before the Second World War in Oriental Studies were good philologists,
but could not very well establish links between a given text and the social mileu in which it had
arisen or which it represented or in which it worked.
Another study which made a breakthrough in the direction of the social sciences was Louis
Gardet’s La cite musulmane (1954). The author took Islam as a social entity, a community, as his
point of departure and tried to establish, on the basis of available texts, an ideal-typical structure
of this community in terms of leading norms and values and relevant institutions. The vision of
Islam, not as a system of ideas and prescriptions or as a political structure, but as a community in
its own right, very much corresponded with the French sociological tradition. Although none of
Durkheim's pupils had become a specialist in Islam, the communal aspects of Islam had been
stressed in France by scholars such as L. Massignon and by researchers working within the
framework of the French colonial administration.
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Let us now look at the progress made by anthropology and sociology in the broad field of
Islamic studies over the last forty years. The laurel- wreath, I think, goes to anthropology insofar
as it studies peoples and societies within the framework of their own social institutions and
cultural expressions, the values by which they live. The effort has been all the more successful
when anthropologists have gone into the field themselves, trying to understand the people they
study as these people express themselves and to understand such foreign cultures on that basis.
Most anthropologists, by the nature of their enquiry, develop a sympathy for the people they
study. They represented in this way an attitude contrary to that of the typical colonial
administrator who never identified himself with the ‘aboriginees’. Anthropologists, however,
preferred to go to people without literate societies. Relatively few went to Muslim regions,
sometimes because those regions were or had been part of the researcher's country's colonies,
sometimes also out of free choice as was the case with some Scandinavian anthropologists doing
research in the Arab world. Let me give some examples of such anthropological research:
1) research on traditional social groups (peasants, nomads) or geographical units (villages,

regions with a homogeneous culture), describing this traditional culture in the framework of the
prevailing conditions of life and social structures, and often open to the study of popular culture
including religion and art;
2) research on processes of change, focussing on the cultural aspects of such changes as

sedentarization of nomads, urbanization of peasants, improvement of education, access to the
media, etc. Such research has to take into account the particular development strategies of the 13
newly independent countries;
3) research on particular religious institutions (mosques, educational institutions, etc.) and

groups (Sufi orders and other Islamic associations). Here the function and meaning of religious
celebrations and other religious customs upheld by tradition, of shrines and sacred places in
nature, and of course the role of religious authorities such as shaykhs (dervishes, marabouts,
pirs), ulama and mullahs are examined.
Besides monographs, some larger works in the field of folklore and anthropology of Muslim
cultures have seen the light, such as R. Kriss and H. Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des
Islam in two volumes (1962) and Richard V. Weekes (ed.), Muslim Peoples: A World Ethno-
graphic Survey (1978), which is a mine of information about the various peoples adhering to
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Islam. For Islam in Africa Joseph M. Cuoq wrote his survey Les Musulmans en Afrique (1975).
Such works may be called a continuation of the earlier editions of the Annuaire
dumondemusulman by Louis Massignon, between 1924 and 1954.
Broader processes in Muslim societies have become the subject of enquiry too, including their
religious aspects: for instance, processes of modernization and their repercussions for traditional
religion, processes of change resulting from the meeting of different cultures (acculturation,
inculturation) and specific kinds of social and religious movements (puritanical, reform,
‘fundamentalist’ movements).
Theoretical issues in the study of Muslim societies, as far as religious aspects are concerned,
have been raised by a few scholars like Ernest Gellner and Clifford Geertz, whose theories have
now become the subject of debate. General questions like the nature of culture, the meaning of
cultural expressions, the relations between explanation and interpretation, etc. have been treated
extensively in anthropology. Regrettably, however, among the relatively small number of trained
anthropologists of religion hardly anyone has specialized in Islam. Yet anthropology has become
a major discipline in the study of contemporary Muslim peoples and cultures. This holds true
both for western and for Soviet studies of Muslim societies and cultures.
Another discipline of the social sciences demanding attention is sociology, the study of processes
taking place within groups and societies, and of interactions between different groups and
societies. Even more than anthropology, sociology has done much to understand Muslim
societies as varieties of human society in general and subject to the same laws and rules as other
societies. Let me again give some examples:
1) research on the social structure, organization and leadership of traditional societies, including
their religious elements;
2) research on the implications of economic and social development for vital sectors of society
such as the family, social organization, education, mobility, etc;
3) research on the impact of social change and development on religious institutions and
traditions (beliefs and practices) and on the impact of religious regimes and state policies; also
the rise of religious revitalization movements at the present time, and the correlation between the
social-political and the religious-ideological aspects of movements in Muslim societies;
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4) research on different ideological articulations of Islam in present-day Muslim countries and

societies, the impact of such formulations on the population and their capacity to mobilize the
masses.
Larger sociological works concentrate on particular regions. On the Middle East we have for
instance C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze, Sociology of the Middle East: A Stocktaking and
Interpretation (1971), which pays some attention to religion. This allows me to mention a
comprehensive work on the area, The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the
Humanities and the Social Sciences, edited by Leonard Binder (1976), which contains detailed
information on social scientific studies of Islam in the area. A good sociological survey of all
Muslim societies has not yet appeared. With regard to the Arab world and Arab Islam reference
must be made to the sociological work of Jacques Berque. Theoretical issues of the sociological
study of religion in Muslim societies have not been dealt with as extensively as in the field of
anthropology. Again, it is significant that hardly any scholar of sociology or religion has
specialized in Islam.
More than anthropological research, sociology, with its search for general rules governing the
life of societies and the groups constituting such societies, has run a certain risk of being bound
to the study of western societies and remaining ethnocentric. This is especially the case when the
‘general’, instead of being obtained inductively from the empirical study of different societies, is
derived from what is current in the researcher's own society, or the researcher's particular views
or ideology of what society is like to how it should be. In other words, sociological approaches to
Islam tend to have a more marked ideological direction, being influenced by the researcher’s
political choices and ideological options. This does not take away the fact that sociology, within
the broad field of the study of Muslim cultures and societies, has greatly improved our
knowledge and understanding.
Like anthropology, sociology has also had a healthy influence on Islamic studies in that it has
shown Islam to be only one of the forces at work in Muslim societies, and not necessarily the
most important one. Over against a traditional view still prevailing in some quarters today, which
wants to take Islam as the key to understanding Muslim cultures and societies, anthropology and
sociology have been able to show that Muslim cultures and societies are to be studied and
explained in the same terms as other cultures and societies, with due attention being paid to the
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infrastructural factors. The Islamic features of these cultures and societies should then be
understood as specific cultural and religious responses to given infrastructural, historical and
social situations.
After anthropology and sociology, political science is the third social scientific approach to
Muslim societies and Islam to be taken into account. This has certainly proved its validity for the
recent past with its analysis of the colonial period, the rise of the movements for independence
and the revolutionary movements once independence was reached. But I am more sceptical as far
as its analysis of the present-day scene is concerned, although I would wish its record on that
score were better. But reading publications by political scientists about the really sensitive
issues—the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian movement, the war between Iraq and Iran
and its repercussions in the Gulf, Islamic states’ policies and the political ‘revival’ of Islam
within the Muslim world—I am struck by the extent to which this literature remains critically
subject to pre-scientific options, political loyalties and western prejudices. It seems to be difficult
to take political developments in Muslim states and regions in their own right.
An impartial, objective study of Muslim countries in the field of political science still seems to
be excessively difficult. This may not be primarily the fault of the scholars themselves, who may
do their best to be as objective as possible. But publications in this touchy domain tend to be
tuned either to official positions or to a public opinion which tends to project Muslim policies as
per se antagonistic to the West, very much in the way that a century ago Islam was seen as per se
antagonistic to Christianity. Apparently the study of the religious as well as the political aspects
of Islam has been very much conditioned by ideological stands in Europe and the USA with
regard to Islam. Islam has always been ideologized by Europeans and the challenge to arrive at a
more impartial, objective, scientific study of both the political and the religious aspects of
Muslim societies is all the greater. We have to engage in a real struggle to be scientific in both
fields of research.
2.2.6 Objectives of Social Science Research

As with any science, the objectives of social science research are to describe, predict, explain,
and control social phenomena. But, as a Muslim researcher, we should link all these objectives
with the objective of receiving hidayah. Description, prediction, and explanation should lead us
to accept hidayah whereas control should allow us to help other people receive hidayah.
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Specifically, the objective of basic or pure social science research should help us in
understanding human behaviour and mental processes and at the same time to receive hidayah—
mission of ‘ibadah or social scientists as servants of Allah. Conversely, or complementarily, the
objective of applied social science research should enable us to help solve human problems so
that they will receive hidayah—mission of khilafah or social scientists as representatives of
Allah in this world. Being scientific is actually being Islamic, as long we do not subscribe to total
positivistic and deterministic perspectives. In fact, al-Qaradawi believes that we should even be
scientific in the field of dawah, and Islamic discipline usually perceived as an art rather than a
science. If we conduct a scientific research in any applied social science discipline with the aim
solving human problem, it can be considered as dawah, and thus fulfilling the mission of
khilafah.
Since the Enlightenment emerged in western world, social science discipline remained one of the
key developed disciplines after scientific revolution and continue to gain momentum across
territorial boundaries. It is generally acknowledged that the Muslim scholars were the founders
of contemporary science, which was based on systematic observation and experiments. They
started the work in the 8th century and assimilated whatever their predecessors achieved. They
not only preserved and disseminated it, but within a short period of time, systematised the
previously acquired knowledge and made significant advances of such fundamental nature that
the phenomenal development of the contemporary era could not have been possible without the
contributions made by them. On these grounds, Muslims believe in a distinct concept of social
sciences. It means that Islam has its own social, economic and political system. Unfortunately,
due to the colonial rule, Muslims did not have the opportunity to practice their own system.
However, during the last half of the 20th century, when the Muslim nations got independence
from colonial rule, there has been an urge to revive, induce and practice Islamic philosophy in
contemporary social sciences.
2.2.7 An Overview of Contemporary Social Sciences
Social Science is the field of human knowledge that deals with all aspects of the group life of
human beings. Any discipline or branch of science that deals with the social and cultural aspects
of human behaviour; it is sometime called behavioural science. Social sciences generally include
economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, social psychology and human geography,
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cultural or social anthropology. Also frequently included are social and economic geography and
those areas of education that deal with the social contexts of learning and the relation of the
school to the social order. History is regarded by many as a social science and certain areas of
historical study are almost indistinguishable from work done in the social sciences. Most
historians, however, still consider history as one of the humanities. It is generally best, in any
case to consider history as marginal to the humanities and social sciences, since its insights and
techniques pervade both. The study of comparative law may also be regarded as a part of social
sciences, although it is ordinarily pursued in schools of law rather than in departments or schools
containing most of the other social sciences. During the past quarter of a century, the behavioural
sciences have become more and more commonly used for the disciplines cited as social sciences.
Whether the term behavioural sciences will in time supplant “social sciences” or whether it will,
as neologisms so often have before, disappear without trace in a few years is impossible to say
Development of Contemporary Social Sciences
Although the social sciences not formally founded until the 19th century, their theoretical origins
can be traced to the spirit of rational inquiry that informed Greek thought. In the following
centuries, however, the impulse to explore human institutions and human nature weakened. In
the Middle-Ages theology dominated scholarly views of human behaviour. Theology was
replaced in the Renaissance by reducing respect for the Greek classics and, later, by an appeal
from the geometrical-deductive philosophy of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). During the 17th and
18th centuries, however, the development of the social sciences was advanced by a rising
awareness, through trade and exploration, of the variety of human experience, the idea of
structure (borrowed from the physical and biological sciences) and the philosophy of
developmentalism and the understanding that the present is an outgrowth of the past. The need
for a redefinition of human culture was evident by the beginning of the 19thcentury and with the
onset of French Revolution (1789-1799) and the spread of Industrial Revolution, the profound
implications of social change became clear. 19th century literature and philosophy reflect the
major social themes of the period. These themes became the source of new philosophies and
ideologies. Conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805-1859) and Max Weber (1864-1920) called for a return to the values of democracy,
capitalism, industrialism and individualism, while such radicals as Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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rejected capitalism for Communism. Other popular 19thcentury ideologies that influenced the
social sciences were positivism, humanitarianism and evolutionism. In the 20thcentury new
issues in the social sciences surfaced. Nationalism, mass democracy, unchecked industrialism
and technology have produced and nourished the ideologies of Existentialism, Marxism and
Freudianism. These and other factors in turn have brought about increasing specialization, the
growth of interdisciplinary research and the professionalization of the social sciences. Statistical
studies, established as a separate branch, have become valuable tools for each of the disciplines.
Despite the 20thcentury emphasis on method and fact, the search for unifying principles has
continued. Some of the better-known contemporary approaches toward general theory are
developmentalism, the social-systems method, structuralism and interactionism.
2.2.8 Methodology of Islamic Social Sciences
Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of Islamic methodology is the principle of the unity of
truth. This principle holds that truth is a modality of God and is inseparable from Him, that truth
is one just as God is one. Reality does not merely derive its existence from God Who is its
Creator and ultimate cause; it derives its meaning and its values from His will which is its end
and ultimate purpose. It means fulfilment or non-fulfilment of value. Indeed, reality becomes
actual when it turns into example of the divine will. Therefore, it should be studied in the
modality of value-realization or value-violation. As such, i.e. outside that modality, reality is
nothing at all. It is hence invalid to seek to establish a knowledge of human reality without
acknowledging what that reality ought to be. Any investigation of a human “is” must therefore
include its standing as an “ought to be” within the domain of possibility
Foundations of Islamic Philosophy of Social Sciences
In this section, we have formulated some foundations for the Islamic philosophy of social
sciences, which are adapted from Qur’ân and Sunnah [18-21]. Man and all other creations owe
their existence, to Allah alone.Universe is created and administered in accordance with the
regulations set by Almighty Allah, known as “Laws of Nature.” Negation of the mechanical
concept of universe, which claims, it a product of an accident.
Whole universe is subservient to Man for his use and benefit. Humankind’s life in this world is
a place of trial, which results in the life of Hereafter.
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Allah alone is the Sovereign; this concept of sovereignty gave birth to the concept of human
unity and human equality. Negation of the rule of man over man and the concept of kingship,
dictatorship, priesthood and Brahmanism.
Every human is equal in the eyes of Islam. All humans enjoy equal rights and can seek redressal,
if wronged, through a court of law. Everyone has protection of his life, property and honour.
Islamic Philosophy is based on Wahî (revelation), which demand a believer to adopt a balance
between the requirements of body and soul and function for the larger interest of human good.
This philosophy is not neutral to morality. It believes in eternal moral values, through which
nations rise and fall. Fundamentals of Islamic philosophy come from Qur’ân and Sunnah. Every
innovation, for which there is no proof in the fundamentals, is condemed. However, Islamic
philosophy is not static. It gives a golden tenet of Ijtihâd, an instrument, for use in all places and
times of need.
Regarding the reason of truth, Islam prescribes that where there is valid evidence for another
point of view, should be accepted with humbleness. However, where the evidence is fake or
lacking, the Islamic philosophy feels obligated to expose that discrepancy. The truth is exclusive
and should be accepted without compromise. The good value is recognition of Allah as the
source of all truth.
A common misunderstanding about Islamic philosophy is that it demands blind faith in its
principles and blocks the way of evaluation. This is a mistaken view, which has created hostility
between the natural and social sciences. Islamic philosophy on the contrary, repetitively invites
and encourages humankind for judicious thinking about the phenomena of nature.
2.2.9 Incorporating Social Sciences with Islamic Epistemology
In this section, a brief strategy to blend Islamic philosophy with contemporary social sciences is
presented, with a hope of execution. Details can be seen in these footnotes: [2, 4, 10, 22-24],
from which this strategy has been adapted. All the knowledge of social sciences concerning to
individual and group, to man and nature, to religion and science, can be restructured under the
principle of tawhid, i.e. that Allah (swt) exists, is One, He is the Creator, Master, Provider,
Sustainer, the ultimate metaphysical cause, purpose and end of everything that is. All objective
knowledge of this world is knowledge of His will, of his arrangement, of His wisdom. It needs
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implementation of His command, understanding of the divine pattern, which He has revealed, to
achieve intense happiness of human soul and body.
The social sciences, which study man and his relations with other humans, have to recognize
man, as living in a kingdom dominated by Allah metaphysically and axiologically. They have to
be concerned with the Sovereignty of Allah on earth, with man’s vicegerency. In addition, since
man’s vicegerency is necessarily social, the sciences that study it should properly be called
Ummatic Sciences.
There should be no bifurcation between humanities and social sciences, because the Muslim
learning rejects it. The disciplines of natural sciences dealing with nature and the ummatic
sciences dealing with man and society also need a reclassification from an Islamic perspective.
This spirit of Islamic philosophy includes all the branches of natural and social sciences. Their
place in the total scheme of human knowledge is similar, with the difference lying in the object
of study, not the methodology. Both aim at discovering and understanding the divine pattern: the
one in physical objects, the other in human affairs. Understanding the pattern in each realm
certainly needs different techniques and strategies.
There is a need for systematic attempt to assess contemporary Anthropology from an Islamic
point of view. There is a lot in this subject for Islamic scholars to learn and much to avoid with
the uniqueness and neutrality of the Islamic spirit. The mistaken conclusions of the contemporary
anthropologists should be exposed with rational and scholastic quality and those of which have
resulted from misinformation may be regarded as methodological errors. The positive direction
for a rectified anthropology can be derived from the vision of Islam, which calls to find the
Truth. This vision can be determined by the unity and transcendence of Allah, rationale, life &
world assertion, universalism, ummatism and ethical service of humanity.
Islamization of the social sciences must endeavour to show the relation of the reality studied to
that aspect or part of the divine pattern relevant to it. Since the divine pattern is the standard
reality, it ought to actualize, the analysis of what ought to be. Moreover, the divine pattern is not
only normative, enjoying a heavenly modality of existence removed from actuality. It is also real
in the sense that Allah (swt) has inclined reality to demonstrate it, a kind of fitrah existence,
which Allah has implanted in the human nature of the individuals. Hence, every Islamic
scientific analysis should therefore endeavour to expose this inherent divine pattern in human
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affairs, to underline that part of it which is required.
The divine pattern in human affairs should be the object of Islamic social scientist’s constant
attention as well as their expectations and desires. They are not only scientific in the sense of not
leaving out the axiological aspects, but are pre-eminently critical in the light of the divine
pattern. Muslim social scientists (the ‘Ulama of Ummah) are the planners and designers of its
future and educators of its political, social and economic activities. Their studies are the
Ummatic sciences, i.e., those disciplines that study reciprocal effects of human behaviour and
society. The Muslim social scientist is a student and teacher too. Ummah’s vision and its pursuit
constitute his concern as ‘alim (man of knowledge) and Muslim (committed to vision). As the
Ummah is the carrier of the divine message and witness unto the rest of humanity (al-Qur’ân 2:
143), so is the Muslim social scientist the trustee of the vision and its first executor. He is, in a
unique sense, the true heir of the Prophet in the role of witness of God over the Ummah (al-
Qur’ân 2: 142).
The Islamic social scientists, should maintain an open and public commitment to the values of
Islam, an ideology that lays a rational, critical claim to the truth. They should not be afraid or
ashamed of being corrected by their Muslim or non-Muslim monitors, because the truth in their
view, is none other than the intelligent reading of nature in scientific reports and experiments, or
the reading of Allah’s revelation in His holy book. Because, Allah is the Author of both and both
of His works are public, appealing to no authority other than that of reason and understanding.
From such a view, the Islamic social scientists are capable of bringing a new critique to natural
and social sciences. Islamic social sciences can therefore, humanize all the disciplines of the
contemporary natural and social sciences.
The Islam-committed scientists should strengthen an awareness that the problem of Islamization
of contemporary natural and social sciences exists. Moreover, it is becoming extremely grave
and dangerous and the all efforts of reconstructing the Ummah will be unproductive, unless the
Muslim intelligentsia becomes aware of Ummah’s mission and translating this mission in all
fields of human life. Islam–committed, scientists and scholars of natural and social sciences
should be identified and be asked, to seek the Islamic relevance of their knowledge. Similarly,
traditional scholars (‘Ulama) should be asked to contribute in the task of Islamization. A
curriculum for Islamic social sciences should be developed with a complete consensus of the
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Islamic scholars of the world, to educate the human resources. Islam-committed scholars should
be equally conversant with the paradigms of contemporary sciences as well as with traditional
doctrines. They should hold a firm stand on the relation of science and religion and must be
capable to describe the premises of both.
The vision of Islamizing the natural and social sciences is only shared by few scholars and is not
readily available to anyone. Training Muslim talents with this vision is another urgent task. Such
training must be carried out on the post-doctoral level. Intensive courses, workshops, seminars,
conferences and research projects will also serve the required purpose. Annotated, topically
arranged bibliographies on major disciplines should be prepared for both the Islamic and Secular
traditions of learning. Specialists of Islamic fields should identify the relevant passages and
discipline experts to determine those issues of the Ummah.
Bibliographical surveys, topically systematized anthologies for each problem or area within the
discipline, analytical surveys or articles dealing with the historical development of the problem
or discipline, or with the contemporary state of research, should be prepared by the experts, for
use by the less advance in the field. This is the speediest way out for extending the frontiers of
Islamic knowledge.

On the basis of above discussion, we see social science is an important component of academics
and how it shapes narratives and discourse. The methodologies used by social scientists are also
to some extent in line with Islamic approach to social scientific enterprise. In fact, it has been
used in Islamic tradition to study religious and social issues. Studies of both religion and social
science are should actually be perceived as a single integrated and unified knowledge aimed to
receive and spread hidayah. After all, the job of social scientists is to understand the behaviour
whereas the job of Islamic scholar is to guide behaviour. Both are needed for us to receive
guidance in this world. It is suggested that Islamic discipline, with the help of social scientists,
should make use of various social sciences methods to help them operationalise various concepts
in religious studies. In addition to that, social scientists can help in collecting data to help Islamic
scholars understand religious issues. This is particularly important in the process of deriving new
fatwa in fiqh discipline, or solving social problems in dawah discipline. However, Readers are
advised to refer to books written by Brewerton and Millward (2001), Schmitt and Klimoski
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(1991), and Schwab (2005), or edited by Cassell and Symon (1994), and Symon and Cassell
(1998) to study the practical aspects of conducting both quantitative and qualitative research
methods in organisations.
1. Write a brief note on Islamic Studies as social science discipline?
2. Elaborate the three fundamental branches of Social Sciences with respect to Islamic
Studies?
3. Explain the Western methodology of Social Sciences?
4. Explain the methodological approach of Social Sciences?
5. Briefly explain the importance of studying social sciences?
1. Akbar, S.A., Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma, & Directions, (Lahore:
Vanguard Books, 1987)
2. Bakar, O., Classification of knowledge in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: Institute for Policy
Research, 1992)
3. The International Institute of Islamic Thought, Towards Islamization of Disciplines,
(Herndon: VA 20170, International Islamic Publishing House, 1995)
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UNIT II
Lesson 3: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Lesson Structure
2.3.1 Introduction
2.3.2 Objectives
2.3.3 Understanding Interdisciplinarity
2.3.4 Approaching Islamic Studies: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
2.3.5 Studying Islam and its Various Dimensions
2.3.6 Let Us Sum Up
2.3.1 Introduction
Islamic Studies clearly has a characteristic set of objectives, but it has no methods of its own.
Depending on the subject or specialization concerned, it prefers to draw on the methods of the
corresponding discipline(s), which so far have mostly been philology, history, law, religion and
literature, although now the political and social sciences are gaining ground. The
interdisciplinary approach in Islamic Studies serves a crucial function in the liberal arts
curriculum by providing a framework for students to develop a meaningful understanding of the
multiple ways in which Islam has shaped human experience both past and present. This lesson
will try to look at the interdisciplinary approach of Islamic Studies discipline and how it fits in
the broader paradigm of other branches of knowledge.
2.3.2 Objectives
 To assess Islamic Studies in the larger interdisciplinary framework

 To understand the interdisciplinary approach of Islamic Studies discipline
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2.3.3 Understanding Interdisciplinarity
The word “interdisciplinary” is defined in Merriam-Webster as simply “involving two or more

academic, scientific, or artistic disciplines.” Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies
involves the combining of two or more academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research
project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology,
economics etc. It is about creating something new by thinking across boundaries. It is related to
an inter-discipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses
traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and
professions emerge. The idea of a multidisciplinary, or liberal arts and sciences, education began
in the middle ages with the identification of skills that the informed citizen would need; the
“trivium” (skills in grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the “quadrivium” (in those days identified
as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music). Today these subjects, and the arts and sciences
that have branched from them over the past 800 years, form the core of the faculties identified as
the social sciences and humanities, and the sciences and environmental studies.
The term interdisciplinary is applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies
that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study.
Interdisciplinarity involves researchers, students, and teachers in the goals of connecting and
integrating several academic schools of thought, professions, or technologies—along with their
specific perspectives—in the pursuit of a common task. At another level, interdisciplinarity is
seen as a remedy to the harmful effects of excessive specialization and isolation in information
silos. On some views, however, interdisciplinarity is entirely indebted to those who specialize in
one field of study—that is, without specialists, interdisciplinarians would have no information
and no leading experts to consult. Others place the focus of interdisciplinarity on the need to
transcend disciplines, viewing excessive specialization as problematic both epistemologically
and politically. When interdisciplinary collaboration or research results in new solutions to
problems, much information is given back to the various disciplines involved. Therefore, both
disciplinarians and interdisciplinarians may be seen in complementary relation to one another.
An interdisciplinary study is an academic program or process seeking to synthesize

broad perspectives, knowledge, skills, interconnections, and epistemology in an educational
setting. Interdisciplinary programs may be founded in order to facilitate the study of subjects
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which have some coherence, but which cannot be adequately understood from a single
disciplinary perspective (for example, women’s studies or medieval studies). More rarely, and at
a more advanced level, interdisciplinarity may itself become the focus of study, in a critique of
institutionalized disciplines' ways of segmenting knowledge.
2.3.4 Approaching Islamic Studies: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Islamic Studies is an interdisciplinary discipline that focuses on the diverse range of lived
experiences and textual traditions of Muslims as they are articulated in various countries and
regions throughout the world. It draws on a variety of fields, including Religion, Anthropology,
History, and Arabic language and literature to shed light on the multiple expressions of Islam as
a religious tradition, the role of Islamic civilization as a force in global history, and the
importance of Islamic discourses in the contemporary world. Over the past four decades, the
rethinking of Islamic Studies has encouraged the energetic cooperation and the engaged
collaborative attention of scholars of Islam and other disciplines in exciting and productive new
ways. During that period, the study of Islam and of Muslim societies has increasingly merged
with theory and method in religious studies, which itself has increasingly developed its
discourses in interdisciplinary relation with the humanities and social sciences. This period has
been a liberating experience for scholars who are initially trained in narrowly textual
“Orientalist” approaches, as they have been forced by circumstance to address many issues of
contemporary political and social relevance, not to mention the numerous theoretical
developments that have taken place in the humanities in recent years. While they still deeply
appreciated the discipline of the philological study of medieval Islamic texts, they have also
welcomed the opportunity to engage with interdisciplinary research, new social-scientific
methodologies, and transregional approaches to Islamic studies in the contemporary world.
We equally see that public interest in Islam has increased dramatically in the first decade of the
twenty-first century. The evidence for this includes a new abundance in colleges and universities
of faculty openings and curriculums that deal with the Islamic religious tradition. As a
consequence, Islamic studies as a field in departments of religion in North America has recently
become more apparent than in the past—in the classroom, bookstores, professional societies, and
conferences worldwide on Islamic topics. The reasons for this sudden surge of interest in Islam
since September 11, 2001 by liberal arts deans, religious studies departments, and scholars
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worldwide require little explanation. As recently as the last decades of the twentieth century,
however, interest in, and room for, curriculum on Islam and Muslims could be found in barely
one-tenth of the approximately 1,200 academic departments of religious studies across the world.
The study of Islam in the humanities is undoubtedly affected by the shifting boundaries of what
scholars do, where scholars work, how scholars publish, and what topics, geographies, and
histories contour the study of Islam. It is simultaneously a purposeful location of scholarship
about Islam and Muslims within broader categorizations of such scholarship into the field of
Islamic studies within the broader study of religion. Islamic Studies, a broad and porous field, is
shaped by and in turn shapes humanities and humanistic disciplines. Islamic Studies is engaged
in a dialectical relationship with the humanities, by standing at the nexus of responsive pedagogy
and use of critical theories and methodologies. We argue that in this dialectical relationship, the
field of Islamic studies both benefits from and contributes to the study of religion across the
humanities, particularly through questioning how we study religions; we further suggest, as part
of this dialectical relationship, that the disciplines engaged in the study of Islam distinctively
contour the humanities and its theoretical frameworks, and internal debates about how to study
and conceive of Islam are shaped by developing theories of humanistic inquiry. We first
maintain that the academic study of Islam distinctively addresses crucial concerns of the
contemporary academy–pedagogy, the value of the humanities, and critical theoretical
advancement–and then introduce the contributions within this special edition thematically.
The blog site for the Bulletin in the Study of Religion hosted a series titled “Reflections on
Islamic Studies.”While it was prompted by a digital article by Omid Safi on Jadaliyya and Aaron
Hughes’ digital reply at the Religion Bulletin site, the series featured other Islamic studies
scholars whose methodological, regional, historical, and theoretical foci suggest the wide
disparity of the field itself. Edward E. Curtis IV, a scholar of American and African-American
Islam, states that: “Islamic studies is more than a specialized field of academic study; it is a
series of discourses that play important educational, social, and political roles in multiple settings
both within and beyond the academy.” Curtis suggests, as Ernst and Martin above, that the shift
from Orientalism to contemporary studies of Islam marks its study as a “field defined by shared
and intersecting questions, themes, and data, not any one methodology or set of texts.”
Moreover, Curtis mentions the ongoing theoretical conversations in religious studies and other
disciplines that arise from works in Islamic studies, and notes the ways in which questions about
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Islam and Muslims undergird a collegiate liberal arts experience: “The very definition of
freedom, goodness, beauty, and justice invoke Islam and Muslims in one way or another.” His
short essay—and its provocations—stand to demonstrate how Islamic studies must be defined
broadly, given its multiple avenues of study across disciplinary boundaries, its ongoing relevance
in a post-9/11 classroom, and the ever-expanding frontiers and boundaries of its study.
While a number of authors including and beyond the ones mentioned above have varied on
approaches to the study of Islam, what has emerged as a product of these debates is evidence of
the shift Curtis, Ernst, and Martin describe. Namely, the definitions of the study of Islam are less
about sources that seem exclusive to Islam (i.e., Qur’an, shari’ah, fiqh, hadith, or other classical,
text-based inquiries) and more about what constitutes the practice of study. The boundaries of
Islamic studies are still influenced by lingering politics of both Orientalism and Arabic-centrism
insofar as undergraduate and graduate programs, job listings, and textbooks (among other
scholarly products); news media and Euro-American politicians also locate Islam in Arabic-
speaking locales and the Middle East broadly. Put differently, an Orientalist production of Islam
as originally and perhaps essentially Arab/Semitic still influences both scholarly and popular
knowledge about Islam.
Hammer, Schubel, Ernst, Martin, Hughes, Safi, and Curtis espouse differing perspectives on
Islamic studies, its history, and its trajectory, but these exchanges take as given that Islamic
studies includes regions, languages, and methodologies beyond the philological and Arabic-
centred roots of the field. These authors collectively raised several questions about how scholars
of Islam affects the ways in which religious studies grapple with questions of essentialism,
insider/outsider dynamics, distinctions between critique and criticism, and the relationship to the
goals of the secular liberal arts. And it is this question, ultimately, in which we are most
interested: how scholars study Islam, how their various roles as scholars contour those studies,
and how Islamic studies offers rich contributions to humanities inquiries. The anecdotes at the
outset gesture toward one avenue worth exploring, demand for Islamic Studies: students report
taking courses about Islam because they are self-evidently instrumental, in varying ways (career
prospects, civic engagement, pluralistic ideals/ideological concerns, and so forth). Carl Ernst and
Charles Kurzman attended to the mushrooming of interest in Islamic Studies in the post-9/11
landscape, and articulated a few metrics by which to demonstrate the growth of Islamic Studies
across disciplines.
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2.3.5 Studying Islam and Its Various Dimensions

The study of Islam is both an ancient and a modern endeavour. The former has its roots among
Muslims in a long-established and continuing tradition of scholarship and interpretation of their
own faith. Among other, particularly medieval Christians, the study was motivated by polemical
ends, aimed at establishing self-authenticity and pre-eminence, by attributing to Islam, often
pejoratively, error or wilful misappropriation. The tendency has lingered on, though the medieval
constructions and assaults on Islam have assumed different forms and emphasis. The academic
study of modern Islam, on the other hand, grew primarily out of the Enlightenment tradition of
European scholarship and interest in Asian and African cultures and peoples, and had assumed
by the 19th and 20th centuries some of the normative contours and institutional patters that are
associated with the general discipline of thought and expertise especially in interdisciplinary
perspective.
In 1953, a conference of leading European Islamicists was organized by the late Gustav von
Grunebaum, as a part of a larger effort, to examine the relationship among Muslims, and between
Islam and the various cultures and civilizations, to which it had spread over time. This marked
probably the first organized and self-conscious endeavour in recent times to undertake a
historical and critical self-understanding of the discipline in the light of developing
methodologies and theories in the social sciences. The history of Islamic studies reveals, there
never was at any time in the past, a fixed paradigm, that operated universally; the boundaries
were constantly being revised, not always by design, but invariably, because the dynamics of
Muslim engagement with their history and heritage, was changing, as dramatically as the
relationship of Science and Social Science, with the Muslim world. The task of modern
scholarship is to further develop and refine mediating categories and tools of comprehension that
allow us to negotiate the space between concepts and practice, embededness and expression,
within different fields of knowledge. This cross fertilization is reflected in the fact that Islamic
studies now radiates from within many departments and disciplines and finds expression in
collaborative projects, institutes, journals and associations. This new constellation of interests
and constituencies, has generated a profusion of transnational and trans-disciplinary scholarly
engagement and understanding of Islam.
The field of Islamic Studies continues to be more diverse and encompassing in its scope, than in
the past. There are many possibilities open for adding to its subject matter and methods,
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including the role of Islam as a cultural force of great diversity; the increasing public interaction
in society, the approach of historical method, the sociological approach to study Islam, the
linguistic angle, the cultural studies program with a vibrant humanistic scholarship can
contribute to knowledge. The interest in Islam has increased dramatically in the first decade of
the 21st century. The evidence for this includes a new abundance in colleges and universities of
faculty openings and curriculums that deal with the Islamic religious tradition. As a
consequence, Islamic studies as a field in departments of religion in North America has recently
become more apparent than in the past— in the classroom, bookstores, professional societies,
and conferences worldwide on Islamic topics. The reasons for this sudden surge of interest in
Islam since September 11, 2001 by liberal arts deans, religious studies departments, and scholars
worldwide require little explanation. As recently as the last decades of the twentieth century,
however, interest in, and room for, curriculum on Islam and Muslims could be found in barely
one-tenth of the approximately 1,200 academic departments of religious studies in North
America. With the rapidly increasing demand for Islamic studies in the first decade of this
century, when at least fifty academic positions for specialists in Islam in religious studies have
been advertised annually, until the collapse of the economy in 2008 there were not enough
qualified candidates trained in religious studies who are also trained in Islamic studies. Yet it was
not so long ago that Islam did not even have a primary presence in the major professional society
for faculty of religion, the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Indeed, as recently as the
middle of the twentieth century, Islam was included within the AAR’s coverage of world
religions at its annual meetings as a subunit of the “History of Christianity” section. Now “The
Study of Islam” is a major program unit within the AAR, with many subsections and sections
cosponsored with other religious traditions. Was 9/11 the cause of all that?
While Islamic studies as a field has been powerfully affected by political events, debates within
the academy have had a longer and more pervasive role in shaping, and sometimes ignoring, this
area of inquiry, the trajectory of which we briefly sketch in this introduction. That trajectory over
the past quarter century, we contend, has encouraged scholars to rethink how to theorize and
problematize the textual and social data of Islam and how to adjust their investigations to
methodologies that address the urgencies of Islamic studies in the twenty-first century. Gabrielle
Marranci explains that in the discipline of anthropology, the study of Muslims was part of
“interest-based relationships with colonial powers” until about the 1970s and 1980s when
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anthropologists began to take Islam as a serious category of inquiry in the anthropology of

Muslims. At first, anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz and Ernest Gellner isolated Islam from
Muslim cultural practices by excluding participant observation or Muslims voices from their
work. This was followed by a corrective by Talal Asad, who argued that Muslim theologies
cannot not be separated from Muslim practice in order to have clarity on what the category of
Islam itself is. Gabriele Marranci argues that scholarly definitions of Islam should be construed
as a map that navigates Muslim beliefs about Islam—that Islam is not theology, but rather what
Muslims believe and practice, and thus all anthropologies of Islam are the same as
anthropologies of Muslims. More recently, scholars have turned to analyzing the issues
surrounding both writing and thinking “Islam.” Mahmut Mutman, as but one example, argues
that writing about Islam, a modern trend that arose during colonialism and the establishment of
the university, is necessarily political; rethinking theoretical frameworks and methodological
tactics to study Islam is thus similarly necessarily political
Moreover, Curtis mentions the ongoing theoretical conversations in religious studies and other
disciplines that arise from works in Islamic studies, and notes the ways in which questions about
Islam and Muslims undergird a collegiate liberal arts experience: “The very definition of
freedom, goodness, beauty, and justice invoke Islam and Muslims in one way or another.” His
short essay—and its provocations—stand to demonstrate how Islamic studies must be defined
broadly, given its multiple avenues of study across disciplinary boundaries, its ongoing relevance
in a post-9/11 classroom, and the ever-expanding frontiers and boundaries of its study.
In a lengthy review article written in 1978, Marilyn Robinson Waldman remarked that, “In
Islamic studies, interdisciplinary research is still in its prehistory, as full of hazards as it is of
potential [because] linguistic, not theoretical, expertise has continued to be the sine qua non for
writing Islamic history.” This legacy of Orientalist scholarship is very much alive in
Departments of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations today, in terms of the persistence of
the philological approach and a lack of interest in applying other disciplinary approaches,
although there have been notable contributions in these areas of textual study and in the study of
modern history. Many dissertations in Islamic studies coming out of these departments focus
nearly exclusively on primary texts from the eighth to twelfth centuries, with emphasis on
normative disciplines like Islamic law. These studies are often unrelieved by substantial
reference to theoretical studies of modern authors in fields like literary theory or moral
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philosophy; they focus on replicating medieval texts rather than interpreting them in terms of
contemporary disciplinary and interdisciplinary issues.
2.3.6 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to assess the interdisciplinary nature of Islamic Studies discipline and
how a recent upsurge in the studies of religion has taken a recourse to other fields of knowledge
like humanities and different sub-disciplines of social sciences. What this interest in Islam also
highlights are how scholars of Islam find themselves speaking to multiple audiences across
humanistic disciplines. It is no wonder that the recent study of Islam is both informed by and
informs these very disciplines. We cannot determine the boundaries of Islamic studies, nor has
that been our aim; however, we submit that the following essays attend to and demonstrate the
shifting boundaries of Islamic studies, and represent a dynamic, disparate field that both
incorporates and contours humanistic theoretical work. We also envisaged the emergence of
different institutions which create a more cohesive and lucid understanding of Islam and
different aspects of Islam using the language and methodology of diverse fields of knowledge. In
short we believe this lesson indicate the continuing maturation of the field of Islamic studies over
the past few decades, and the importance, now more than ever, of integrating it into the wider
discipline of religious studies. In addition, the modern study of Islam needs to combine a critique
of its traditional heritage as well as a critique of modernity. Therefore, mastery of the Islamic
legacy is an essential component of Islamic Studies because it is a natural prerequisite to enable
the evaluation of the success of any modern reconstructions of traditional Islam.
1. Write a brief note on the definition and concept of interdisciplinary study?

2. Explain briefly the nature of Islamic Studies?
3. Elaborate the interdisciplinary approach of Islamic studies discipline?
4. Write a note on the importance of interdisciplinary studies?
5. Discuss the relevance of interdisciplinary approach in studying Islam?
1. Akbar, S. A., Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma, & Directions, (Lahore:
Vanguard Books, 1987)
2. The International Institute of Islamic Thought, Islamization of Knowledge: General
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Principles & Work Plan, (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995)
3. Richard C. Martin, ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 1985)
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UNIT II
Lesson No. 4: Relationship with Oriental Languages and their Literature
Lesson Structure
2.4.1 Introduction
2.4.2 Objectives
2.4.3 Defining Oriental Languages
2.4.4 Languages, Humanities and Islamic Studies
2.4.5 Arabic and Islamic Studies
2.4.6 Persian Language and Literature
2.4.7 Turkish-Islamic Literature
2.4.8 Let Us Sum Up
2.4.1 Introduction
Languages play a significant role in communicating ideas, thought and knowledge. As it is

widely argued that developing an understanding of a religion extends to learning its associated
language or the languages the book of the tradition is written. For many, developing a greater
understanding of a religion extends not only to studying the theological and philosophical points
but to learning another language. Across the centuries, the Arabic, being the language of the
Quran has been the backbone of Islamic sciences due to its epistemological relation. Not only
Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad’s traditions, the main epistemological sources for Islamic
sciences were revealed in Arabic, both too, have been engrossed with Arabic metaphors and
semantics. Thus, a sufficient command of Arabic language or at least, certain degree of
competency in understanding certain Arabic terminologies and grammar are expected for one to
mastering Islamic studies. This interconnectedness between Arabic language and the learning of
Islamic sciences through what is known nowadays as Islamic studies is pertinent as been
explained by scholars and researchers in the field. Other oriental languages like Persian, Urdu
have also remained a key repository sources of Islamic literature in the intellectual history of
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Islam. This lesson will discuss the role and importance of oriental languages and the literature
produced in the oriental linguistic landscape for understanding Islam and Islamic studies.
2.4.2 Objectives
 To understand the role and importance of Oriental languages
 To contextualize the importance of literature written in oriental languages and its
relationship with Islam and Islamic Studies
2.4.3 Defining Oriental Languages
Language is at the heart of culture, and culture is the glue of society, without language, culture
could not be transmitted from one generation to the next. Language is a means of communicating
thoughts, ideas, and concepts. Through this medium, ideas are conveyed from one person to
another, from one place to another, and from the past to the present and recorded for the future.
Whether written or spoken, it remains as a medium through which people express their thoughts,
images, and emotions in a manner comprehensible to others. Professor Richard Horton opines
that, if we analyse language, and study the relationship between languages and thought the issue
becomes more complex. Does language play a role in the way we perceive, think, analyse, or
judge, and if so to what extent and in what ways? Many different scientific theories and research
have only contributed to confusion. Rather, we will discover through empirical evidence that
language is not part of the thinking process but one of its by-product. This is evident by people
who speak different languages and share similar ideologies and views. It is common to see a
Chinese, a Korean, a Cuban, or a German, adopting Communism as an ideology and applying it
without any interference from their respective languages.
Linguistics and religion in the case of the Oriental language and Islamic Studies are indivisible
from each other and could be regarded as a clear example of interdisciplinary communication in
historical perspective. Oriental languages, especially Turkish and Persian in general and Arabic
in particular are considered as some of the most key languages to peep into the the Islamic
intellectual history. No other linguistic culture has ever blended the language of God himself
with that of human thought and culture on a comparable scale. The study of Islam is always
accompanied by a study of its history, Muslim art, culture, ethnography, etc. Besides that,
interdisciplinarity manifests itself in the fact that it is necessary to study these disciplines, relying
upon original sources in Arabic. That is why it is the obligatory for any specialist in Islamic
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Studies to read and understand texts especially Arabic. Among subjects in the humanities,
Oriental Studies is unique in introducing students to civilisations that are different from the
Western ones that form the basis of the curriculum in most British schools and colleges. The
courses present both the major traditions of the regions studied and, in most cases, their modern
developments. All courses include language, literature, history and culture and there is a wide
range of options in such fields as art and archaeology, history, literature, philosophy, religion and
modern social studies.
2.4.4 Languages, Humanities and Islamic Studies
According to an old distinction, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, the arts are distinguished
from the sciences by the fact that they study human culture, its history and the variety of its
expressions, rather than nature and natural processes. The humanities are thus largely identified
with the study of languages and literatures, arts and philosophy, and history, in particular cultural
history. Only in the course of the nineteenth century did the social sciences emerge as a third
kind of discipline dealing with human society, making their breakthrough in the educational
systems only in the course of this century. The following appear to be the most important
contributions of the humanities to the study of Islam:
(1) Through learning Arabic, Persian and Turkish—the three classical languages of Islam, as
important for Islamic scholars as Latin and Greek for classical scholars—researchers acquired
access to the basic texts of Islam as a civilization and religion.
(2) At the same time, elaborate searches have been made for manuscripts of important texts, to a
large extent in the heartlands of Islam, but also in the larger Oriental libraries in Europe, Central
Asia and North America. Subsequently, a number of manuscript holdings have been catalogued.
Microfilms have replaced the older handwritten copies of manuscripts needed for research
purposes.
(3) Gradually, critical editions of the more important texts have been made based on the
surviving manuscripts. Until now, only a minority of the many existing Arabic, Persian and
Turkish manuscripts have been printed and even fewer in a critical edition. Only a fraction of
these texts has been made available to the western public through translation with a scholarly
introduction and commentary.
(4) With the increase in knowledge of available texts it has slowly become possible to establish
the main outlines of the historical development of different kinds of texts: literary, historical,
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religious. This history of types of texts has been put within the wider framework of the social and
cultural history of particular regions of the Muslim commonwealth. As far as religion is
concerned, it has been possible to trace the main stages of the development of the Islamic
religious sciences (ulum al-din), and so of normative Islam in general, and to supplement this
with the history of other expressions of religious experience in mystical texts, religious poetry
and more popular religious literature.
Although the humanities’ approach to Islamic materials requires that much technical work be
done in the field of philology arid the analysis of sources, it covers a much broader range of
problems. First, the researcher has to learn to grasp the meanings of particular expressions and
understand the relevant texts not from an outside perspective but in their own terms, against the
background of the cultural and religious tradition of which they are part. Second, the historian
has to interpret the history of Muslim regions in the first place according to what is known of
their economic, social and political history and it is not easy to find the relevant precise data
about this 'infrastructure' in which culture and religion have expressed themselves, or in which
people have expressed themselves culturally and religiously.
Third, there is the recurrent problem, of interpreting the contents of Islamic thought in its
historical development: problems formulated or hinted at, ways of reasoning with or without the
use of certain Quranic texts and hadiths, solutions arrived at. Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), in
particular, confronts the western researcher who has no similar discipline in his own cultural
heritage with serious problems. We leave aside problems like those raised by hypercritical
scholarship with regard to the earliest known text of Islam, including the Qur'an, and the earliest
history of Islam in general, or the comparisons drawn. For instance, between the development of
Islam as a religion and that of the religion of the ancient Israelites, Judaism and Christianity, not
to mention their mutual historical influences and specific features in terms of forms and content.
Also the relationship between normative Islam as formulated by the ulama', and all kinds of
experienced Islam, often of a popular nature, and the relationships between Muslims and non-
Muslims in different times and places, constitute formidable problems for the humanities'
approach in Islamic studies. The characteristic problem in the humanities, apart from acquiring
the necessary technical capacities, appears to be in hermeneutics: the right understanding of the
texts studied either in themselves or in the light of particular well thought-out questions.
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2.4.5 Arabic and Islamic Studies
Linguistics and religion in the case of the Arabic language and Islamic Studies are indivisible
from each other and could be regarded as a clear example of interdisciplinary communication in
historical perspective. Arabic is considered to be one of the most powerful examples of a sacred
language in the history. No other linguistic culture has ever blended the language of God himself
with that of human thought and culture on a comparable scale. The key object of Classical or
Academic Islamic Studies, which relied upon the source study, was Islam in its historical
perspective. This approach was characterized by comprehensive source base, which rests upon
the original Arabic writings, context-historical attitudes to the information contained therein;
knowledge of the principal terminology and concepts of Islam and Academic Islamic Studies
that reflects specificity and general principles of this religious system.
The genesis of Islam revolves intimately around the Arabic language, and because Arabic
remained the dominant language of Muslim scholarship for centuries, it retains unparalleled
importance for Muslim and non-Muslim scholars today. Even if one’s primary research language
is not Arabic, there are too many terms—and therefore concepts—rooted in the Arabic language
that without a familiarity with or even moderate proficiency in the language, one’s authority and
overall comprehension of the Islamic tradition will be severely limited. Etymological and
morphological familiarity with key terms such as Islam, Muslim, fiqh, shari‘a, ḥijāb, Sufi, and
kalām—to name but a few—is indispensable for any grasp of the Islamic tradition that aims to
reach beyond the rudimentary.
According to Samir Abu-Absi, Arabic language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages.
The earliest known example of Arabic is an inscription found in the Syrian Desert dating back to
the fourth century A.D. Some believe that Arabic is a sacred language because it is the language
of the Quran, However, the language, by origin, it is believed to have come into existence around
three thousand years ago, before the revelation of the Quran. Quran was revealed in Arabic.
Allah says: “Indeed We have made it an Arabic Quran that perchance you will comprehend.”
(Surah al-Zukhruf: 3). The Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad also came in Arabic. These two
are the primary sources of Islam that lead scholars to consider mastering Arabic language is a
prerequisite to learn and understand Islam. Thus, a good understanding of the language will
enable a person to understand the meanings being indicated by the Quran and Sunnah with
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respect to Islamic Law. In other words, any negligence will lead to deviation from the true
meaning of the Quran and Sunnah.
The analysis and study of the text of the Qurʾān is of special importance for those who study
Islamic civilization, its role in the destinies of the mankind, its values and virtues. Without
understanding of the polyphony of this sacred text, indivisible unity of its form and content it is
impossible to understand social developments both in present and past. Since the first years of
Islam the Qurʾān has been in the center of attention of Moslem scholars, and in the center of
attention of theologians, historians, philologists, jurists, mathematicians. Only quite recently it
became an object of analysis of the specialists of computer technologies. In Arabic and Islamic
Studies mediaeval texts, i.e. textual documents are considered the main source of information.
Hence the analysis of the multiplicity of various texts and finding of interconnections among
them help to set scattered fragments of the riddle into a common and eloquent picture of the past,
which reflects the state of the society on certain stages of its development.
The text of the Qurʾān like any other phenomenon is a multifaceted object that should be studied
from different points of view. As a result, this complex study will allow to obtain a three-
dimensional image rather than a flat picture alone. This kind of written codification ensured its
continuity as well as guaranteed its transmission through time and space for many centuries.
Thus hitherto except for some graphic innovations (diacritics, signs for vowels, etc.) which had
been introduced during the first decades of hijrah the text of the Qurʼān has remained
unchanged. As for its translations into another language, as a rule they are commonly considered
only as attempts of transmission of the original text and reflections of some aspects of its content
and form.
The study of Islam is always accompanied by a study of its history, Muslim art, culture,
ethnography, etc. Besides that, interdisciplinarity manifests itself in the fact that it is necessary to
study these disciplines, relying upon original sources in Arabic. That is why it is the obligatory
for any specialist in Islamic Studies to read and understand texts in Arabic. This paper
demonstrates correlation between religion and language study on the example of the historical
development of Islam and the Arabic language. In this regard the role of written tradition, and,
foremost, the Qurʾān cannot be overestimated.
By the beginning of the eighth century, the Islamic Arab Empire had spread from Persia to
Spain, resulting in the interaction between Arabs and local populations who spoke different
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languages. In Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, where the majority of the population spoke some
dialect of Aramaic and where Arab tribes had been present in the vicinity, the local languages
were for the most part replaced by Arabic. In Iraq, Arabic became the dominant language among
a population who spoke Aramaic and Persian. A more gradual process of Arabization occurred in
Egypt where Coptic and Greek were the two dominant languages. In North Africa, where Berber
dialects were spoken and still are used in some parts, the process of Arabization was less
complete. Persia and Spain, however, retained their respective languages. In the early days of the
Empire, the majority of the population would not have been Arabic monolinguals. The
interaction of Arabic with other languages led to the borrowing of new vocabulary which
enriched the language in areas such as government, administration, and science. This, in addition
to the rich internal resources of Arabic, enabled the language to become a suitable medium for
governing a vast empire.
Under the Umayyad dynasty (661-750 A.D.), with Damascus as the center of power, Arabic
continued its tradition of excellence as the language of poetry, enriched its literature with
translations from Persian and other languages, and acquired new terminology in various fields of
study which included linguistics, philosophy, and theology. Under the Abbasid rule from
Baghdad (750-1258 A.D.), Arabic literature reached its golden age as linguistic studies reached a
new level of sophistication. Many scholars, Arabs and non-Arabs, Muslims, Christians and Jews,
participated in the development of intellectual life using Arabic as their preferred language. A
systematic effort at translation from various sources had made Arabic the most suitable scholarly
medium of the day in disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, medicine, geography and
various branches of science. Many of the words readily borrowed during this period were easily
assimilated into Arabic and later transmitted to other languages.
A period of decline began in the eleventh century as the result of several factors including the
start of the Crusades, the political unrest in Spain, Mongol and Turkish invasions from the East,
and internal divisions within the Empire. This marked a period of relative stagnation for Arabic
although its status as the language of Islam was never threatened.
In pre-Islamic times, Arabic script suffered from a number of deficiencies including the lack of
letters for certain consonant sounds and the absence of any system for indicating vowel sounds.
The Arabic alphabet is simple and concise. It has 28 letters, all consonants - with the exception
of three used for long vowels. The other vowels are supplied by 14 diacritical marks which also
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serve as noun and verb modifiers. These are placed above or below the consonants to bring out
the correct pronunciation of the words. The present system is the result of some major reforms
which were introduced when the script was found inadequate as a tool for recording and
preserving the Holy Quran. This close association with the Quran bestowed a sanctified status on
a script that arose from a humble beginning. This enabled it to develop into a unique art form not
equalled by any other calligraphic tradition.
With the spread of Islam, many non-Arabs found themselves learning Arabic in order to be able
to read the Quran. Thus many languages which came under the influence of Arabic through
Islam adopted the use of the Arabic script. These languages, most of which were non-Semitic in
origin, included Farsi (Persian), Pashto, Kashmiri, Urdu, Sindhi, Malay, and others. There is no
doubt that the survival of Arabic through the ages is primarily due to the survival of Islam.
However, credit must be given to the inherent qualities of Arabic itself. Arabic is a vigorous,
trenchant language. Its vitality, inherited from the rough days of the desert, has enabled it to
withstand hardship of time.
2.4.6 Persian Language and Literature
Persian has historically been, after Arabic, the most prestigious literary language in the Muslim
world and a vehicle of cultural expression in Ottoman Turkey, Central Asia, Mogul India and, of
course, Persia (greater Iran). The influence of Persian literature and Persianate culture therefore
covered a wide region, from the Balkans to Bangladesh, and from the Persian Gulf to north of
the Jaxartes River in Central Asia. Persian literature is a body of poetic and other literary works
created principally in Iran. Afghanistan, the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and Turkey also
have been home to a rich literature written in Persian. During extensive periods of Islamic
history, Persian also enjoyed great significance and acted as an administrative, spoken, and
scholarly language for much of Central and South Asia. Therefore, depending on regional and
historical focus, an Islamic Studies scholar may indeed require a more in-depth knowledge of
Persian than Arabic, but because Persian is sprinkled with thousands of Arabic words and
idioms, working primarily with Persian texts without securing a foundational knowledge of
Arabic would nevertheless create many roadblocks.
Persian literature constitutes a rich, diversified, and autonomous aesthetic tradition within
Islamic civilization, to which the Iranian, or more accurately Persian-speaking, literati and their
audiences have actively contributed throughout history. Persian literature is not reducible to the
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fundamental tenets of Islam. Although most Persian literati have been born to families and raised
in environments in one way or another identifiable as “Islamic,” their imagination and literary
production are sui generis, irreducible to any religious worldview. The Persian literature
produced after the Arab invasion of the seventh century was thus heir both textually and orally to
a substantial body of literature that, whether in direct (written or oral) tradition or in literary
imagination, persisted well into the later periods. As it gradually emerged as a non-canonical
language, Persian evolved into a literary language of monumental imagination. Always under the
shadow of Arabic, Modern Persian carried within its relation to Arabic the debilitating memory
of the decisive Battle of Qādisīyah (636/637) in which the Persians were defeated by the newly
Muslim Arabs. In a remarkable division of creative imagination, the Persian scientific and
philosophical writings were produced primarily in Arabic, while literature continued to flourish
in Persian. Arabic then became the paternal language of the hegemonic theology, jurisprudence,
philosophy, and science, while the maternal Persian, the language of mothers’ lullabies and
wandering singers, songwriters, and storytellers, constituted the subversive literary imagination
of a secular and poetic conception of being.
Neither the romantic nor the lyrical possibilities of Persian poetry escaped the attention of
Persian mystics. Devoted to a particular doctrinal reading of the Qurʿān and of the message of
Muḥammad, the Persian Ṣūfīs joined their Arab, Turkish, and Indian brethren in a thorough
mystification of the physical world. Following the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of
being), the Ṣūfīs collectively engaged in a radical mystification of both literature and love, and
Persian lyrical poetry proved most appropriate for such a task. Three poets, Sanāʿī (d. 1130),
ʿAṭṭār (d. about 1220), and Rūmī (d. 1273), are recognized as the master-builders of Persian
mystical poetry.
With Sanāʿī we witness the decline of the court as the great patron of Persian poetry and the rise
of religious sentiments to substitute the physical beauties that principally shaped Persian poetry's
imaginative repertoire. The substantial mystification of Sanāʿī by later Ṣūfīs is not borne out by
the actual presence of religious sensibilities in his poetry. Sanāʿī professed that his worldly
poetics did not significantly promote his station in life, and that consequently he decided to
devote his talent to religious poetry. He blamed his contemporaries—a vague reference to his
liaisons with the Ghaznavid court—for not having appreciated his poetry. He seems to have felt
particularly humiliated by submitting his poetic gift to the brute taste of his patrons. He was the
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master of the world of words, he thought, and yet a servile slave to his brute masters. As a result,
he informs us, he abandons worldly poetry and turns his attention to religious matters. But the
conversion is not so dramatic as to abandon poetry altogether. He simply decides to attend to
religious matters poetically. “My poetry shall be a commentary on Religion and Law/The only
reasonable path for a poet is this.” Despite his Shīʿī sentiment, Sanāʿī equally praised the first
three caliphs, indicating a less than zealous religiosity. Nevertheless, later Ṣūfīs took full
advantage of this “conversion” and fabricated fantastic stories about it, turning Sanāʿī into a full-
fledged Ṣūfī. As a poet, however, Sanāʿī remained singularly attached to religious matters, a fact
represented not only in his poetry but also in his pilgrimage to Mecca from Khorāsān.
After that pilgrimage, a friend of Sanāʿī, a man named Khvājah ʿAmīd Aḥmad ibn Masʿūd,
provided him with room and board and asked Sanāʿī to collect his own poems and prepare
a dīvān (collection of poetry). Sanāʿī spent the rest of his life in this house in Ghaznīn (modern
Ghaznī, Afghanistan) and compiled his collected works, including his masterpiece Ḥadīqat al-
ḥaqīqah (The Garden of Truth). Sanāʿī's dīvān, masterfully edited in more than thirteen thousand
verses by Mudarris-i Raḍawī, is a compendium of his secular and religious sensibilities.
His madāʿiḥ (panegyrics) demonstrate Sanāʿī’s mastery of the genre and are clear indications of
a boastful awareness of his poetic gifts.
Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah va sharīʿat al-ṭarīqah (The Garden of Truth and the Law of the Way, also
known as Ilāhī-nāmah, The Divine Book) is Sanāʿī’s most significant work, which he composed
between 1129 and 1130 in ten thousand verses. Sanāʿī dedicated this maѕ-navī couplet to the
Ghaznavid warlord Bahrāmshāh (r. about 1118–1152). The Ḥadīqat begins with conventional
salutations to God, the Prophet, and his companions, and then proceeds to poetic discourses on
reason, knowledge, wisdom, and love. There must have been something in the original version
of Ḥadīqat that angered contemporary religious authorities. Sanāʿī sent a copy of it to a
prominent religious authority, Burhān al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Nāṣir al-Ghaznavī, in
Baghdad and asked him to issue an edict in its support. In his letter, composed in the form of a
poem, Sanāʿī went so far as to identify Ḥadīqat as “the Qurʿān in Persian,” a phrase that has been
used for other texts as well, particularly by Jāmī in reference to Rūmī's Maѕ-navī. On the death
of Sanāʿī, there was no complete version of Ḥadīqah extant. Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Raffāʿ, a
Ṣūfī as judged by his introduction, prepared an edition of the text.
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Kārnāmah-yi Balkh, another maѕ-navī of Sanāʿī, thought to be the earliest poetic composition, is
entirely worldly and humorous. Composed for the Ghaznavid ruler Masʿūd ibn
Ibrāhīm, Kārnāmah-yi Balkh is full of praises for the nobility and poetic dialogues with his
contemporary poets. Sayr al-ʿibād ilā al-Maʿād, Ṭarīq al-tahqīq, and ʿIshq-nāmah are three
other of Sanāʿī's maѕ-navīs. Among his numerous maѕ-navīs, ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-ṭayr (Colloquy
of the Birds) has been persistently read as a mystical allegory, foretelling Rūmī's maѕ-navī to be
composed later in the same century. ʿAṭṭār’s story of a group of birds persuaded by the hoopoe
(Hudhud) to look for a king is a simple didactic narrative. Thirty of the many birds thus
persuaded to look for their king finally make it to their destination, where they meet Sīmurgh (by
folk-etymology, the “thirty-bird,” but actually the modern Persian descendant of an Avestan
name referring to a raptor of some sort).
Sanāʿī and ʿAṭṭār’s experimentation with didactic maѕ-navī narrative ultimately reached Rūmī, in
whose hands Persian mystical poetry achieved its pinnacle. Rūmī’s Maѕ-navī, dubbed “the
Qurʿān in Persian” by Jāmī, is the highest achievement of Persian mystical poetry. Rūmī took
equal advantage of Persian ghazal lyricism and supplanted his mystical love where the physical
love of Saʿdī was. With slight poetic modifications in conceptual and aesthetic sensibilities,
Rūmī gave full expression to a mystical narrative that postulated an all-loving God presiding
over the worldly manifestation of his omnipresence. Man in Rūmī's narrative became a Man-God
endowed with the potential for the realization of all divine attributes. Rūmī’s became a
passionate quest toward the realization of God within.
After Rūmī, the colossal mystification of Persian lyrical and romantic poetry was so pervasive
and powerful that not until the advent of modernity after the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–
1911 did poetic imagination have a literary space in which to emerge. The only exception to that
massive mystification in premodern Persian poetry is in the lyrical poetry of Ḥāfiẓ and the whole
new universe of aesthetic sensibilities that he created.
2.4.7 Turkish-Islamic Literature
Turkish belongs to the Altay branch of the Ural-Altay linguistic family. Through the span of
history, Turks have spread over a wide geographical area, taking their language with them.
Turkish speaking people have lived in a wide area stretching from today's Mongolia to the north
coast of the Black Sea, the Balkans, East Europe, Anatolia, Iraq and a wide area of northern
Africa. Due to the distances involved, various dialects and accents have emerged. The history of
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the language is divided into three main groups, old Turkish (from the 7th to the 13th centuries),
mid-Turkish (from the 13th to the 20th) and new Turkish from the 20th century onwards. During
the Ottoman Empire Period Arabic and Persian words invaded the Turkish language and it
consequently became mixed with three different languages. During the Ottoman period, which
spanned five centuries, the natural development of Turkish was severely hampered.
Following the adoption of Islam by the Karakhanid Khanate and the Seljuk Turks, regarded as
the cultural ancestors of the Ottomans, the administrative and literary languages of these states
acquired a large collection of loanwords from Arabic (usually by way of Persian), as well as non-
Arabic Persian words: a leading example of a Perso-Arabic influenced Turkic language
was Chagatai, which remained the literary language of Central Asia until Soviet times. During
the course of over six hundred years of the Ottoman Empire (c. 1299–1922), the literary and
official language of the empire was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic, which differed
considerably from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time, and is termed Ottoman Turkish.
After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, and following the script reform, the Turkish
Language Association (TDK) was established under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in
1932, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established
association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian
origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning the usage of replaced loanwords in the press, the
association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language, thus
diminishing but by no means erasing the Arabic influence on Turkish.
The discipline of Turkish-Islamic Literature came into existence with the Turkish embrace of
Islam. It refers to the literature that the Turks have produced under the influence of the Islamic
religion. Starting from Kutadgu Bilig, the earliest extant work in Turkish written in the
11th century during the Karakhanid dynasty by Yusuf Khass Hajib of Balasagun, Turkish-Islamic
Literature has generated its own forms of literary production. Scholars of the field name three
main traditions in this regard: Divan Literature, Folk Literature, and Tekke Literature. Divan
Literature refers to a highly symbolic art form inspired by Islam and produced under the
influence of Persian and Arabic literary forms.
Following Turkish migrations into Anatolia in the wake of the Malazgirt victory in 1071, the
establishment of various Beyliks in Anatolia and the eventual founding of the Seljuk and
Ottoman Empires set the scene for Turkish literature to develop along two distinct lines, with
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“divan” or classical literature drawing its inspiration from the Arabic and Persian languages and
Turkish folk literature still remaining deeply rooted in Central Asian traditions. Divan poets did
not have independent philosophies; they were content to express the same ideas in different
ways. The magnificence of the poet came from his artistry in finding original and beautiful forms
of expression. The most famous of the Divan poets were Baki, Fuzuli, Nedim and Nef'i. To a
certain extent, the Turkish folk literature which has survived till our day, reflects the influence of
Islam and the new life style and form of the traditional literature of Central Asia after the
adoption of Islam. Turkish folk literature comprised anonymous works of bard poems and Tekke
(mystical religious retreats) literature. Yunus Emre who lived in the second half of the 13th and
early 14th centuries were an epoch making poet and Sufi (mystical philosopher) expert in all
three areas of folk literature as well as divan poetry. Important figures of poetic literature were
Karacaoglan, Atik Ömer, Erzurumlu Emrah and Kayserili Seyrani.
The organization of education in Islam reveals some rather important contributions of the Turks
to Islamic civilization. The madrasa system came into being during the period of Turkish rule,
the first of such institutions formally supported by the state being a creation of the Turkish
Seljuqs. In a more general sense too, the birth of the madrasa system owed much to Turkish
initiative. It was developed in the region of Transoxiana and Khorasan, where Turks constituted
a significant part of the population, and Turkish kings of the Qarakhanid, Ghaznawid, and Seljuq
dynasties were the founders of the earliest of such schools. Turks appear, moreover, among the
earliest bibliophiles and founders of libraries in Islam.
The most illustrious among Turkish rulers who encouraged and promoted scientific work is,
without any doubt, Ulugh Bey. Indeed, if only three rulers should be singled out for
consideration as the most remarkable patrons of science throughout the Middle Ages, they would
undoubtedly be Al-Mamun, Alfonso X, and Ulugh Bey, and Ulugh Bey should certainly be
ranked as the most enlightened among them. There will be occasion in the following pages to
refer to other Turkish rulers who patronized scientific work when speaking of observatories and
hospitals. Names of Turkish rulers in Islam who encouraged scientific work and were personally
interested in its cultivation would run into a quite long list.
Turks have played an active part in the pursuit of science and learning in the Islamic World
throughout its history. This activity started at the very formative stages of the process of building
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a historically momentous world civilization and continued, with its various turns of fortune,
down to the present day.
The Turks in the Indian subcontinent also contributed significantly to Indian civilisation and
Islamic civilisation as a whole. Their contributions are visible in many areas. . In fact, the Turks
enhanced the process of decorating books. Artists painted portraits of the monarchs and sultans
and occasionally they demonstrated the events depicted in the books with their paintings. I
believe that such art was introduced to India by the Turkish rulers themselves because they
brought with them books illustrating the beautiful Persian miniatures. Miniature paintings were
used to illustrate books.
The impact and embedding of Turkish culture into Hindustan took place during the Turco-
Afghan period of India's history from the end of the 12th century to the early 16th century and
continued during the Mughal period. When Turkish rulers entered India, they introduced their
own customs while accepting Indian customs, such as the class system. The art and architecture
of the Delhi Sultanate epoch was dissimilar from the Indian style. The Indo Islamic style of
architecture developed as a mishmash of the Indian and Turkish styles. The Turks also brought
with them Arabian and Persian traditions of architecture. Indian decorations and methods were
used in Islamic buildings, with the domes and arches of their own design. Among the legendary
buildings of this time are the Qutub Minar, the Quwat-ul–Islam mosque, the Alai Darwaza, the
tomb of Ghiasudduin Tughlaq, Ferozshahkotla, the citadel at Tuglaqgabad and other outstanding
constructions. Sultan Ahmad I (1422 A.D.-1435 A.D.) carried out the building of the fort at
Bidar. According to Ferishta it took nine years to complete the defences of the fort. The
fortifications were entirely rebuilt under the supervision of Turkish engineers towards the end of
the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century A.D. The fortifications, having been built
by Turkish mercenaries, possess a certain resemblance to medieval European forts in terms of
their barbicans, covered passages and bastions. The moat was apparently the work of Hindu
masons, while the massive walls constructed of ‘stone and mortar’ were designed and built by
Persian and Turkish architects who had assembled at the court of King Ahmad I. It is recorded
that Ahmad I formed a group of three thousand archers in his army. The archeries came from
Khorassan, Turkey and Arabia. The manuscript entitled Ajaibul Makhluqat of Al Qazwini,
written in 1560 A.D. belongs to King Ali I’s reign. It was inspired by the Ottoman Turkish
paintings and does not exhibit any local Deccani influence. An elegant portrait decorated by
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Muhammad Adil Shah is considered to be one of the greatest structural triumphs of Indo-Perso-
Ottoman architecture of Adil Shahi period. Furthermore, they introduced the Unani system of
medicine, the art of papier-mâché and enameling skills, and painting and carving in wood which
were developed under the Vijaynagar rulers. They also enhanced Indian architecture and added
their distinguished touches. Hence, new magnificent buildings emerged in India during this era
which now count as some of the wonders of the world.
2.4.8 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to understand the Oriental languages and their role in shaping a cohesive
and Muslim centric approach to Islam after the advent of Islam to the respective places of their
origin. The way religious language can inspire and arouse feelings in people is the main
argument in this section. This lesson tried to emphasize the fundamental role language plays in
the practical understanding, expression, presentation and furtherance of any set of religious
beliefs (with particular reference to Islam), and the invaluable assistance which linguistics, the
scientific study of language, can give. Languages, such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian, and the
literature, which emerged in these languages, helped to create a trans-territorial understanding
and dissemination of Islam. Moreover, these languages and the culture, which emerged from the
influence of Islam on the religious consciousness, shaped an Islamic epistemological framework
throughout Muslim societies.
1. Write a brief note on Oriental Languages?
2. Explain briefly the role of Arabic Language in Islamic Studies discipline
3. Elaborate briefly the important features of Persian literature on Islam?
4. Explain the Turko-Islamic Literature and its importance?
5. Write a brief note on the importance of learning Oriental Languages and their relevance in the
field of Islamic Studies?
1. Arberry, Arthur J., “Islamic Literature: Persia,” In Near Eastern Culture and Society, T.
Cuyler Young, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951)
2. Mohammad Taher, Quantitative Study of Islamic Literature, (New Delhi: Adam
Publishers, 2004)
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3. Nanji Azim, Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, (Berlin:
Mounton De Greytur, 2010)
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Unit III
i) Project Report Writing and its Significance
ii) Selecting the Project Topic and Writing the Synopsis of the Project
iii) Sources and Methods of Collecting the Data
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UNIT III
Lesson 1: Project Report Writing and Its Significance
Lesson Structure
3.1.1 Introduction
3.1.2 Objectives
3.1.3 Framework of Report Writing
3.1.4 Writing Style of the Report
3.1.5 Report Writing: The Do’s and The Don’ts
3.1.6 Significance of Report Writing
3.1.7 Components of a Report
3.1.8 Let Us Sum Up
3.1.1 Introduction
Project Report is a written document relating to any investment. It contains data on the basis of
which the project has been appraised and found feasible. It consists of information on economic,
technical, financial, managerial and production aspects. Mostly, research work is presented in a
written form. The practical utility of research study depends heavily on the way it is presented to
those who are expected to act on the basis of research findings. It is a written document
containing key aspects of research project. Research report is the systematic, articulate, and
orderly presentation of research work in a written form. It is a research document that contains
basic aspects of the research project. The results of any investigation should be presented to the
reader in the form of written report. The style and form of the report varies according to the
nature of the project. However, the report should be written in simple language so that it would
be easily grasped by the reader. The most important point to be kept in mind while writing
research report is its intended function. The purpose of report is communication with an audience
and not with oneself. Although this may appear redundant, it is seen that many social research
reports give an evidence for a struggle of clarification of the authors thought and thus are not
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designed to communicate ideas meaningfully to an audience about the problems that it would
find of interest. It should be objective in nature, however without any exaggerations, thus
preserving the originality of the study. The ideas, facts and results should be communicated in a
clear and concise manner.
3.1.2 Objectives
 To understand the framework of writing a project report
 To understand its significance and use in our research
3.1.3 Framework of Report Writing
The production of a good piece of technical writing for a project report is as much a part of the
project as doing the experimental work. However excellent and original a piece of work the
project may be, unless the results can be communicated to other people it may as well not have
been done! Communicating results of an investigation in a clear and useful way is a key part of
science and is the reason for devoting a lot of effort to this aspect. Whether it is a progress report
or a post-mortem, every project manager eventually has to write a project report for the client or
management’s benefit. The problem is, not all project managers know how to write a report,
much less write an effective one. The good news is that it is a skill that can be learned. Unlike
other skills, you do not need months of training. There is no single correct way to write a report.
There are many accepted formats and methods, each varying by industry, organization, or even
manager. What is important is that it gets the right information across clearly and effectively. To
write a good project report, you just need to follow these basic principles:
Write to the Reader: Remember that you are not writing the report for yourself. You are
probably writing for clients or management, so you need to know how familiar they are with the
concepts and terminologies that your team uses. If they are not well-acquainted with it, you may
have to spend the first part of your report defining them so readers can follow along. Or, you
might want to dumb it down a bit to layman’s terms and cut back on acronyms and jargon. A
good way to practice this is to do the same with meeting notes.
Structure your Report: One thing all reports should have in common is a form of structure.
Ideally, you want to organize information into different segments so that your reader can identify
relevant sections and quickly refer back to them later on. Common sections include a
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background or abstract to explain the project’s purpose, and a final summary of the document’s
contents.
Back Up your Report with Data: A good project report is going to have lots of data backing it
up, whether it is defending the team’s performance or breaking down a successful project.
Accurate charts, spreadsheets, and statistics are a must if the report is to have any degree of
credibility when presented to clients. Many project management tools provide flexible project
reporting features to help PM’s compile and present data in meaningful ways.
Separate Facts from Opinion: You should never confuse the two when writing a project report,
especially if you are doing a post-mortem on a failed project. Opinions are subjective and should
never be presented as absolutes. The report should be scrubbed of any personal views or
preferences unless absolutely necessary. And if your opinion is required, be sure to clearly
identify it as such. You may want to put it in an entirely different section, if possible.
Details of the Report: It is not necessary, or even desirable; to describe every minute detail of
what was done. One of the most important aspects of good technical writing is to be concise, yet
remain informative. The ability to select what is essential, and to omit what is merely incidental
detail, is a skill every scientist needs to develop. In view of this, the main part of your report
must be within the word limit(s) specified in the applicable module description. An overlong
report will be penalized and receive a lower mark than it otherwise deserves.
Most research funds are available for research in a particular area, e.g. on the less controversial
topics rather than on most controversial ones relating to politics and religion. Better paid
positions may be available to researchers working in certain areas than in certain others.
Needless to say few social scientists would be indifferent to such considerations as income,
personal prestige, research funds and public or state cooperation. R. L Ackoffs analysis affords
considerable guidance in identifying a problem for research. Ackoff visualizes five components
of a problem.
Research Consumer: There must be an individual or a group that experiences any difficulty.
The individual may be the researcher himself and the group could be a group of researchers or
scientists. For most problems there are other participants. The researcher, if he is different from
the research-consumer, is a participant in the problem. So are all individuals or groups who may
be affected by the decision taken by the research-consumer.
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Research Consumer’s Objectives: The research consumer must have something he wants to get
at or some ends he seeks to achieve. Obviously, a person who wants nothing cannot have a
problem.
Alternative means to meet the objectives: The research-consumer must have available,
alternative means for achieving the objectives he desires. Means are courses of action open to the
research consumer. A course of action may involve use of various objects. Objects used thus are
the instruments. A scale may be an instrument but the use of a scale may be conceived of as a
means. An instrument refers to any object, concept or idea which can be effectively incorporated
in the pursuit of the object.
Doubt in regard to selection of alternatives: The existence of alternative courses of action is
not enough in order to experience a problem, the research consumer must have some doubt as to
which alternative to select. Without such a doubt, there can be no problem. The research
consumer must have a question concerning the relative efficiency of the alternative means and he
must want to answer it.
There must be one or more environments to which the difficulty or problem pertains: A
change in environment may produce or remove a problem. A research consumer may have
doubts as to which will be the most efficient means in one environment but would have no such
doubt in another. For example, a person may have problem involving a decision as to what kind
of court to wear on a clear day. But should it rain, he would have no doubt about the propriety of
wearing his rain court.
Research reports are written in a scientific writing style. You have probably noticed that the
writing style in published articles is fact-filled, highly structured, and more concise than other
kinds of writing. This is deliberate. The goal of an experimental report is to provide objective
information and not to entertain the reader or express opinions, or talk about personal life
experiences. Even so, the writing should be interesting, simple and lively. Whenever a report is
written we also refer to many other sources from where we obtained varied types of information.
It is important that all facts need to be documented by citing the published sources from where
the information has been obtained. You must also avoid your subjective ideas and opinions in
regard to the topic while writing a research report.
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Every effort should be made to keep off one’s personal feelings from the writing of the report.
One can use a formal style or an informal style, either way no personal feelings must be allowed
to enter the report. A report is a scientific document for public consumption and perhaps for the
scientific community and it is not an essay or personal statement. Most authors avoid personal
pronouns like I or we, whenever possible (their occasional use is acceptable in order to avoid
awkward sentences).The scientific style is also parsimonious. The author attempts to give
complete information in as few words as possible, because the amount of publication space in
journals is limited and authors write as concisely as possible, selecting their words carefully.
Each word is chosen for its precision. Most of us need practice to write scientifically because it is
very different from the common styles of writing. Always avoid flowery expressions in writing
and practice precision and accuracy in stating facts. These in turn would contribute to making
you write the report in a scientific manner. In a scientific report, it is always advisable to avoid
slang as it lacks exact meaning and might not be universally familiar.

When you write your research report, be careful to use unbiased language. The American
Psychological Association (APA), the American Psychological Society (APS), and other
publishers of psychological research reports, such as the Sage Publications are committed to
encouraging language free of gender and ethnic bias in their publications. There are several
techniques for avoiding bias: When writing about ethnic groups, for example, use the term that is
currently preferred by most members of that group. Always use non-sexist language. Whenever
you are writing about individuals (research participants, people in general), select words that are
free of gender bias. Because some sexist words are so embedded in our language, this can seem
awkward at first instance. For example, do not talk about the benefits of psychological research
for “man” or “mankind” when you really mean “all people” –say “people” instead. Do not refer
to a participant as “he” (unless all your participants really were male); use “he or she” or “they”
instead. If you use “he or she” (or “she or he”), however, do so sparingly or the usage becomes
distracting. Never use contrived contractions, like “she”, or “he/she”, which suggest that the
genders are interchangeable.
3.1.6 Significance of Report Writing
A report is an informational work made with the specific intention of relaying information or
recounting certain events in a way that is concise, factual and relevant to the audience at hand.
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Reports may be conveyed through a written medium, speech, television, or film. In professional
spheres, reports are a common and vital communication tool. Additionally, reports may be
official or unofficial, and can be listed publicly or only available privately depending on the
specific scenario. The audience for a report can vary dramatically, from an elementary school
classroom to a boardroom on Wall Street. Reports fill a vast array of informational needs for a
spectrum of audiences. Reports may be used to keep track of information, evaluate a strategy, or
make decisions. Written reports are documents which present focused and salient content,
generally to a specific audience. An example of an official report would be a police report, which
could have legally binding consequences. Other types of reports, like Consumer Reports inform
the public about the quality of products available on the market. Reports are used in government,
business, education, science, and other fields, often to display the results of an experiment,
investigation, or inquiry.
Why are project reports so important? There are many reasons why, and most are very intuitive.
Status reports are part of the project documentation and allow you to monitor your project’s
progress. The progress is quantified in the reports, so instead of flying blindly and hoping for the
best, you have a solid foundation that will help you make more informed decisions. It also
enables you to justify why you made changes to the project plan. Project reports also guarantee
that you have a constant information flow. It allows you to manage and communicate with
your stakeholders more effectively. Stakeholders are always anxious to know how the project is
doing, so keeping them in the loop via regular status reports will increase their confidence in the
project manager and the project. It is not wise to keep stakeholders in the dark. It is better to
communicate potential or real issues and challenges with them as soon as they arise.
Two of the reasons why reports are used as forms of written assessment are:
 To find out what you have learned from your reading, research or experience;
 To give you experience of an important skill that is widely used in the work place.
An effective report presents and analyses facts and evidence that are relevant to the specific
problem or issue of the report brief. All sources used should be acknowledged and referenced
throughout, in accordance with the preferred method of your department/university. The style of
writing in a report is usually less discursive than in an essay, with a more direct and economic
use of language. A well-written report will demonstrate your ability to a) focus: an effective
report emphasizes the important information b) accuracy: an effective report does not mislead
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the reader c) clarity: an effective report does not confuse the reader d) Conciseness: an effective
report does not waste the reader’s time.
With respect to the preparation of a detailed report, one must begin with the question of what a
research report should contain. The audience for whom the report is intended, needs to know
enough about the study to be able to place it in its general scientific context, and thus, to judge
the adequacy of its methods and arrive at an evaluation of how seriously the findings may be
taken or to what extent these should be depended upon as guides to future scientific activity and
social action. The report should advisedly elude to the following aspects in order that necessary
information is afforded to the readers:
a) An introduction informing the problems the researcher was investigating and the
rationale or justification for selecting the problem for investigation.
b) A discussion of methods/ procedures employed by the researcher for sampling out
respondents, collection of data and data analysis.
c) An elaborative presentation on what the findings of the investigation have been, followed
by a discussion devoted to what the findings mean or signify at the level of theory and
practice and what these findings point to as worthwhile problem-areas for future
investigation.
d) Abstract comprising a brief summary of the introduction and interpretation section.
e) An alphabetical list of books and articles cited in the various sections of the report,
customarily subsumed under the larger rubric of “references”.
f) Appendix (desirably) comprising copy of the questionnaire schedule used, scales or
stimuli employed (as in controlled observation), tables of data, which are not as important
in relation to the study as to find a place in the body of the report.
Research report is considered a major component of the research study for the research task
remains incomplete till the report has been presented and/or written. In fact, even the most
brilliant hypothesis, highly well designed and conducted research study, and the most striking
generalizations and findings are of little value unless they are effectively communicated to
others. The purpose of research is not well served unless the findings are made known to others.
Research results must invariably enter the general store of knowledge. All this explains the
significance of writing research report. There are people who do not consider writing of report as
an integral part of the research process. But the general opinion is in favour of treating the
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presentation of research results or the writing of report as part and parcel of the research project.
Writing of report is the last step in a research study and requires a set of skills somewhat
different from those called for in respect of the earlier stages of research. This task should be
accomplished by the researcher with utmost care, he may seek the assistance and guidance of
experts for the purpose.
3.1.7 Components of a Report
To tell the reader what was done, what was discovered as a consequence and how this relates to
the reasons the report was undertaken. Include only relevant material in your background and
discussion. A report is an act of communication between you and your reader. So pay special
attention to your projected reader, and what they want from the report. Sometimes you will be
asked to write for an imaginary reader (e.g. a business client). In this case it is vital to think about
why they want the report to be produced (e.g. to decide on the viability of a project) and to make
sure you respond to that. If it is your tutor, they will want to know that you can communicate the
processes and results of your research clearly and accurately, and can discuss your findings in the
context of the overall purpose.
Write simply and appropriately: Your method and findings should be described accurately and
in non-ambiguous terms. A perfectly described method section would make it possible for
someone else to replicate your research process and achieve the same results. See the page in this
guide on 'Writing up your report' for more on this.
Spend time on your discussion section: This is the bit that pulls the whole piece together by
showing how your findings relate to the purpose of the report, and to any previous research.
Every idea and piece of information you use that comes from someone else’s work must be
acknowledged with a reference. Check your brief, or department handbook for the form of
referencing required (usually a short reference in the body of the text, and a full reference in the
Reference List at the end).
Be clear about the scope of the report: The word count will help you to understand this. For
instance, a 5000-word report will be expected to include a lot more background and discussion
than a 1000-word report this will be looking for more conciseness in the way you convey your
information.
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3.1.8 Let Us Sum Up

In this lesson, we tried to understand the concept of report writing and how to approach the
report writing. From this lesson, we understood that report is an informational work made with
the specific intention of relaying information or recounting certain events in a way that is
concise, factual and relevant to the audience at hand. Reports may be conveyed through a written
medium, speech, television, or film. In professional spheres, reports are a common and vital
communication tool. Additionally, reports may be official or unofficial, and can be listed
publicly or only available privately depending on the specific scenario. Reports fill a vast array
of informational needs for a spectrum of audiences. They may be used to keep track of
information, evaluate a strategy, or make decisions. Written reports are documents which present
focused and salient content, generally to a specific audience. An example of an official report
would be a police report, which could have legally binding consequences.
1. What is report writing?
2. What are the different components of Report Writing?
3. Explain the Do’s and Don’ts of Report Writing?
4. Define the importance of Report Writing?
5. What is the usage of Report Writing?
1. Webster Gorden, Managing Projects at Work, (New York: Routledge, 2017)
2. John Bowden, Writing a Report: How to Prepare, Write and Present Effective Reports, (How
Books, 2011)
3. Margaret Greenhall, Report Writing Skills Training Course: How to Write a Report and
Executive Summary, and Plan, Design and Present Your Report - An Easy Format for Writing
Business Reports, (Uo Learn Publishers, 2010)
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UNIT III
Lesson 2: Selecting the Project Topic and Writing the Synopsis of the Project
Lesson Structure
3.2.1 Introduction
3.2.2 Objectives
3.2.3 Purpose of a Report
3.2.6 Develop the Background
3.2.7 State the Purpose and Rationale
3.2.8 Standard Headings for Synopsis Writing
3.2.9 Writing the Synopsis for the Project
3.2.1 Introduction
Research really begins when the researcher experiences some difficulty, i.e. a problem
demanding a solution within the subject area of his discipline. This general area of interest,
however, defines only the range of subject matter within which the researcher would see and
pose a specific problem for research. In other words, the subject area only indicates where to
look for a problem without specifying what the problem is like. In its diffuse form the subject
area simply represents a broad zone of issue within which the researcher expects to find his
specific problem. The general area or topic of a study may be either suggested or known. The
researcher may also be interested in the phenomenon that have already been studied to a certain
extent, in which case, the researcher may be interested in identifying more exactly the conditions
that effect the given phenomena in a particular way. If the researcher is working in a field in
which there has developed a well-articulated theoretical system, he may want to test specific
predictions or expectations based on that theory. This unit introduces you to report writing.
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Reports are of many types, with some based on research work and some based on review of work
done, and a few others based on one’s experience. There are reports which we write about some
matter to another agency or to our successor indicating what had gone on until now and what
more to be done etc. Thus, report writing is of many types. In this unit, we are going to focus on
writing of a report based on research work. This unit will provide you with the purpose of a
report, writing style of a report, how to write the abstract to a report as well as the typical major
headings one must follow in a research report.
3.2.2 Objectives
 Discuss the purpose of a report;

 Explain the writing style of the report;
3.2.3 Purpose of a Report
A report is a written document, which contains information regarding a topic, which has been
dealt with by a person. For example, a teacher might have dealt with a topic on how teaching
methodology influences students performance. The person would have tried out three or four
different teaching methods such as lecture method, discussion method, tutorial method and
audiovisual method. Students performance would have been noted before teaching by a certain
method and after the teaching with a particular method was over say in a period of 3 months, the
performance of students will be assessed once again. Based on the results the person would have
written the report about what all was done, and what was the final outcome of such a research.
The report, which is a written document, contains a number of chapters each focusing on certain
aspects and with final chapter highlighting the conclusions arrived at based on the research.
Thus, the purpose of report in the field of psychology is to communicate to others what has been
experimented or researched on, and what has been the result of such an effort. Through the report
we tell other psychologists and colleagues in the field as well as the practitioners what
experiment we did on memory or what therapeutic method did we try to use to find its
effectiveness in the treatment of mental disorder etc. along with what our results showed in
regard to the experiment conducted or the research work. In addition to reporting findings, we
provide information to other psychologists and researchers in this area to enable them to make a
critical evaluation of procedures and a reasonable judgment about the quality of the research that
has been conducted whether experiment or survey or case study. In addition, another purpose of
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the report in psychology is that we want to provide enough information so as to enable others to
replicate and extend the findings.
Research reports are written in a scientific writing style. You have probably noticed that the
writing style in published articles are fact-filled, highly structured, and more concise than other
kinds of writing. This is deliberate. The goal of an experimental report is to provide objective
information and not to entertain the reader or express opinions, or talk about personal life
experiences. Even so, the writing should be interesting, simple and lively. Whenever a report is
written we also refer to many other sources from where we obtained varied types of information.
It is important that all facts need to be documented by citing the published sources from where
the information has been obtained. You must also avoid your subjective ideas and opinions in
regard to the topic while writing a research report.
Every effort should be made to keep off one’s personal feelings from the writing of the report.
One can use a formal style or an informal style, either way no personal feelings must be allowed
to enter the report. A report is a scientific document for public consumption and perhaps for the
scientific community and it is not an essay or personal statement. Most authors avoid personal
pronouns like I or we, whenever possible (their occasional use is acceptable in order to avoid
awkward sentences).The scientific style is also parsimonious. The author attempts to give
complete information in as few words as possible, because the amount of publication space in
journals is limited and authors write as concisely as possible, selecting their words carefully.
Each word is chosen for its precision. Most of us need practice to write scientifically because it is
very different from the common styles of writing. Always avoid flowery expressions in writing
and practice precision and accuracy in stating facts. These in turn would contribute to making
you write the report in a scientific manner. In a scientific report, it is always advisable to avoid
slang as it lacks exact meaning and might not be universally familiar.
When you write your research report, be careful to use unbiased language. The American
Psychological Association (APA), the American Psychological Society (APS), and other
publishers of psychological research reports, such as the Sage Publications are committed to
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encouraging language free of gender and ethnic bias in their publications. There are several
techniques for avoiding bias: When writing about ethnic groups, for example, use the term that is
currently preferred by most members of that group. Always use non-sexist language. Whenever
you are writing about individuals (research participants, people in general), select words that are
free of gender bias. Because some sexist words are so embedded in our language, this can seem
awkward at first instance. For example, do not talk about the benefits of psychological research
for “man” or “mankind” when you really mean “all people” –say “people” instead. Do not refer
to a participant as “he” (unless all your participants really were male); use “he or she” or “they”
instead. If you use “he or she” (or “she or he”), however, do so sparingly or the usage becomes
distracting. Never use contrived contractions, like “she”, or “he/she”, which suggest that the
genders are interchangeable.
3.2.6 Develop the Background

In introduction an effort should be made to provide those studies that have influenced the present
one, and also a brief literature review must be provided that should indicate which of these
studies and methodology have influenced the researcher to undertake this topic. While doing the
review, latest literature should be the focus though one or two classic studies in this area could
also be mentioned. The literature review must not delve deep into the historical aspects as it
would be an enormous waste of space and material, but the historical aspects must be directly
relevant to the topic concerned. What is more important is studies which have used some of the
variables used in the present research if had been used also by other studies and they had come to
the same or similar or different conclusions, these studies must definitely be included in the
review as part of introduction. The introduction should indicate the methodology used and the
research design formulated, method used for selecting the sample for the study and the method
by which the data was collected, the tools and instruments used in the study, the hypotheses
formulated and the statistical tools used to analyze the data. Such exposition of the various
activities that underlie the research when reported in the introduction, would indicate not only
the researcher’s scholarly approach to the problem but the comprehension the person has of the
problem and how the individual is going to overcome many of the pitfalls and shortcomings of
the earlier research. The introduction should demonstrate the logical continuity between previous
and present work.
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Controversial issues, when relevant, should be treated fairly. A simple statement that certain
studies support one conclusion and others support another conclusion is better than an extensive
and inconclusive discussion. Whatever the personal opinion of the while expressing that opinion
the researcher must avoid any kind of animosity or howstility or severe criticism or personal
attack. Every care must be taken by the researcher not to support or justify one’s position by
citing established authorities out of context.
3.2.7 State the Purpose and Rationale
After the researcher has introduced the problem and developed the background material, one is
in a position to tell what is the next step and how to go about it. Make this statement in the
closing paragraphs of the Introduction. At this point, a definition of the variables and a formal
statement of the hypotheses should be able to give clarity to the paper. The researcher should
bear in mind the following questions in closing the Introduction: What variables did I plan to
manipulate? What results did I expect and why did I expect them? The logic behind “Why did I
expect them?”
3.2.8 Standard Headings for Synopsis writing
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Problem analysis/literature review
Objectives
Hypotheses
Limitations
Methodology and methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Appendix A Research matrix
Appendix B Data collection instruments (e.g., interview guide, questionnaire)
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3.2.9 Writing the Synopsis for the Project

Title: This should be brief and self-explanatory. It should relate directly to the main objective of
the proposed research. A more specific and descriptive sub-title can be added if necessary, for
example to indicate the main methodology that will be applied. The title of the final report can be
different from the working title of the synopsis.
Abstract: The abstract should briefly state the problem, the main objective(s), the
theories/conceptual framework used (if relevant), and the method(s). The abstract alone should
give the reader a clear idea about the research in no more than 150 words.
Introduction: Here you should introduce the main problem, set it into context and introduce the
particular niche within the main subject area that you will work with. For example, the main
subject area could be deforestation and the Introduction would then briefly argue why it is
relevant to be concerned with deforestation, to whom it is a problem and why. The niche could
be the role of small-scale farmers in deforestation processes in mountain areas. Justification for
the niche should also be included in the Introduction.
‘Justifying’ a research problem means providing information documenting that both the main
problem and the specific niche are of relevance to others than yourself, such as the scientific
community and stakeholders. A research problem can be, for example, a gap of knowledge, an
unexplained observation, something not yet analysed (using this systematic, with this level of
detail, from this particular angle), or something that does not fit traditional beliefs. The
information you provide as documentation for the existence and relevance of the problem should
primarily be scientific peer reviewed literature. Newspaper articles, blogs and a lot of material
from the internet are not subject to quality control and are therefore considered less trustworthy.
Problem Analysis/Literature Review: In this section you present details regarding the research
problem. You should present documentation of the existence of the problem, how it is
manifested, who it affects and involves, what roles and interests the involved actors have, the
historical background to the problem (including what has lead to the actual situation), and the
problem’s complexity (what it consists of and what it is a part of) (Dahl et al., 1999).
The problem analysis is based on a critical review of scientific literature: the theories typically
used to frame research on the subject area, knowledge available and research methods used with
what degree of success. The review can add to the justification of choice of the subject included
in the Introduction. It is important that the review includes recent literature, and that it critically
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synthesises knowledge within the subject being addressed rather than merely describing it. A
critical review of the subject being addressed involves (i) identification of relevant literature
through a thorough and systematic literature search using combinations of relevant key words in
appropriate databases, (ii) the relevant literature must be critically read, meaning that the
soundness of research approach and conclusions must be evaluated, you should of course not
base your arguments on untrustworthy literature, and (iii) important approaches, conclusions
and/or discussions of the literature are presented in an argument logically leading to your
objectives. Remember, the literature review is not just a list of the methods used/conclusions
made by previous studies. Have a look at research papers published in international journals for
inspiration, the introductions most often include highly condensed literature reviews.
Objectives: These should be identified on the basis of the problem analysis. That means, after
reading the problem analysis it should be immediately clear that the choice of objectives is
relevant and justified. The objectives should focus on concepts and problems mentioned in the
problem analysis Each research proposal should contain one overall objective describing the
general contribution that the research project makes to the subject area as well as one or more
specific objectives focusing on discrete tasks that will be achieved during the research. The
overall objective may be something that the study will contribute towards but not solve/finish;
the overall objective should not be a compilation of the specific objectives.
Hypotheses: These are predictions of the outcomes from the study. It is useful at the outset to
specify the hypotheses in terms of the assumed relations between variables to clarify the position
and pre-understanding of the researcher. If statistical tests are to be conducted formulation of
hypotheses is a crucial element of the research design. Hypotheses can be derived from theory,
experience or knowledge concerning contextual factors. In purely quantitative, deductive
research hypotheses are tested statistically, whereas in qualitative,
inductive research hypotheses are not formulated. In the Joint Summer Module you are unlikely
to conduct purely qualitative research (although qualitative elements may be included), and so
hypotheses are relevant.
Limitations: Although the specific or immediate objectives may be quite narrow, they could
probably imply much more data collection and analysis than possible for a thesis. To
demonstrate a good overview of the general subject area it should be specified what aspects will
not be addressed and how this will limit conclusions. It is important to not (only) mention that
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due to time constraints a limited number of observations/measurements/interviews will be

conducted. Rather, the aim here is on topical limitations. Methodological limitations can be put
in the methods section.
Methodology and Methods: A research project follows an overall methodology to make
conclusions in relation to the overall objective. Some types are experiments, surveys, models and
case studies. Within a given research methodology several data collection methods can be
relevant, and both quantitative and qualitative methods may be used in the same study. You
should specify what research methodology is chosen to fulfil the research objectives (see
Appendix A). A description of the methodology used does not mean a reproduction of standard
textbook definitions, instead, references should be used. For example, it is not necessary to
explain that a case study approach ‘will allow in-depth analysis of a particular problem and that
the limitation is that the results cannot be statistically generalized, but that they could be
theoretically generalized for places with similar characteristics’. This is part of the definition of a
case study, and it would be more informative to explain why a case study approach is suitable in
the specific context. Likewise, there is no need to describe in general terms what data will result
from an inventory or a semi-structured interview. A reference will be sufficient for commonly
used methods, whereas it is relevant to describe the specific data to be collected.
The description of data collection methods should always be as specific and realistic as possible.
It should be clear that the chosen methods are appropriate and suitable for achieving the
objective. A useful step in that regard is to identify what data is required to answer the specific
objectives/research questions (Appendix A). After having read the section on methods, the reader
should have a clear understanding of what will be actually done during data collection. State
what data will be collected using a given method and avoid vague or general statements.
An important part of the methods description is the sampling design. How, and how many,
objects for experiments, plots for a vegetation survey, or respondents to
questionnaires/interviews are chosen have implications for the subsequent possibilities for
generalisations and the validity and reliability of research findings.
An often overlooked part of student research design is the data analysis. However, if data
analysis is not considered before collection important data are likely to be missing at the write-up
stage. You should, as a minimum, have an idea of what calculations and combinations of the data
you will make. The research synopsis must specify how the collected data will be analysed to
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answer the research questions/objectives Strategies may include testing of hypotheses, which
means that dependent and independent parameters for analysis should be clear as should the type
of statistical analysis, the number of observations needed etc. A qualitative analysis of, for
example, people’s response to a specific change could require analysis of the meaning of
responses and/or behaviour observed, possibly guided by theory. To recapitulate: it is important
to envision how all the information collected will be combined to provide a meaningful answer
to the research objective.
Results: This section presents the analysed data, preferably in tables and charts. It is a good idea
to organise the results logically, for example by first presenting background information like
demographics and then continue with in a sequence reflecting the specific objectives. All tables
and figure must be numbered and referred to in the text. Table headings go above the table,
figure headings go below the figure. Traditionally, you do not discuss the results in this section.
That means, you do not explain why a specific number is an outlier, or why few people answered
a specific question – you leave to the Discussion.
Discussion: Here you discuss what the results mean in relation to the objectives. You also
discuss the influence of the chosen methods on the results and what methodological problems
may have been faced. Finally, you compare your own results with those of other studies to
identify whether your study is in accordance or at odds with previous scientific studies. If the
latter is the case this warrants special consideration.
Conclusion: Start by clearly stating the main finding of the research. Then go on to outline the
implications of the findings. How important is your contribution to the understanding that is
currently held on the subject area and niche? What future studies could be recommended (do not
overdo the last point).
References: When you cite literature, there are standards to be followed for in-text citations and
the format of the reference list. You should use the Harvard referencing system, meaning that in-
text citations consist of author name(s) and publication year, for example: Swanson, 2005.
Literature can be used passively, in which case the author name(s) and publication year are put in
brackets: The moon is made from cheese (Silverbrandt, 1935). When the author name is used
actively only the publication year is put in brackets: Silverbrandt (1935) argued that the moon is
made from cheese. When an article is written by two authors the in-text citation is (Oldfield and
Morse, 2009) or (Oldfield & Morse, 2007). The coma before publication year can be omitted –
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but then it should always be omitted. A very crucial point is to decide which of several possible
formats to use and then to follow it consistently.
The purpose of a reference list is that the reader should be able to find the references used.
Therefore, be sure to write the full reference in the reference list, including author, publication
year, title, title of journal/series, volume of journal/series contribution, publisher (omitted for
journal), location (omitted for journal), page numbers. For chapters in books and contributions to
conference proceedings the editors and title of the book/proceedings must be added. You can
choose a standard from, e.g., a scientific journal and follow it consistently. All references in the
text must be in the list of references and vice versa.
Appendix A Research Matrix: A logical visual representation of the research design helps to
ensure coherence - use the research matrix template provided below while developing the design.
Submit the final version with the synopsis.
Appendix B Data collection instruments: The translation of a good research design into good
results requires thorough preparation of data collection. For measurement and observation this
means preparation of data entry forms, while for surveys and interviews questionnaires and
interview guides are necessary. Include the data collection instruments for each method you plan
to apply.
In this lesson, we tried to conceptualize the concept of report writing and how to frame a
coherent synopsis for a project. We tried to understand the purpose of the project is, in the
context of the research you are studying, to integrate various aspects of the taught material and to
demonstrate your (academic) research skills and your (professional) analysis, design and
implementation skills. It gives you the opportunity to conduct in-depth work on a substantial
problem to show individual creativity and originality, to apply where appropriate knowledge,
skills and techniques taught throughout the degree programme to further oral and written
communication skills, and to practise investigative, problem-solving, management and other
transferable skills. The management and execution of the project is your responsibility, but you
should seek and take advantage of advice from your supervisor.
1. Write a brief note on the concept of project writing?

2. Explain the importance of project writing?
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3. Explain the significance of background work for a result oriented project report?
4. Elaborate the stages of synopsis for report writing?
5. Critically evaluate the limitations of report writing?
1. C.R. Kothari, Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, (Mamta Publishers, 2001)
Books, 2011)
Business Reports, (UoLearn Publishers, 2010)
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UNIT III
Lesson 3: Sources and Methods of Data Collection
Lesson Structure
3.3.1 Introduction
3.3.2 Objectives
3.3.3 Sources and Research Resources
3.3.4 Types of Information Sources
3.3.5 Online Resources
3.3.6 Sources of Selecting Research Topic
3.3.7 Methods of Data Collection for the Project
3.3.8 Let Us Sum Up
3.3.1 Introduction
This lesson intends to deal with the concept of sources in report and research writing and its
different classifications. A source is a text from which information or ideas are derived. In
translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language. The
proper acknowledgement of sources might seem like a no-brainer, as indeed it should, to a
scientist, and yet there are altogether too many instances where improper attribution goes
unchecked. Sir Isaac Newton’s famous words in a l675 letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen
further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants,” may serve as a pithy reminder that even
the most famous scientists depended on their forebears. However, in fact, it is even inadequate
because Newton did not explicitly name those giants. (As a historical aside, Newton’s comment
was not as benign in intent as the words might indicate. The two men had been embroiled in a
bitter dispute over certain optical discoveries and the handsome upper class Newton was likely
taking a dig at his lower-class rival’s physical deformity. Regardless of intent, however, the
statement has come to represent the importance of giving credit where credit is due). There is a
vast literature on the issues of proper citation, academic honesty, and the potential pitfalls of
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plagiarism, and the list of references for further reading at the end of this article offers a few
suggestions.
In report or academic writing, an important objective of classifying sources is to determine their

independence and reliability. In contexts such as historical writing, it is almost always advisable
to use primary sources and that "if none are available, it is only with great caution that [the
author] may proceed to make use of secondary sources.” Sreedharan believes that primary
sources have the most direct connection to the past and that they "speak for themselves" in ways
that cannot be captured through the filter of secondary sources. In scholarly writing, the objective
of classifying sources is to determine the independence and reliability of sources. Though the
terms primary source and secondary source originated in historiography as a way to trace the
history of historical ideas, they have been applied to many other fields. For example, these ideas
may be used to trace the history of scientific theories, literary elements and other information
that is passed from one author to another.
3.3.2 Objectives
 To understand the concept of sources in report and research writing

 To find the out the different types of sources used in report and research writing
3.3.3 Sources and Research Resources
Research resources are usually thought of as primary sources and secondary sources. Primary
sources can be first-hand accounts of actual events written by an eyewitness or original literary
or artistic works. They may be letters, official records, interviews, survey results, or unanalysed
statistical data. These sources contain raw data and information, such as the original work of art
or immediate impressions. Secondary sources, on the other hand, are usually discussions,
evaluations, syntheses, and analyses of primary- and secondary-source information. You will no
doubt use both primary and secondary sources throughout your academic career. When you use
them, and in what combination, usually depends on what your research inquiry is and the
discipline for which you are writing. If you are unclear about which sources to use, ask your
instructor for guidance.
Your research resources can come from your experiences; print media, such as books, brochures,
journals, magazines, newspapers, and books; and CD-ROMs and other electronic sources, such
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as the Internet and the World Wide Web. They may also come from interviews and surveys you
or someone else designs. You may develop your own field research where you collect data
through observation or experimentation. For example, before you interview your candidates for a
study on adolescent girls, you may use library research to get some background information on
adolescent girls and their current issues. You may also want to observe them in a school setting,
noting certain behaviours, dress, or mannerisms, depending on your focus. You may also want to
review other studies on adolescent girls to see how the studies were conducted and the data
interpreted. You may even design a survey to collect first-hand information from the girls
themselves or from their teachers. Your research question and the kind of research you do will
guide the types of resources you will need to complete your research. Students now have easy
access to a wider range of information than ever before. Conducting research today requires that
you understand how to locate resources—in libraries and frequently online—and that you have
the skill and motivation to work with librarians and library technology. Identifying and managing
those resources within your research project is as important as integrating them into your own
words and your research writing voice.
3.3.4 Types of Information Sources
The report is a very familiar thing that every manager has to write it frequently or occasionally.
There are many types of a report like a monthly report, seller report, market report, reports to the
board, research report etc. A memo is sometimes considered as a short form of a report. Writing
report is like explaining something in a short way. Information can come from virtually
anywhere: personal experiences, books, articles, expert opinions, encyclopaedias, the Web. The
type of information needed will change depending on its application. Individuals generate
information on a daily basis as they go about their work. In academic institutions, staff and
students consult various sources of information. The choice of the source to consulted is usually
determined by the type of information sought. For writing an outstanding report we need to
collect the information. The three important sources are below:
1. Primary Sources: Primary sources are original materials on which other research studies
are based. Primary sources report a discovery or share new information; they present
first-hand accounts and information relevant to an event. They present information in its
original form, not interpreted or condensed or evaluated by other writers. They are
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usually evidence or accounts of the events, practices, or conditions being researched and
created by a person who directly experienced that event. Primary sources are the first
formal appearance of results in print or electronic formats. Examples of primary sources
are: eyewitness accounts, journalistic reports, financial reports, government documents,
archaeological and biological evidence, court records, ephemerals (posters, handbills),
literary manuscript and minutes of meetings.
2. Secondary Sources are those that describe or analyse primary sources, including:
 Reference materials – dictionaries, encyclopaedias, textbooks, and
 Books and articles that interpret, review, or synthesize original
research/fieldwork.
3. Tertiary sources are those used to organize and locate secondary and primary sources.
 Indexes – provide citations that fully identify a work with information such as
author, titles of a book, article, and/or journal, publisher and publication date,
volume and issue number and page numbers.
 Abstracts – summarize the primary or secondary sources,
 Databases – are online indexes that usually include abstracts for each primary or
secondary resource, and may also include a digital copy of the resource.
3.3.5 Online Resources
Websites, unlike books, do not necessarily have publishers. Instead, you should consider who is
behind the websites you find. To avoid using information that comes from an unreliable source,
stick to scholarly databases. While you can find some articles with general search engines, a
search engine will only find non-scholarly articles. If you use broader Internet searches, look
closely at domain names. Domain names can tell you who sponsors the site and the purpose of
that sponsorship. Some examples include educational (.edu), commercial (.com), nonprofit
(.org), military (.mil), or network (.net).
Depending on your topic, you may want to avoid dot-com websites because their primary
purpose tends to be commerce, which can significantly affect the content that they publish.
Additionally, consider the purpose that the website serves. Is any contact information provided
for the website’s author? Does the website provide references to support the claims that it
makes? If the answers to these types of questions are not readily available, it may be best to look
in other places for a reliable source.
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There are increasing numbers of non-scholarly sites that pertain to particular topics, but are not
scholarly sources. Blogs, for example, may cater to a particular topic or niche, but they are
typically created and managed by an individual or party with an interest in promoting the content
of the blog. Some blog writers may have valid credentials, but because their writing is not peer-
reviewed or held to an academic standard, sites such as these are typically unreliable sources.
Remember, when researching, the goal is not only to gather sources, but to
gather reliable resources. To do this, you should be able to not only track the claims contained
within a source, but also consider the stakes that may be involved for the author making those
claims. While personal motivation may not always be accessible in a document, in some cases
there can be contextual clues, like the type of publisher or sponsor. These may lead you to decide
that one source is more reliable than another.
3.3.6 Sources of Selecting Research Topic
How do we get the ideas of deciding a topic of research? How do we formulate relevant
hypotheses? The idea stems from varied sources. These are:
1. Researches Conducted by Others: Exposure to professional seminars and conferences
also sometimes throws ideas of research.
2. Reviewing literature and getting ideas from books and articles: Questions which
either others have posed or which arise in the course of one’s reading should become
research questions.
3. Experience: i.e., one’s own life experiences in professional work or the general life
experiences.
4. Government Priorities: Various government organizations also publicize research
topics e.g. Ministry of welfare and justice, Government of India circulates a list of
various topics in which it fails the necessity of research.
5. Prevalent Theories: There are some popular theories (but not scientific ones), prevalent
in society. These need to be tested by a variety of specific hypotheses to determine in
which contexts/conditions they may or may not hold. In this way, popular theories as well
as scientific theories can give ideas about research problems. E.g. The popular belief is
that women administrators are less efficient and dedicated than male administrators. A
research can disprove this thesis and show that women are as good administrators as man.
The positivist theoretical assume that there are factors external to social actors which
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determine their social behaviour. In contrast, inter-pretationist theorists’ described as

anti-positivists reject the positivist premises and try to understand the meaning of social
actors.
6. Imagination: sometimes, the mass media provides an ever-growing potential source of
research problem for researchers. E.g. methods used by T.V for creating awareness
among women and adopting modern values.
7. Some observed phenomenon, e.g., adult child interaction, shopkeeper and customer
interaction. Interaction of members of two parties belonging to two different factions.
Some of the ideas, which have been recently identified for research: Mass
communication media, women empowerment, political corruption, and civil society,
value oriented education and the like. Sometimes, the topics are assigned by funding
agencies to study problems like drug abuse, crimes against women, functioning of NGOs,
getting central aid, rights among women, education of scheduled castes and rehabilitation
of scavengers
3.3.7 Methods of Data Collection for the Project
Various methods of data collection are employed by social scientists. Data in social sciences as
in other sciences are based on sense observations. The word observation implies all forms of
perception used in recording responses as they impinge upon our senses. The two main sources
of data (information related to the research problem) in social science research comes from two
sources-the inner world of library and the outer world of living people. Paper sources may
provide the social or behavioural scientist a wealth of usable information. It is often
uneconomical to spend time and energy on field surveys to collect information readily obtainable
from authentic paper sources. Under the general rubric of documentary or paper sources, one
may subsume historical records, diaries, biographies and statistical records etc. In case of people
being the potential source of data in social sciences, researchers identify various forms of
observation, but particularly and primarily, the interview and the questionnaire form the
important tools of data collection. Some of the methods of data collection are:
1. Observation: Observation entails the systematic noting and recording of events,

behaviours, and artefacts (objects) in the social setting chosen for study. The
observational record is frequently referred to as field notes—detailed, nonjudgmental,
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concrete descriptions of what has been observed. For studies relying exclusively on
observation, the researcher makes no special effort to have a particular role in the
setting; to be tolerated as an unobtrusive observer is enough. Classroom studies are
one example of observation, often found in education, in which the researcher
documents and describes actions and interactions that are complex: what they mean
can only be inferred without other sources of information. This method assumes that
behaviour is purposeful and expressive of deeper values and beliefs. Observation can
range from a highly structured, detailed notation of behaviour structured by checklists
to a more holistic description of events and behaviour.
2. Focus Groups: The method of interviewing participants in focus groups comes
largely from marketing research but has been widely adapted to include social science
and applied research. The groups are generally composed of 7 to 10 people (although
groups range from as small as 4 to as large as 12) who are unfamiliar with one
another and have been selected because they share certain characteristics relevant to
the study’s questions. The interviewer creates a supportive environment, asking
focused questions to encourage discussion and the expression of differing opinions
and points of view. These interviews may be conducted several times with different
individuals so that the researcher can identify trends in the perceptions and opinions
expressed, which are revealed through careful, systematic analysis. This method
assumes that an individual’s attitudes and beliefs do not form in a vacuum: People
often need to listen to others’ opinions and understandings to form their own. One-to-
one interviews may be impoverished because the participant had not reflected on the
topic and feels unprepared to respond. Often, the questions in a focus-group setting
are deceptively simple; the trick is to promote the participants’ expression of their
views through the creation of a supportive environment. The advantages of focus-
group interviews are that this method is socially oriented, studying participants in an
atmosphere more natural than artificial experimental circumstances and more relaxed
than a one-to-one interview.
3. Life Histories and Narrative Inquiry: Life histories and narrative inquiry are
methods that gather, analyze, and interpret the stories people tell about their lives.
They assume that people live “storied” lives and that telling and retelling one’s story
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helps one understand and create a sense of self. The story is important but so is how
the story is told. The researcher, working closely with the participant, explores a story
and records it. Life histories and narrative analysis are used across the social science
disciplines and are particularly useful for giving the reader an insider’s view of a
culture or era in history.
4. Historical Analysis: A history is an account of some event or combination of events.
Historical analysis is a method of discovering what has happened using records and
accounts. It is particularly useful in qualitative studies for establishing a baseline or
background prior to participant observation or interviewing. Sources of historical data
are classified as either primary or secondary. Oral testimony of eyewitnesses,
documents, records, and relics are primary. Reports of persons who relate the
accounts of eyewitnesses and summaries, as in history books and encyclopedias, are
secondary.
5. Questionnaires and Surveys: Researchers administer questionnaires to some
samples of a population to learn about the distribution of characteristics, attitudes, or
beliefs. In deciding to survey a group of people, researchers make one critical
assumption—that a characteristic or belief can be described or measured accurately
through self-reporting. In using questionnaires, researchers rely totally on the honesty
and accuracy of participants’ responses. Although this limits the usefulness of
questionnaires for delving into tacit beliefs and deeply held values, there are still
many occasions when surveying can be useful. Questionnaires typically entail several
questions that have structured response categories; some open-ended questions may
also be included. The questions are examined (sometimes quite vigorously) for bias,
sequence, clarity, and face-validity. Questionnaires are usually tested on small groups
to determine their usefulness and, perhaps, reliability. In sample surveys, data are
collected in a standardized format, usually from a probability sample of the
population. The survey is the preferred method if the researcher wishes to obtain a
small amount of information from a large number of subjects. Survey research is the
appropriate mode of inquiry for making inferences about a large group of people
based on data drawn from a relatively small number of individuals in that group. Its
basic aim is to describe and explain statistically the variability of certain features in a
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population. Surveys are conducted in three ways: by mail, telephone, and personal
interview. Any method of data collection, however, from observation to content
analysis, can be and has been used in survey research. Most survey studies involve
cross-sectional measurements made at a single point in time or longitudinal
measurements taken at several different times. Other forms of survey research include
trend studies that examine a population by studying separate samples at different
points in time, cohort studies of a bounded population, and panel studies of a single
sample of individuals at several points in time. Analysis of survey data takes the form
of quantitative analysis that relies mainly on either descriptive or inferential statistics.
6. Content Analysis: It is a method of social research that aims at the analysis of the
content, qualitative or quantitative- of documents, books, newspapers, magazines and
other forms of written material. According to Berelson, content analysis is a research
technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest
content of communication. The word communication refers to available written
material or print media. According to Eckhardt and Ermann, as a qualitative
technique, content analysis is directed towards more subjective information such as
attitudes, motives and values, while as a quantitative method it is employed when
determining the time frequency or duration of the event. Through this method
researcher also make inferences about conduct, intentions, ideologies, sentiments and
values of individuals and groups.
3.3.8 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to understand the concept of sources and how it plays an important role in
shaping our report and research writing. Sources are one of the fundamental principles of
report/research writing and a systematic usage of these precepts helps the researcher to create a
balanced and academic approach towards this field. We also tried to understand how a
systematic understanding and usage of sources enables us to frame and consolidate our report.
When researching, it is important to determine the position and the reliability of
every source/author. This will ensure that your source is both credible and relevant and that
the source will enhance your paper rather than undermine it. There are a variety of reasons for
acknowledging the sources upon which you have built your own work; to distinguish your own
work from that of your sources, to receive credit for the research you have done on a project, to
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establish the credibility and authority of your knowledge and ideas, to place your own ideas in
context, locating your work in the larger intellectual conversation about your topic, to permit
your reader to pursue your topic further by reading more about it, to permit your reader to
check on your use of source material. All these aspects help us to ascertain the value of our
report/research writing and help us to use the sources to consolidate our work.
1. What is the definition of sources?

2. What are the classification of the sources?
3. What is the importance of sources in report/academic writing?
4. What are online sources?
5. Critically evaluate the place of sources in report/academic writing?
1. C.R. Kothari, Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, (Mamta Publishers, 2001)
Books, 2011)
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Unit IV
i) Examining and Using the Data
ii) Use of Chapterization, References, Tables and Appendices
iii) Transliteration
iv) Use of Introduction, Conclusion, Bibliography in the Project Report
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UNIT IV
Lesson 1: Examining and Using the Data
Lesson Structure
4.1.1 Introduction
4.2.2 Objectives
4.1.3 Need of Data Analysis
4.1.4 Significance of Data Analysis
4.1.5 Need for Analysis of Data
4.1.6 Analysis of Data
4.1.7 Statistical Analysis of Data
4.1.8 Descriptive Data Analysis
4.1.9 Inferential Data Analysis
4.1.10 Steps in Analysing the Data
4.1.11 Suggestion for Analysis
4.1.12 Analysing Qualitative Data
4.1.13 Interpreting your Results and Drawing Conclusions
4.1.1 Introduction
Data is an important aspect of any research or report writing project. The quality and utility of
monitoring, evaluation and research in our projects and programmes fundamentally relies on our
ability to collect and analyse quantitative and qualitative data. Monitoring and evaluation plans,
needs assessments, baseline surveys and situational analyses are all located within a project cycle
and require high-quality data to inform evidence-based decision-making and programmatic
learning. To achieve this, it is useful to reflect on research practices, which in a monitoring,
evaluation, accountability and learning context refers to the systematic investigation of
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programmes. Although this session targets monitoring and evaluation specialists, it is framed by
the research agenda and will build on your existing knowledge of using different data collection
methods in your project work. In this lesson, we will discuss the process of identifying research
questions and selecting appropriate methodologies, understanding the difference between
quantitative and qualitative data, and associated benefits and limitations. We will give an
overview of common methods and data analysis techniques for both quantitative and qualitative
research and finally discuss the interpretation of findings using multiple data sources.
4.1.2 Objectives
 The value of the types of data

 The relative scientific rigor of the data
4.1.3 Need of Data Analysis
Data analysis, also known as analysis of data or data analytics, is a process of inspecting,
cleaning, transforming and modelling data with the goal of discovering useful information,
suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data analysis has multiple facets and
approaches, encompassing diverse techniques under a variety of names, in different business,
science, and social science domains. Data is a particular data analysis technique that focuses on
modelling and knowledge discovery for predictive rather than purely descriptive purposes,
while business intelligence covers data analysis that relies heavily on aggregation, focusing on
business information. In statistical applications data analysis can be divided into descriptive
analysis, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and confirmatory data analysis (CDA). EDA focuses
on discovering new features in the data and CDA on confirming or falsifying existing
hypothesis. Predictive analysis focuses on application of statistical models for predictive
forecasting or classification, while text analytics applies statistical, linguistic, and structural
techniques to extract and classify information from textual sources, a species of unstructured
data. All are varieties of data analysis. Data integration is a precursor to data analysis, and data
analysis is closely linked to data visualization and data dissemination. The term data analysis is
sometimes used as a synonym for data modelling.
As with other facets of research, data analysis is very much tied to the researcher's basic
methodological approach. In the chapters on field and available-data research, we discussed
certain data-analytic techniques at length, but in the case of experiments and surveys we alluded
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only briefly to this stage of research. The underlying logic and flow of the analysis described are
basically the same as in other approaches. There is, for example, always a constant interplay
between theory and data. The stage for data analysis is set by the researcher’s theoretical model
of anticipated relationships because this limits and guides the kinds of analyses that can be
carried out. The analysis, in turn, assays and elaborates this model and invariably suggests new
models for further analysis. The first rule in all this is that “facts (data) never speak for
themselves.” Rather, they must be interpreted. That interpretation will be influenced by prior
research and ultimately will be communicated in the form of a research report, book, or article
that will be read and interpreted by others.
4.1.4 Significance of Data Analysis
However valid, reliable and adequate the data may be, if they do not serve any worthwhile
purpose unless they are carefully edited, systematically classified and tabulated, scientifically
analyzed, intelligently interpreted and rationally concluded. Barr and others point out, “Analysis
is an important phase of the classification and summation of data into a summary.” According to
A. Wolfe, “The discovery of order in the phenomena of nature, not withstanding their
complexity and apparent confusion is rendered possible by the process of analysis and synthesis
which are foundation stone of all scientific methods.” The types of statistical analysis of the data
obtained in a research work are limited to the nature of data or to the type of scale of
measurement one obtains by the process of quantification. The four scales investigated are:
nominal, ordinal, equal interval, and ratio. Non-parametric statistics may be used to analysed
data measured by the nominal or ordinal scale. Data measured by either the equal- interval or the
ratio scale may be analysed by either non-parametric or parametric methods. Parametric statistics
or tests are preferred if all the parametric assumptions are fully met and provided the researcher
has great competence in the use of inferential statistics.
4.1.5 Need for Analysis of Data
After administering and scoring research tools scripts, data collected and organized. The
collected data are known as ‘raw data.’ The raw data are meaningless unless certain statistical
treatment is given to them. Analysis of data means to make the raw data meaningful or to draw
some results from the data after the proper treatment. The ‘null hypotheses’ are tested with the
help of analysis data so to obtain some significant results. Thus, the analysis of data serves the
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following main functions:
1. To make the raw data meaningful,

2. To test null hypothesis,
3. To obtain the significant results,
4. To draw some inferences or make generalization, and
5. To estimate parameters.
4.1.6 Analysis of Data
Analysis of data means studying the tabulated material in order to determine inherent facts or
meanings. It involves breaking down existing complex factors into simpler parts and putting the
parts together in new arrangements for the purpose of interpretation. A plan of analysis can and
should be prepared in advance before the actual collection of material. A preliminary analysis on
the skeleton plan should as the investigation proceeds, develop into a complete final analysis
enlarged and reworked as and when necessary. This process requires an alert, flexible and open
mind. Caution is necessary at every step. In case where a plan of analysis has not been made
beforehand. Good. Barr and Scates suggest four helpful modes to get started on analysing the
gathered data:
(i) To think in terms of significant tables that the data permit.

(ii) To examine carefully the statement of the problem and the earlier analysis and to study the
original records of the data.
(iii) To get away from the data and to think about the problem in layman’s terms.
(iv) To attack the data by making various simple statistical calculations.
In the general process of analysis of research data, statistical method has contributed a great deal.
Simple statistical calculation finds a place in almost any research study dealing with large or
even small groups of individuals, while complex statistical computations form the basis of many
types of research. It may not be out of place, therefore to enumerate some statistical methods of
analysis used in educational research.
4.1.7 Statistical Analysis of Data
Statistics is the body of mathematical techniques or processes for gathering, describing

organising and interpreting numerical data. Since research often yields such quantitative data,
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statistics is a basic tool of measurement and research. The research worker who uses statistics is
concerned with more than the manipulation of data, statistical methods goes back to fundamental
purposes of analysis. Research in education may deal with two types of statistical data
application.
1. Descriptive Statistical Analysis, and

2. Inferential Statistical Analysis.
Descriptive Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistical analysis is concerned with numerical
description of a particular group observed and any similarity to those outside the group can not
be taken for granted. The data describe one group and that one group only. Much simple
educational research involves descriptive statistics and provides valuable information about the
nature of a particular group or class.
Inferential Statistical Analysis: Inferential statistical analysis involves the process of sampling,
the selection for study of a small group that is assumed to be related to the large group from
which it is drawn. The small group is known as the sample; the large group, the population or
universe. A statistics is a measure based on a sample. A statistic computed from a sample may be
used to estimate a parameter, the corresponding value in the population which it is selected.
4.1.8 Descriptive Data Analysis
Data collected from tests and experiments often have little meaning or significance until they
have been classified or rearranged in a systematic way. This procedure leads to the organisation
of materials into few heads.
(i) Determination of range of the interval between the largest and smallest scores.
(ii) Decision as to the number and size of the group to be used in classification. Class interval is
therefore, helpful for grouping the data in suitable units and the number and size of these
class intervals will depend upon the range of scores and the kinds of measures with which
one is dealing. The number of class intervals which a given range will yield can be
determined approximately by dividing the range by the interval tentatively chosen.
Most commonly used methods of analysis data statistically are:
1. Calculating frequency distribution usually in percentages of items under study.
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2. Testing data for normality of distribution skewness and kurtosis.

3. Calculating percentiles and percentile ranks.
4. Calculating measures of central tendency-mean, median and mode and establishing norms.
5. Calculating measures of dispersion-standard deviation mean deviation, quartile deviation
and range.
6. Calculating measures of relationship-coefficient of correlation, Reliability and validity by
the Rank-difference and Product moment methods.
7. Graphical presentation of data-Frequency polygon curve, Histogram, Cumulative frequency
polygon and Ogive etc.
While analyzing their data investigations usually make use of as many of the above simple
statistical devices as necessary for the purpose of their study.
4.1.9 Inferential Data Analysis
The primary purpose of research is to discover principles’ that have universal application.
However, to study a whole population in order to arrive at generalization would be impracticable
if not impossible. A measured value based upon sample data is statistic. A population value
estimated from a statistic is a parameter. A sample is a small proportion of a population selected
for analysis. By observing the sample, certain inferences may be made about the population.
Samples are not selected haphazardly, but are chosen in a deliberate way so that the influence of
chance or probability can be estimated. Several types of sampling procedures are described each
one is particularly appropriate in a given set of circumstances.
4.1.10 Steps in Analysing the Data
How is it possible to organize and analyse qualitative data that is in the form of words, pictures
and even sounds, and to come to some conclusions about what they reveal? Unlike the well-
established statistical methods of analysing quantitative data, qualitative data analysis is still in
its early stages. The certainties of mathematical formulae and determinable levels of probability
are difficult to apply to the ‘soft’ nature of qualitative data, which is inextricably bound up with
individual human feelings, attitudes and judgements and their interplay in society. Miles and
Huberman (1994: 10–12) suggested that there should be three concurrent flows of action:
1. data reduction;
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2. data display;
3. conclusion drawing/verification.
An awkward mass of information that is normally collected to provide the basis for analysis
cannot be easily understood when presented as extended text. Information in text is dispersed,
sequential rather than concurrent, bulky and difficult to structure. Our minds are not good at
processing large amounts of information, preferring to simplify complex information into
patterns and easily understood configurations. Therefore, data reduction through coding,
clustering and summarizing provides the first step to simplification, followed by arranging the
compacted data into diagrams and tables which can display the data in a way that enables you to
explore relationships and gauge the relative significances of different factors.
4.1.11 Suggestion for Analysis

 Review and clean data to make sure everything is accurate, complete, and any
inconsistencies have been resolved before beginning your analysis.
 Leave enough time and money for analysis—it is easy to focus so much on data collection
that you do not leave enough resources to analyze the results.
 Identify the appropriate statistics for each key question—get consultation if needed.
 Do not use the word “significant” when describing your findings unless it has been tested
and found to be true either statistically or clinically.
 Keep the analysis simple.
4.1.12 Analysing Qualitative Data
Qualitative data is non-numerical information, such as responses gathered through interviews,
observations, focus groups, written documents or journals, or open-ended survey questions. On
its own, or in combination with quantitative information, qualitative data can provide rich
information about how programs work. At the simplest level, qualitative analysis involves
examining your data to determine how they answer your evaluation questions. Meaningful
analysis of qualitative information can be challenging, however. The first step in analyzing
qualitative information is to reduce or simplify the information. Because of its verbal nature, this
simplification may be difficult. Important information may be interspersed throughout interviews
or focus group proceedings. During this first stage of analysis, you must often make important
choices about which aspects of the information should be emphasized, minimized, or left out of
our analysis altogether. While it can be difficult to remove comments provided directly by your
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informants, it is important to remain focused on the questions that you are trying to answer and
the relevance of the information to these questions.
When analyzing qualitative data, look for trends or commonalities deeply-rooted in the results.
Depending on the amount and type of data that you have, you might want to assign codes to the
responses to help you group the comments into categories. You can begin to develop a set of
codes before you collect your information, based on the theories or assumptions you have about
the anticipated responses. However, it is important to review and modify your set of codes as you
proceed to ensure that they reflect the actual findings. When you report the findings, the codes
will help you identify the most prevalent themes that emerged. You might also want to identify
quotes that best illustrate the themes, for use in reports.
4.1.13 Interpreting your Results and Drawing Conclusions
Both quantitative and qualitative analysis only gets you so far. While the analysis can help you to
summarize and identify key findings, you still need to interpret the results and draw your
conclusions. Drawing conclusions involves stepping back to consider what the results mean and
to assess their implications. During this phase, consider the following types of questions:
 What patterns and themes emerge in the results?
 Are there any deviations from these patterns? If yes, are there any factors that might
explain these deviations?
 Do the results make sense?
 Are there any findings that are surprising? If so, how do you explain these results?
 Are the results significant from a clinical or statistical standpoint? Are they meaningful in
a practical way?
 Do any interesting stories emerge from the responses?
 Do the results suggest any recommendations for improving the program?
 Do the results lead to additional questions about the program? Do they suggest that
additional data may need to be collected?
Involve stakeholders: While evaluation findings must be reported objectively, interpreting those
findings and reaching conclusions can be a challenging process. Consider including key
stakeholders in this process by reviewing findings and preliminary conclusions with them prior
to writing a formal report.
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Consider practical value, not just statistical significance: Do not be discouraged if you do not
obtain statistically significant results. While a lack of significant findings may suggest that a
program was not effective in promoting change, other factors should also be considered. You
may have chosen to measure an outcome that was too ambitious, such as a behavioral change
that takes longer to emerge. In interpreting your results, consider whether there are alternate
explanations for the lack of significance. It is also important to consider the practical significance
of the findings. Some statistically significant results do not yield important information to guide
program enhancements, while some findings that are not significant are still useful.
Watch for, and resolve, inconsistencies: In some cases, you may obtain contradictory
information. For example, you may find that stakeholders describe important benefits of the
services, but these improvements do not appear in pre-post-test comparisons. Various
stakeholders may also disagree. For instance, staff may report improvements in participants that
are not reported by the participants themselves. It can be challenging to determine which
information is accurate, especially when comparing different peoples’ viewpoints or
perspectives. It is important to consider the validity of each information source, and to remember
that various stakeholders can have valid viewpoints that vary based on their unique perspectives
and experiences. Try to resolve these discrepancies and reflect them in your findings to the
extent possible.
In this lesson, we tried to understand the perspective on examining and using the data. In this
pretext, we learnt that Organizing and analysing your data, while sometimes daunting, is how
you learn the meaning and results of an evaluation. Plan ahead for this phase of the project,
taking into consideration the time, budget and expertise necessary to complete this essential
phase of any evaluation. Tips for analysing quantitative and qualitative data are identified
throughout this section. Quantitative analysis can be descriptive, such as using frequency
distributions, mean, median, mode, and variability. Quantitative analysis can also be inferential,
a process that requires greater technical skills. Qualitative analysis consists of analysing non-
numerical data, such as information gathered from interviews, focus groups, or open-ended
survey questions. The key to analysing qualitative information is to make it manageable. We
should take care to interpret results accurately and to report sounds conclusions. Get input from
stakeholders to ensure that everyone is drawing similar conclusions from the information
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available.
1. Write a brief note on the concept of Data Analysis?

2. Explain the need and significance of Data analysis?
3. Elaborate the different aspects of Data analysis?
4. How to analyse Qualitative Data?
4. How to interpret your result and draw conclusion from data analysis?
1. Miles, M.B., and Huberman, A.M., Qualitative Data Analysis, (Newbury Park, CA: Sage,
1984)
2. Patton, M.Q., Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 2nd Ed., (Newbury Park, CA:
Sage, 1990)
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UNIT IV
Lesson 2: Use of Chapterization, References, Tables and Appendices
Lesson Structure
4.2.1 Introduction
4.2.2 Objectives
4.2.3 Chapterization
4.2.4 Chapter Structure
4.2.5 The Purpose of Chapters
4.2.6 Use of Tables
4.2.7 Importance of Tables
4.2.8 References
4.2.9 Referencing/Citation Styles
4.2.10 Appendices
4.2.11 Format
4.2.1 Introduction
This lesson intends to discuss some of the key features/aspects of report/research writing. This
lesson will start from the role and importance of Chapterization and how its facilitates a better
and cohesive understanding of a report. This will be followed by the discussion on references, its
uses, types and importance. Furthermore, the importance of tables and how it creates a clear
understanding and picture of a report will be discussed including the role of appendix in report
writing process. The lesson will place and discuss all the four [Chapterization, references, tables
and appendix] and it helps to nourish and frame a coherent report.
4.2.2 Objectives
 To understand and place of Chapterization and References
 To highlight the importance and role of Tables and Appendix
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4.2.3 Chapterization
Writing a thesis, or indeed an academic book, a report means constructing an extended argument.
One common problem in writing a very long text is that it is not hard in 80,000 to 100,000 words
for the reader to get lost in between chapters—they are not sure of the connection of one to the
other and of how they work, together to advance the case being made, move by move. And
sometimes the writer can get lost too! That is because chapters are often written in a different
order to the order in which they are read, and sometimes they are written at very different times.
Of course, sometimes the text is written straight through. But whatever the circumstances, it is
easy for both reader and writer to get lost in the overall argument because there is just so much
detail to cover. One way to address the getting lost problem and one that many thesis writers
find helpful. Confident and clever writers will find their own way to connect chapters together,
but if you’re feeling a bit stuck this will help. It is just a simple frame to use at the beginning of
each new chapter. The frame–link, focus, overview–can be used for writing the first draft of the
whole text. Because it is a bit formulaic, it is helpful to play with it on the second and third drafts
so it reads more easily. But even when playing with it, keep the three moves because this is a
good way to keep yourself as writer, and the reader, on track.
These are the most important components of your thesis or report. Put your biggest effort into
getting them perfect. Most professors read the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusions chapters
of a thesis first, then they dive into the main body text afterwards. This means that you have to
be particularly careful in wording these sections, since there is some content overlap. If you just
copy and paste text between them, people will notice and it won’t leave them with a very
favourable impression. Many people read technical reports in the same order—in fact, some
people actually never read anything but the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion.
Chapterization is one of the key components of your work/report writing. This aspect of your
work helps you to divide and create continuity in your work. The best-built stories have chapters
with a clearly defined mission that works to support its overarching premise. A chapter is one of
the main divisions of a piece of writing of relative length, such as a book of prose, poetry or law.
A chapter book may have multiple chapters and can be referred to many things that may be the
main topic of that specific chapter. Flexibility is critical to create a cohesive and argumentation
flow in your work, and that is another key to harnessing a chapter title’s power. If I craft chapter
titles that sum up the heart of the chapter I am writing, but their message does not align with my
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premise, I know the chapters need to be rewritten or cut. In the same manner, if my chapter’s
position within the storyline I have defined presents problems with plausibility or continuity, it
may also need to be cut, edited, or simply moved to a spot where it makes more sense. Beyond a
title’s power to attract an audience, focus your work, and keep you oriented within the world of
your story, the simple process of boiling down your book into the short phrases that capture its
essence burns your tale deeper into your brain with every chapter title you take on. That kind of
intimacy with your subject is the hallmark of a seasoned writer. It is a sure sign you’re
creating chapter titles that will live on the tips of many happy readers’ tongues.
4.2.4 Chapter Structure
The Beginning: Draw the reader into the first scene. This scene either provides continuity from
the previous one or a surprising shift such as a change of POV, time or style. It gives the reader
an idea what the next part of the story will be like.
The Middle: Offer mini breaks here if the chapter is especially lengthy. They might not be
crucial but they help the reader put an anchor down if they do not have time to make it to the end
of the chapter. Mini breaks occur between scenes and are denoted by a white space line or some
asterisks if occurring at the end of a page.
The Ending: This is the most likely place to lose your reader for good. Once the book is put
down, the reader might get preoccupied, distracted and forget about it. This is where you must
spice things up to make sure the reader picks the book back up, or even refuses to put it down to
begin with. Take the reader to an exciting emotional state and then leave them hanging with
uncertainty, leave them wondering. It is human nature to be curious, to pursue the answer to a
question. No matter how long or short the chapter is, end them at a point where the reader is
motivated to continue reading your work.
The Body of the Report: The body of the report should be broken down into chapters (or
simply sections in a short report). Each chapter should have a title, which conveys to the reader
an idea of its contents. A typical chapter order is:
 Introduction: gives a general description of the project and the objectives.
 Background: reviews previous work by others that is relevant to the project. A review does
not mean reproducing in detail materials given in text books, reports and papers. It does
mean summarising the information so that a reader is informed of where to look for the
information.
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 One or more Chapters, the content of which will depend on the type of project. A practical
project may have a chapter in which the apparatus used (or built) is described; followed by
chapters describing experimental or test procedures and discussion of results. A design
project may have a chapter describing a particular design method, followed by chapters
describing how the method has been applied, a discussion of reasons for design decisions
and an analysis of the design.
 A chapter containing a discussion of results or findings. For a design project this may take
the form of a detailed assessment or evaluation of the design.
 A concluding chapter that summarises the outcomes of the project and in which proposals
for further work are given. Suggestions for further work may range from simple statements
about further experimental tests required to major proposals for totally different approaches
to the problem that you have been studying.
4.2.5 The Purpose of Chapters
 By cutting the story into chucks, it is easier to digest. The reader can process
the plot developments and characters before continuing into the complications.
 Chapters can also adjust the structure to highlight pivotal themes or ideas.
 They create rhythm and determine the pace.
 Coming up with interesting chapter titles also has its uses. It grabs the attention, it
refocuses the reader’s focus and curiosity and it creates signposts to orientate the reader
within the fictional world.
 Chapters usually consist of several scenes. In novels, usually three or more scenes linked
together per chapter.
 For those using several points of view when writing, creating chapters with the POV
character’s name can help readers understand who is telling the story this round.
4.2.6 Use of Tables
Tables are an integral part of a well-written scientific paper, not an adjunct. The bulk of the
detailed information in a paper is typically presented in its tables. Many of the descriptions and
basic concepts, key natural trends, key discoveries, and some of the conclusions are presented in
figures. As you prepare your report, consider whether a figure or a table is more appropriate. If
the text is crowded with detail, especially quantitative detail, consider creating a table. Do not
overload the text with information that could be presented better in a table. Consolidate similar
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information into one table to let the reader compare easily. Do not make the reader search for
related information. If a table has only a few rows and columns, try stating the findings in a few
sentences. Do not use too many small tables for information that could be presented better in the
text. In a difficult prose explanation, decide whether it could be better described with a figure.
Does your figure show more than could be said in a few well-chosen words? A figure is not
always better. Tables, figures, and text all have a role to play Deciding what best goes where is
not always easy, but readers appreciate the effort. Both tables and figures are used to support
conclusions or illustrate concepts, but they have essential differences in purpose. Tables present
numbers for comparison with other numbers or summarize or define concepts, terms, or other
details of a study. Graphs reveal trends or delineate selected features. Sometimes the two
purposes overlap, but they rarely substitute for one another. Data presented in tables should not
be duplicated in graphs, and vice versa. Readers typically study tables and figures before they
read the text. Therefore, each table and figure should stand alone, complete and informative in
itself.
4.2.7 Importance of Tables
Tables are often used for reporting extensive numerical data in an organized manner. They
should be self-explanatory. It is seldom necessary to use a table for fewer than eight items of
data. Number the tables in the order in which they are cited in the text. Tables are easily created
using programs such as Excel. Tables and figures in scientific papers are wonderful ways of
presenting data. Effective data presentation in research papers requires understanding your reader
and the elements that comprise a table. Tables have several elements, including the legend,
column titles, and body. As with academic writing, it is also just as important to structure tables
so that readers can easily understand them. Tables that are disorganized or otherwise confusing
will make the reader lose interest in your work.
 Title: Tables should have a clear, descriptive title, which functions as the “topic sentence” of
the table. The titles can be lengthy or short, depending on the discipline.
 Column Titles: The goal of these title headings is to simplify the table. The reader’s attention
moves from the title to the column title sequentially. A good set of column titles will allow
the reader to quickly grasp what the table is about.
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 Table Body: This is the main area of the table where numerical or textual data is located.
Construct your table so that elements read from up to down, and not across.
The placement of figures and tables should be at the centre of the page. It should be properly
referenced and ordered in the number that it appears in the text. In addition, tables should be set
apart from the text. Text wrapping should not be used. Sometimes, tables and figures
are presented after the references in selected journals.
4.2.8 References
One characteristic of scholarly writing is that it is to some extent based on previous research
within the field or within related fields. References need to be made to all sources that have been
used, according to accepted writing standards. Your source should be acknowledged every time
the point that you make, or the data or other information that you use, is substantially that of
another writer and not your own. As a very rough guide, while the introduction and the
conclusions to your writing might be largely based on your own ideas, within the main body of
your report, essay or dissertation, you would expect to be drawing on, and thus referencing your
debt to, the work of others in each main section or paragraph. Referencing is important because
it:
a) Helps show that you have been thorough and careful (or rigorous) in your academic work.
b) Indicates what material is the work of another person or is from another source.
c) Indicates what material is your original work since you have provided a citation for work that
is not your own.
d) Allows the reader to refer back to any external material (i.e., not your own) that you have
stated or discussed.
e) Provides the reader with an indication of the quality and authority of the material you are
referencing (e.g., published article in a respected journal, unpublished opinion piece on a popular
online website) Of course the relevance and importance of material is dependent on your topic.
f) Lets the reader see if you have included up-to-date work, seminal (early and influential) work,
and material central to your research topic.
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4.2.9 Referencing/Citation Styles
There are a great many different styles and you should follow the referencing style required for
your particular assignment, or as set out by your lecturer or department, and confirm this for each
assignment. How you format your reference depends upon the reference or citation style you use
e.g., Vancouver (a numbered system), APA (an author-date system), Chicago (a notes-
bibliography system). In all referencing systems a short reference, called the in-text citation, is
appropriately placed within the body of the text to provide a key to the full bibliographic details
that will follow later in your work in the footnotes, endnotes, reference list or bibliography. (The
format and terms used depend on the citation style.) The terms reference list and bibliography
are sometimes used to mean the same thing, that is, the complete list of references or
bibliographic details for the sources you have cited. However, bibliography can be used more
broadly to describe a list of relevant, influential, and related sources, which may also include
work that you did not directly cite.
How to reference using the ‘author, date’ system: In the ‘author, date’ system (often referred
to as the ‘Harvard’ system) very brief details of the source from which a discussion point or
piece of factual information is drawn are included in the text. Full details of the source are then
given in a reference list or bibliography at the end of the text. This allows the writer to fully
acknowledge her/his sources, without significantly interrupting the flow of the writing.
Citing your source within the text: As the name suggests, the citation in the text normally
includes the name(s) (surname only) of the author(s) and the date of the publication. This
information is usually included in brackets at the most appropriate point in the text. The seminars
that are often a part of humanities courses can provide opportunities for students to develop the
communication and interpersonal skills that are valued by employers (Lyon, 1992). The text
reference above indicates to the reader that the point being made draws on a work by Lyon,
published in 1992. An alternative format is shown in the example below. Knapper and Cropley
believe that the willingness of adults to learn is affected by their attitudes, values and self-image
and that their capacity to learn depends greatly on their study skills.
Reference lists/bibliographies: When using the ‘author, date’ system, the brief references
included in the text must be followed up with full publication details, usually as an alphabetical
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reference list or bibliography at the end of your piece of work. The examples given below are
used to indicate the main principles.
Book references: The simplest format, for a book reference, is given first; it is the full reference
for one of the works quoted in the examples above.
Knapper, C.K. and Cropley, A. 1991: Lifelong Learning and Higher Education. London: Croom
Helm.
The reference above includes:
 the surnames and forenames or initials of both the authors

 the date of publication
 the book title
 the place of publication
 the name of the publisher.
The title of the book should be formatted to distinguish it from the other details; in the example
above it is italicised, but it could be in bold, underlined or in inverted commas. When multi-
authored works have been quoted, it is important to include the names of all the authors, even
when the text reference used was et al. Papers or articles within an edited book
A reference to a paper or article within an edited book should in addition include:
 the editor and the title of the book
 the first and last page numbers of the article or paper.
Lyon, E.S. 1992: Humanities graduates in the labour market. In H. Eggins (ed.), Arts
Graduates, their Skills and their Employment. London: The Falmer Press, pp. 123-143.
Journal Articles: Journal articles must also include the name and volume number of the journal
and the first and last page numbers of the article. The publisher and place of publication are not
normally required for journals. Pask, G. 1979: Styles and strategies of learning. British Journal of
Educational Psychology, 46, pp. 128-148.Note that in the last two references above, it is the
book title and the journal name that are italicised, not the title of the paper or article. The name
highlighted should always be the name under which the work will have been filed on the library
shelves or referenced in any indexing system. It is often the name which is written on the spine
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of the volume, and if you remember this it may be easier for you to remember which is the
appropriate title to highlight.
Other types of publications: The three examples above cover the most common publication
types. You may also wish to refer to other types of publications, including PhD dissertations,
translated works, newspaper articles, dictionary or encyclopaedia entries or legal or historical
texts. The same general principles apply to the referencing of all published sources, but for
specific conventions consult your departmental handbook or your tutor, or look at the more
detailed reference books listed in the Further reading section of this guide.
Referencing WebPages: The internet is increasingly used as a source of information and it is

just as important to reference internet sources as it is to reference printed sources. Information on
the internet changes rapidly and web pages move or are sometimes inaccessible meaning it can
often be difficult to validate or even find information cited from the internet. When referencing
webpage, it is helpful to include details that will help other people check or follow up the
information. A suggested format is to include the author of the information (this may be an
individual, group or organisation), the date the page was put on the internet (most web pages
have a date at the bottom of the page), the title, the http:// address, and the date you accessed the
web page (in case the information has been subsequently modified). A format for referencing
web pages is given below:
University of Leicester Standing Committee of Deans (6/8/2002) Internet code of practice and
guide to legislation. Accessed 8/8/02 http://www.le.ac.uk/committees/deans/codecode.html
Referencing lectures Full references to unpublished oral presentations, such as lectures, usually
include the speaker's name, the date of the lecture, the name of the lecture or of the lecture series,
and the location:
1. Barker, G. 1996 (7 October): The Archaeology of Europe, Lecture 1. University of

Leicester.
Please note that in contrast to the format used for the published sources given in the first three
examples above, the formatting of references for unpublished sources does not include italics, as
there is no publication title to highlight.
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Reference Using Footnotes or Endnotes: Some academic disciplines prefer to use footnotes
(notes at the foot of the page) or endnotes (notes at the end of the work) to reference their
writing. Although this method differs in style from the 'author, date' system, its purpose - to
acknowledge the source of ideas, data or quotations without undue interruption to the flow of the
writing is the same. Footnote or endnote markers, usually a sequential series of numbers either in
brackets or slightly above the line of writing or printing (superscript), are placed at the
appropriate point in the text. This is normally where you would insert the author and date if you
were using the 'author, date' system described above.
Employers are not just looking for high academic achievement and have identified competencies
that distinguish the high performers from the average graduate.1 This view has been supported
by an early study that demonstrated that graduates employed in the industrial and commercial
sectors were as likely to have lower second and third class degrees as firsts and upper seconds.
Full details of the reference are then given at the bottom of the relevant page or, if endnotes are
preferred, in numerical order at the end of the writing. Rules for the formatting of the detailed
references follow the same principles as for the reference lists for the ‘author, date’ system.
1. Moore, K. 1992: National Westminster Bank plc. In H. Eggins (ed.), Arts Graduates,
their Skills and their Employment. London: The Falmer Press, pp. 24-26.
2. Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. 1970: Six Years After. Sheffield: Higher Education
Research Unit, Sheffield University, p. 40.
4.2.10 Appendices
An appendix contains supplementary material that is not an essential part of the text itself but
which may be helpful in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem
or it is information that is too cumbersome to be included in the body of the report. A separate
appendix should be used for each distinct topic or set of data and always have a title descriptive
of its contents. As such, your study must be able to stand alone without the appendices, and the
paper must contain all information including tables, diagrams, and results necessary to
understand the research problem. The key point to remember when including an appendix is that
the information is non-essential; if it were removed, the reader would still be able
to comprehend the significance, validity, and implications of your research.It is appropriate to
include appendices for the following reasons:
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 Including this material in the body of the paper that would render it poorly structured or
interrupt the narrative flow;
 Information is too lengthy and detailed to be easily summarized in the body of the paper;
 Inclusion of helpful, supporting, or useful material would otherwise distract the reader
from the main content of the paper;
 Provides relevant information or data that is more easily understood or analyzed in a self-
contained section of the paper;
 Can be used when there are constraints placed on the length of your paper; and,
 Provides a place to further demonstrate your understanding of the research problem by
giving additional details about a new or innovative method, technical details, or design
protocols.
When considering whether to include content in an appendix, keep in mind the following points:
1. It is usually good practice to include your raw data in an appendix, laying it out in a clear
format so the reader can re-check your results. Another option if you have a large amount
of raw data is to consider placing it online and note that this is the appendix to your
research paper.
2. Any tables and figures included in the appendix should be numbered as a separate
sequence from the main paper. Remember that appendices contain non-essential
information that, if removed, would not diminish a reader's ability to understand the
research problem being investigated. This is why non-textual elements should not carry
over the sequential numbering of non-textual elements in the body of your paper.
3. If you have more than three appendices, consider listing them on a separate page at the
beginning of your paper. This will help the reader know before reading the paper what
information is included in the appendices [always list the appendix or appendices in a
table of contents].
4. The appendix can be a good place to put maps, photographs, diagrams, and other images,
if you feel that it will help the reader to understand the content of your paper, while
keeping in mind the point that the study should be understood without them.
5. An appendix should be streamlined and not loaded with a lot information. If you have a
very long and complex appendix, it is a good idea to break it down into separate
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appendices, allowing the reader to find relevant information quickly as the information is
covered in the body of the paper.
Content: Never include an appendix that isn’t referred to in the text. All appendices should be
summarized in your paper where it is relevant to the content. Appendices should also be arranged
sequentially by the order they were first referenced in the text [i.e., Appendix 1 should not refer
to text on page eight of your paper and Appendix 2 relate to text on page six]. There are few
rules regarding what type of material can be included in an appendix, but here are some common
examples:
 Correspondence: if your research included collaborations with others or outreach to

others, then correspondence in the form of letters, memorandums, or copies of emails
from those you interacted with could be included.
 Interview Transcripts: in qualitative research, interviewing respondents is often used to
gather information. The full transcript from an interview is important so the reader can
read the entire dialog between researcher and respondent.
 Non-textual elements: as noted above, if there are a lot of non-textual items, such as,
figures, tables, maps, charts, photographs, drawings, or graphs, think about highlighting
examples in the text of the paper but include the remainder in an appendix.
 Questionnaires or surveys: this is a common form of data gathering. Always include the
survey instrument or questionnaires in an appendix so the reader understands not only the
questions asked but the sequence in which they were asked. Include all variations of the
instruments as well if different items were sent to different groups.
 Raw statistical data: this can include any numerical data that is too lengthy to include in
charts or tables in its entirety within the text.
 Research instruments: if you used a camera, or a recorder, or some other device to
gather information and it is important for the reader to understand how that device was
used; this information can be placed in an appendix.
 Sample calculations: this can include quantitative research formulas or detailed
descriptions of how calculations were used to determine relationships and significance.
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4.2.11 Format
Here is some general guideline on how to format appendices, but consult the writing style guide
[e.g., APA] your professor wants you to use for more detail, if needed:
 Appendices may precede or follow your list of references.

 Each appendix begins on a new page.
 The order they are presented is dictated by the order they are mentioned in the text of
your research paper.
 The heading should be “Appendix,” followed by a letter or number [e.g., Appendix A or
Appendix 1], centered and written in bold type.
 Appendices must be listed in the table of contents [if used].
 The page number(s) of the appendix/appendices will continue on with the numbering
from the last page of the text.
In this lesson, we tried to deliberate on some of the key aspects of report/research writing i.e.
Chapterization, tables, references and appendices and how it plays an important role in shaping a
good report. This lesson highlighted the importance of Chapterization and how it facilitates a
continuation of an argument across the report or research writing process. We also learnt the
importance of tables and their role in creating a better understanding and analysis of our
arguments. The chapter further discussed the role and importance of referencing and different
types and aspects of referencing in writing a cohesive and argumentative report. The chapter
finally summed up in the importance of appendix and how it is useful in providing the
supplementary material that is not an essential part of the text itself but which may be helpful in
providing a more comprehensive understanding of the research problem or it is information that
is too cumbersome to be included in the body of the report.
1. Write the importance of Chapterization in report/research or dissertation writing?

2. What is the usage of tables in report writing?
3. Explain the importance of referencing and its different uses in report/research writing?
4. Write a short note on the concept of appendix and its usage?
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5. Critically evaluate and place all these concepts in framing a cohesively engaging report?
1. Webster Gorden, Managing Projects at Work, (New York: Routledge, 2017)

Books, 2011)
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UNIT IV
Lesson 3: Transliteration
Lesson Structure
4.3.1 Introduction
4.3.2 Objectives
4.3.3 Aim of Transliteration
4.3.4 Definitions
4.3.5 Translation and Transliteration
4.3.6 Transliteration as a Translation Strategy
4.3.7 Romanization of Arabic and Method
4.3.8 Arabic Transliteration System: Key to Right Pronunciation
4.3.9 Let Us Sum Up
4.3.1 Introduction
Transliteration is a crucial factor in Cross Lingual Information Retrieval (CLIR). It is also
important for Machine Translation (MT), especially when the languages do not use the same
scripts. It is the process of transforming a word written in a source language into a word in a
target language without the aid of a resource like a bilingual dictionary. Word pronunciation is
usually preserved or is modified according to the way the word should be pronounced in the
target language. In simple terms, it means finding out how a source word should be written in the
script of the target languages such that it is acceptable to the readers of the target language.
Transliteration involves rendering a language from one writing system to another. Though it
sounds similar to translation, they are two different processes with very different goals. Here is a
look at what transliteration is and why it’s used. Transliteration consists in representing the
characters of a given script by the characters of another, while keeping the operation reversible.
The use of diacritics or digraphs solves the problem of different number of characters between
the alphabets of the two writing systems. Many people assume transliteration is equivalent to
translation. However, there are some important distinctions. Translation allows words in one
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language to be understood by those who speak another language. Essentially, translation of a

foreign word involves interpreting its meaning. On the other hand, transliteration makes a
language a little more accessible to people who are unfamiliar with that language’s alphabet.
Transliteration focuses more on pronunciation than meaning, which is especially useful when
discussing foreign people, places and cultures. Therefore, if you need to read text in another
language, and are more interested in pronouncing it than understanding it, you need
transliteration. But if you want to know what it means, you need translation services.
4.3.2 Objectives
 To understand the concept of transliteration
 To see its usage and importance
4.3.3 Aim of Transliteration
The term transliteration is defined as a process of replacing or complementing the words or
meanings of one language with meanings of another as sometimes the exact equivalence or exact
meaning might not exist. The important aspect of transliteration is an unavoidable loss of
meaning that occurs in everyday language, which helps to set the context in which cross-cultural
translation can be better understood. Nida and Taber raised a concern that the issue of
untranslatability often occurs when exact equivalence of meanings rather than comparative
equivalence is required. A study by Nida and Taber showed that if one is to insist that translation
must involve no loss of information whatsoever, then obviously not only translating but all
communication is impossible. Therefore, transliteration is often required. Such an interpretation
process will often be demonstrated by the use of italics in-text, giving the closest meaning either
in brackets or as footnotes with some explanations.
Transliteration is to write or describe words or letters using letters of a different alphabet or

language. Despite the limited debates within research discourses and paradigms in relation to
qualitative and interpretative perspectives, there has been a growing trend toward conducting
research in a source language other than English. Presenting findings in a different target
language, that is, English, is now increasingly popular among health and social researchers. This
means understanding and seeking comparable data across language boundaries, using research
(qualitative) methodologies and values prepared in one language for use in another. Hennink has
argued that the use of language in research and its appropriate interpretation is an ever-expanding
field in qualitative research when research seeks to understand human behaviour, social
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processes, and cross-language meanings that describe human behaviour in natural settings.
The main goal of this conversion operation is to enable the automatic and unambiguous
recreation of the original (which is also known as retro-conversion). In a word, the transliteration
of a transliterated text should return the original text. This is why transliteration standards are
used. These standards define the transliteration rules: which characters are replaced by which
others, and in which case. There are many, but the most used for Romanization are ISO-9 (for
Cyrillic), ALA-LC (to represent bibliographic names in the English-world libraries), and
BGN/PCGN (for geographical names and personal names). Romanization (or Latinization) is the
transliteration of a non-Latin script into a Latin script. For instance, a Latin transliteration of the
Greek phrase “Ελληνική Δημοκρατία”, usually translated as ‘Hellenic Republic’, is “Ellēnikḗ
Dēmokratía”. Transliteration is not concerned with representing the sounds of the original, only
the characters, ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the above example, λλ is
transliterated as ‘ll’, but pronounced /l/; Δ is transliterated as ‘D’, but pronounced ‘ð’; and η is
transliterated as ‘ē’, though it is pronounced /i/ (exactly like ι) and is not long.
4.3.4 Definitions
Systematic transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another, typically
grapheme to grapheme. Most transliteration systems are one-to-one, so a reader who knows the
system can reconstruct the original spelling. Transliteration is opposed to transcription, which
maps the sounds of one language into a writing system. Still, most systems of transliteration map
the letters of the source script to letters pronounced similarly in the target script, for some
specific pair of source and target language. If the relations between letters and sounds are similar
in both languages, a transliteration may be very close to a transcription. In practice, there are
some mixed transliteration/transcription systems that transliterate a part of the original script and
transcribe the rest. For many script pairs, there is one or more standard transliteration systems.
However, unsystematic transliteration is common.
4.3.5 Translation and Transliteration
The transliteration process means that a word written in a character set like the Latin alphabet is
transposed in another, say the Inuktitut syllabics. In other words, there is no translation involved.
If the source word means nothing in the given language, its transliterated form will also mean
nothing, even though it will look like a word in that language as it will be written in its alphabet
or syllabic system.
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4.3.6 Transliteration as a Translation Strategy
When simple equivalence is not available, the translator must call upon more elaborate
techniques or translation strategies, which may be understood as the set of rules or principles
used to reach the goals determined by the translating situation. Hans Peter Krings defines
translation strategy as “the translator’s potentially conscious plans for solving concrete
translation problems in the framework of a concrete translation task”. Transliteration is one type
of translation strategy. Wright and Budin define transliteration as “an operation whereby the
characters of an alphabetic writing system are represented by characters from another alphabetic
writing system”. Some scholars such as John Napier note that both translation and transliteration
share common underlying processes although the former represents free interpretation and the
latter represents literal interpretation. Napier defines translation as “the process by which
concepts and meanings are translated from one language into another, by incorporating cultural
norms and values; assumed knowledge about these values, and the search for linguistic and
cultural equivalents.” Conversely, transliteration is defined as “literal interpretation.” Napier’s
definitions of both translation and transliteration make it clear that in translation–being a “free
interpretation” –the translator closely follows the patterns of the target language whereas in
transliteration – being a “literal interpretation”–the translator closely follows the patterns of the
source language.
4.3.7 Romanization of Arabic and Method

The Romanization of Arabic refers to the various methods and approaches that are used to
formally represent varieties of Arabic, both written and spoken, in the Latin script. Romanized
Arabic is used for a number of different purposes, among them transcription of names and titles,
Cataloguing Arabic language works, language education when used in lieu of or alongside the
Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by linguists. These
formal systems, which often make use of diacritics and non-standard Latin characters and are
used in academic settings or for the benefit of non-speakers, contrast with informal means of
written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based Arabic chat alphabet. Different
systems and strategies have been developed to address the inherent problems of rendering
various Arabic varieties in the Latin script. Examples of such problems are the symbols for
Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European languages; the means of
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representing the Arabic definite article, which is always spelled the same way in written Arabic
but has numerous pronunciations in the spoken language depending on context; and the
representation of short vowels (usually i u or e o, accounting for variations such
as Muslim/Moslem or Mohammed/Muhammad/Mohamed).
Romanization is often termed “transliteration”, but this is not technically correct. Transliteration
is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for
Romanizing Arabic are actually transcription systems, which represent the sound of the
language. As an example, the above rendering munāẓaratu l-ḥurūfi l-ʻarabīyah of the Arabic
‫ ﻣﻨﺎظﺮة اﻟﺤﺮوف اﻟﻌﺮﺑﯿﺔ‬is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration
would be mnaẓrḧ alḥrwf alʻrbyḧ.
However, transliteration has certain disadvantages that have led some translators and researchers
in translation studies to advocate translation rather than transliteration of religious terms. For
example, transliterated IRTs may suggest a pronunciation in English which is different from the
pronunciation of the Arabic original. The pronunciation of the transliterated words ‘Abd Allāh
and Isrā’ (‫ )إﺳﺮاء‬in English is different from their pronunciation in Arabic in which they are
pronounced with initial ‘ayn (‫ )ع‬in ‘Abd Allāh and final hamzah (‫ )ء‬in Isrā’. This problem stems
from the absence of phonetic equivalences in English:
Ideally, one would hope for a one-to-one mapping of the graphemes, though this is not possible
in Arabic-English transliteration due to the absence of consonantal equivalences in one of the
two languages. The problem is compounded by the fact that short vowels are not represented by
letters in Arabic but by vocalization diacritics, which are rarely used except in the Qur’ān. Yet,
the absence of phonetic equivalences in one of the two languages can be addressed by the use of
special symbols, diacritics, and combinations of letters to change the sound value of the letter to
which they are added, and thus compensate for the absence of phonetic equivalences between SL
and TL combinations of) ‫(غ‬letters (e.g. using the combination gh /ɣ/ to stand for the Arabic letter
ghayn) ‫( ص‬or using ṣ /sʕ/ to represent the Arabic letter ṣād
Another problem in the transliteration of IRTs is that the transliterated form may give a sense of
the exotic and of cultural difference. Commenting on M. A. S. Abdel Haleem’s The Qur’ān, A
New Translation, Khaleel Mohammed recommends translation rather transliteration: The
translator renders the Arabic Allah as God, an astute choice, since the question of why many
Muslims refuse to use the word God as a functional translation has created the misconception for
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many that Muslims worship a different deity than the Judeo-Christian creator. Similarly, Ahmed
Abdel Azim Shiekh and Mona Ahmed Saleh argues that the use of transliterated religious terms
rather than translations reflects some kind of an exclusive attitude rather than an inclusive one on
part of the language user. In other words, it originates from as well as displays a high estimation
of the transliterated Islamic concepts at the expense of their counterparts in other religions.
Shiekh and Saleh assume that the use of transliteration rather than translation of IRTs may reflect
an anti-others attitude, whereas translated IRTs are probably more favourable in discourses that
advocate dialogue with the religious other: “[i]t turns out to be the better option for Muslims
writing in English about Islamic religious concepts to resort to translation rather than
transliteration.” However, this argument focuses only on the perception of non-Muslim readers
of Islamic religious texts in English, which might be negative for reasons other than the
insistence on transliterating IRTs and ignores other advantages that the transliteration of IRTs
may yield. One such advantage is that transliteration is more appropriate with IRTs that have no
direct equivalents in the TL. Also, transliteration strategy allows back- translation, so that
readers, translators and researchers can easily reconvert the transliterated IRT from English into
Arabic. For instance, reconverting, ‫ ﷲ‬transliterated words such as Allāh, zakāh, ṣalāh, and ḥajj
back into Arabic. It is important to note that none of the aforementioned English words (God,
alms, prayer, and pilgrimage) actually convey the true religious connotations of the Arabic
words. Translating ṣalāh as prayer is not precise enough, as prayer can indicate several different
ways of relating to Allāh; personal prayer or supplication is called du‘ā’ (literally supplication) in
Islamic usage. Another advantage of transliteration is that the transliterated form looks more like
an English word since it is written using the alphabetical system of English. Therefore, many
translators may choose to transliterate words and thus create new words in English, instead of
using existing English words with partially equivalent meanings.
4.3.8 Arabic Transliteration System: Key to Right Pronunciation

As been said before, Arabic is not an easy to grasp Language; thanks to Transliteration -the
technique that changes Arabic writing to a Latin substitute that paves the way towards a special
writing Latin phonetic system where you can find special linguistic qualities and characteristics
as it provides a key system for letters, vowels and accents. Sometimes they call this system
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Romanization. The more you go further in our trip the more you will fully absorb it. Consider the
Chart below for better and clear understanding:
pronunciationTransliteratedIsolated Transcription pronunciation
‫أَﻟِﻒ‬ ̛ālif ‫ا‬ ā Like A in Apple
‫ﺑَﺎء‬ bā̛ ‫ب‬ b Like B in Baby
‫ﺗَﺎء‬ tā̛ ‫ت‬ t Like T in Tree
‫ﺛَﺎء‬ thā̛ ‫ث‬ th Like the Th in Theory
Sometimes like the G in Girl or

‫ِﺟﯿﻢ‬ Jim ‫ج‬ j
like the J in Jar
Like the h in he yet light in

‫ﺣَﺎء‬ hā̛ ‫ح‬ h
pronunciation
‫َﺧﺎء‬ khā̛ ‫خ‬ kh Like the Ch in the name Bach
‫دَال‬ Dāl ‫د‬ d Like the D in Dad
‫ذَال‬ Zāl ‫ذ‬ z Like the Th in The
‫َراء‬ rā̛ ‫ر‬ r Like the R in Ram
‫َزاي‬ Zāy ‫ز‬ z Like the Z in zoo
‫ﺳِﯿﻦ‬ Sin ‫س‬ s Like the S in See
‫ﺷِﯿﻦ‬ Shin ‫ش‬ sh Like the Sh in She
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Like the S in Sad yet heavy in

‫ﺻَﺎد‬ Sād ‫ص‬ s
pronunciation
Like the D in Dead yet heavy in

‫ﺿَﺎد‬ Dād ‫ض‬ d
pronunciation
Like the T in Table yet heavy in

َ
‫طﺎء‬ tā̛ ‫ط‬ t
pronunciation
Like the Z in Zorro yet heavy in

َ
‫ظﺎء‬ ẓā̛ ‫ظ‬ ẓ
pronunciation
Has no real equivalent sometimes

they replace its sound with the A
‫َﯿﻦ‬
ٍ ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ع‬ain ‫ع‬ ̛‫ع‬
sound like for example the name
Ali for ‫ع‬/ ‫ﻋﻠﻲ‬ali/
َ
‫ﻏﯿﻦ‬ Ghain ‫غ‬ gh Like the Gh in Ghandi
‫ﻓَﺎء‬ fā̛ ‫ف‬ f Like the F in Fool
Like the Q in Queen yet heavy

‫ﻗَﺎف‬ Qāf ‫ق‬ q
velar sound in pronunciation
‫ﻛَﺎف‬ Kāf ‫ك‬ k Like the K in Kate
‫ﻻَم‬ Lām ‫ف‬ l Like the L in Love
‫ﻣِ ﯿﻢ‬ Mim ‫م‬ m Like the M in Moon
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‫ﻧُﻮن‬ Nun ‫ن‬ n Like the N in Noon
‫ھَﺎء‬ hā̛ ‫ه ھـ‬ h Like the H in He
Like the W in the reaction of

‫َواو‬ Wāw , W(aw, au, u)
astonishment saying: WAW!
‫ﯾَﺎء‬ yā̛ ‫ي‬ Y (ay, ai, ῑ) Like the Y in you
‫ء‬
Latter will be
ُ‫أ‬ Seen latter because it differs
َ ‫َھ‬
‫ﻤﺰة‬ Hamza discussed
ِ‫إ‬ according to case and context
separately
َ‫أ‬
4.3.9 Let Us Sum Up
In this lesson, we tried to understand the concept of transliteration and how it helps us to
understand and transform the exact idea of one language into another language. Keep in mind
that transliteration doesn’t really render the words in a new language—just a new format.
Transliteration is more prevalent than you may have realized. Clearly, there is often a need for
transliteration of a language, either in tandem with or in place of translation. In this lesson, we
have highlighted the increasing need for non-English-speaking researchers to transliterate from
one language into English, and the transliteration-related methodology and framework that
researchers engaging in this approach need to take. Before focusing on issues related to English
and non-English translation, we acknowledge the possibility that all interpretations in research
and the research process embrace an element of cross-cultural transliteration. Although this
lesson has highlighted some key issues that arise for researchers when conducting transliteration,
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and suggested strategies that might assist researchers in their research process. For novice
researchers in particular, translation of qualitative research data is a challenge. However, with
careful consideration, the process of transliteration can widen the academic audience for a piece
of research without jeopardizing its validity.
1. Write a definition of Transliteration?

2. Explain the difference between Translation and Transliteration?
3. Explain with example the concept of Romanization of Arabic?
4. How is transliteration important in rendering the words in a new language?
5. Critically place the importance of Transliteration?
1. Alasuutari, P, Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Culture Studies, (London: Sage,
1992)
2. Brislin, R. W., Lonner, W., & Thorndike, R. M., Cross-cultural Research Methods, (New
York: John Wiley, 1973)
3. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, Towards Islamic English, (USA: International Institute of Islamic
Thought, 2001)
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UNIT IV
Lesson 4: Use of Introduction, Conclusion, Bibliography in the Project Report
Lesson Structure
4.4.1 Introduction
4.4.2 Objectives
4.4.3 Contextualizing the Role of Introduction
4.4.4 Role of the Introduction
4.4.5 Conclusion
4.4.6 Importance of Good Conclusion
4.4.7 Developing a Compelling Conclusion
4.4.8 Problems to Avoid in Conclusion
4.4.9 Bibliography
4.4.10 Features of Bibliography
4.4.11 Types of Bibliography
4.4.12 Choosing Sources for Your Bibliography
4.4.1 Introduction
In this lesson, we will try to introduce the importance of writing a compressive and engaging
introduction, conclusion and bibliography and its importance for a general overview of our
research/report/project. Introduction provides the background information needed for the rest of
your report to be understood. This is the beginning of any serious academic
project/report/dissertation work and shapes the whole discourse and gives an overall idea of the
project. In line with introduction, we also try to learn the importance of conclusion in the project
report writing and how it gives an overall picture of the work in few lines or pages and sums up
and brevity plays an important role in shaping a good conclusion. This lesson will also highlight
the importance of bibliography and how it authenticates and shows the coherence and diverse
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sources used in shaping and bringing up work of the researcher. This lesson will highlight all the
three important aspects of report/research writing and how it plays a key role in shaping a good
project report.
4.4.2 Objectives
 To have an idea and place of Introduction in Project Report Writing.

 To understand the importance of Conclusion in Project Report Writing.
 To place the role of Bibliography in the Project Report Writing.
4.4.3 Contextualizing the Role of Introduction
The purpose of the introduction is to set the context for your report, provide sufficient
background information for the reader to be able to follow the information presented, and inform
the reader about how that information will be presented. The introduction leads the reader from a
general subject area to a particular field of research. It establishes the context and significance of
the research being conducted by summarizing current understanding and background information
about the topic, stating the purpose of the work in the form of the research problem supported by
a hypothesis or a set of questions, briefly explaining the methodological approach used to
examine the research problem, highlighting the potential outcomes your study can reveal, and
outlining the remaining structure of the paper/dissertation/project or research paper. The
introduction includes:
 the background to the topic of your report to set your work in its broad context
 a clear statement of the purpose of the report, usually to present the results of your
research, investigation, or design
 a clear statement of the aims of the project
 technical background necessary to understand the report; e.g. theory or assumptions
 a brief outline of the structure of the report if appropriate (this would not be necessary in
a short report)
Think of the introduction as a mental road map that must answer for the reader these four
questions:
1. What was I studying?

2. Why was this topic important to investigate?
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3. What did we know about this topic before I did this study?
4. How will this study advance new knowledge or new ways of understanding?
A well-written introduction is important because, quite simply, you never get a second chance to
make a good first impression. The opening paragraphs of your paper will provide your readers
with their initial impressions about the logic of your argument, your writing style, the overall
quality of your research, and, ultimately, the validity of your findings and conclusions. A vague,
disorganized, or error-filled introduction will create a negative impression, whereas, a concise,
engaging, and well-written introduction will lead your readers to think highly of your analytical
skills, your writing style, and your research approach.
4.4.4 Role of the Introduction
The introduction is the best opportunity to convince your audience that you have something
worthwhile to say. An introduction can accomplish this by fulfilling five important
responsibilities: get the audience’s attention, introduce the topic, explain its relevance to the
audience, state a thesis or purpose, and outline the main points. By the end of the introduction,
the audience should know where you’re headed and what your speech will cover. If you are
giving a persuasive speech, state your thesis in the introduction. If you are giving an informative
speech, explain what you will be teaching the audience.
Structure and Approach: The introduction is the broad beginning of the paper that answers
three important questions for the reader:
1. What is this?
2. Why should I read it?
3. What do you want me to think about / consider doing / react to?
Think of the structure of the introduction as an inverted triangle of information. Organize the
information so as to present the more general aspects of the topic early in the introduction, then
narrow your analysis to more specific topical information that provides context, finally arriving
at your research problem and the rationale for studying it and, whenever possible, a description
of the potential outcomes your study can reveal.These are general phases associated with writing
an introduction:
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Establish an area to research by: a) Highlighting the importance of the topic, and/or b)
Making general statements about the topic, and/or b) Presenting an overview on current research
on the subject.
Identify a research niche by: a) Opposing an existing assumption, and/or b) Revealing a gap in
existing research, and/or c) Formulating a research question or problem, and/or d) Continuing a
disciplinary tradition.
Place your research within the research niche by: a) Stating the intent of your study, b)
Outlining the key characteristics of your study, c) Describing important results, and d) Giving a
brief overview of the structure of the paper.
Delimitations of the Study: Delimitations refer to those characteristics that limit the scope
and define the conceptual boundaries of your research. This is determined by the conscious
exclusionary and inclusionary decisions you make about how to investigate the research
problem. In other words, not only should you tell the reader what it is you are studying and why,
but you must also acknowledge why you rejected alternative approaches that could have been
used to examine the topic.
Obviously, the first limiting step was the choice of research problem itself. However, implicit are
other, related problems that could have been chosen but were rejected. These should be noted in
the conclusion of your introduction. For example, a delimitating statement could read, “Although
many factors can be understood to impact the likelihood young people will vote, this study will
focus only on socioeconomic factors related to the need to work full-time while in school.” The
point is not to document every possible delimiting factor, but to highlight why obvious issues
related to the research problem were not addressed. Examples of delimitating choices would
be:
 The key aims and objectives of your study,
 The research questions that you address,
 The variables of interest [i.e., the various factors and features of the phenomenon being
studied],
 The method(s) of investigation,
 The time period your study covers, and
 Any relevant alternative theoretical frameworks that could have been adopted.
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Review each of these decisions. Not only do you clearly establish what you intend to accomplish
in your research, but you should also include a declaration of what the study does not intend to
cover. In the latter case, your exclusionary decisions should be based upon criteria understood as,
“not interesting”; “not directly relevant”; “too problematic because...”; “not feasible,” and the
like. Make this reasoning explicit!
The Narrative Flow: Issues to keep in mind that will help the narrative flow in your
introduction:
 Your introduction should clearly identify the subject area of interest: A simple
strategy to follow is to use key words from your title in the first few sentences of the
introduction. This will help focus the introduction on the topic at the appropriate level
and ensures that you get to the subject matter quickly without losing focus, or discussing
information that is too general.
 Establish context by providing a brief and balanced review of the pertinent
published literature that is available on the subject: The key is to summarize for the
reader what is known about the specific research problem before you did your analysis.
This part of your introduction should not represent a comprehensive literature review. It
consists of a general review of the important, foundational research literature [with
citations] that lays a foundation for understanding key elements of the research problem.
See the drop-down menu under this tab for “Background Information” regarding types of
contexts.
 Clearly state the hypothesis that you investigated: When you are first learning to write
in this format it is okay, and actually preferable, to use a past statement like, “The
purpose of this study was to....” or “We investigated three possible mechanisms to
explain the....”
 Why did you choose this kind of research study or design: Provide a clear statement
of the rationale for your approach to the problem studied? This will usually follow your
statement of purpose in the last paragraph of the introduction.
Engaging the Reader: The overarching goal of your introduction is to make your readers want
to read your paper/dissertation/project. The introduction should grab your reader’s attention.
Strategies for doing this can be to:
1. Open with a compelling story,
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2. Include a strong quotation or a vivid, perhaps unexpected anecdote,

3. Pose a provocative or thought-provoking question,
4. Describe a puzzling scenario or incongruity, or
5. Cite a stirring example or case study that illustrates why the research problem is
important.
4.4.5 Conclusion
The conclusion is intended to help the reader understand why your research should matter to
them after they have finished reading the paper. A conclusion is not merely a summary of the
main topics covered or a re-statement of your research problem, but a synthesis of key points
and, if applicable, where you recommend new areas for future research. For most essays, one
well-developed paragraph is sufficient for a conclusion, although in some cases, a two or three
paragraph conclusion may be required. The primary purpose of the Conclusion/Discussion
section is to present the relationship between the observed facts (i.e. your results). This is the
section of your report where you explain your results in themselves and in relation to earlier
research. In other words, you give your research and your results “meaning”. Conclusions show
readers the value of your completely developed argument or thoroughly answered question.
Consider the conclusion from the reader's perspective. At the end of a paper, a reader wants to
know how to benefit from the work you accomplished in your paper. Here are ways to think
about the purpose of a conclusion:
 To connect the paper's findings to a larger context, such as the wider conversation
 about an issue as it is presented in a course or in other published writing.
 To suggest the implications of your findings or the importance of the topic.
 To ask questions or suggest ideas for further research.
 To revisit your main idea or research question with new insight.
4.4.6 Importance of Good Conclusion
A well-written conclusion provides you with important opportunities to demonstrate to the reader
your understanding of the research problem. These include:
1. Presenting the last word on the issues you raised in your paper. Just as the
introduction gives a first impression to your reader, the conclusion offers a chance to
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leave a lasting impression. Do this, for example, by highlighting key points in your
analysis or results or by noting important or unexpected implications applied to practice.
2. Summarizing your thoughts and conveying the larger significance of your study.
The conclusion is an opportunity to succinctly answer the “So What?” question by
placing the study within the context of past research about the topic you've investigated.
3. Identifying how a gap in the literature has been addressed. The conclusion can be
where you describe how a previously identified gap in the literature [described in your
literature review section] has been filled by your research.
4. Demonstrating the importance of your ideas. Do not be shy. The conclusion offers you
the opportunity to elaborate on the impact and significance of your findings.
5. Introducing possible new or expanded ways of thinking about the research problem.
This does not refer to introducing new information [which should be avoided], but to
offer new insight and creative approaches for framing or contextualizing the research
problem based on the results of your study.
General Rules: When writing the conclusion to your paper, follow these general rules:
 State your conclusions in clear, simple language. State how your findings differ or
support those of others and why.
 Do not simply reiterate your results or the discussion of your results. Provide a synthesis
of arguments presented in the paper to show how these converge to address the research
problem and the overall objectives of your study
 Indicate opportunities for future research if you have not already done so in the
discussion section of your paper. Highlighting the need for further research provides the
reader with evidence that you have an in-depth awareness of the research problem.
The function of your paper’s conclusion is to restate the main argument. It reminds the reader of
the strengths of your main argument(s) and reiterates the most important evidence supporting
those argument(s). Do this by stating clearly the context, background, and necessity of pursuing
the research problem you investigated in relation to an issue, controversy, or a gap found in the
literature. Make sure, however, that your conclusion is not simply a repetitive summary of the
findings. This reduces the impact of the argument(s) you have developed in your essay. Consider
the following points to help ensure your conclusion is appropriate:
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1. If the argument or purpose of your paper is complex, you may need to summarize the
argument for your reader.
2. If, prior to your conclusion, you have not yet explained the significance of your findings
or if you are proceeding inductively, use the end of your paper to describe your main
points and explain their significance.
3. Move from a detailed to a general level of consideration that returns the topic to the
context provided by the introduction or within a new context that emerges from the data.
The conclusion also provides a place for you to persuasively and succinctly restate your research
problem, given that the reader has now been presented with all the information about the topic.
Depending on the discipline you are writing in, the concluding paragraph may contain your
reflections on the evidence presented, or on the essay's central research problem. However, the
nature of being introspective about the research you have done will depend on the topic and
whether your professor wants you to express your observations in this way.
4.4.7 Developing a Compelling Conclusion
Strategies to help you move beyond merely summarizing the key points of your research paper
may include any of the following:
1. If your essay deals with a contemporary problem, warn readers of the possible
consequences of not attending to the problem.
2. Recommend a specific course or courses of action that, if adopted, could address a
specific problem in practice or in the development of new knowledge.
3. Cite a relevant quotation or expert opinion already noted in your paper in order to lend
authority to the conclusion you have reached [a good place to look is research from your
literature review].
4. Explain the consequences of your research in a way that elicits action or demonstrates
urgency in seeking change.
5. Restate a key statistic, fact, or visual image to emphasize the ultimate point of your paper.
6. If your discipline encourages personal reflection, illustrate your concluding point with a
relevant narrative drawn from your own life experiences.
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7. Return to an anecdote, an example, or a quotation that you presented in your introduction,

but add further insight derived from the findings of your study; use your interpretation of
results to recast it in new ways.
8. Provide a “take-home” message in the form of a strong, succinct statement that you want
the reader to remember about your study.
4.4.8 Problems to Avoid in Conclusion
1. Failure to be concise: The conclusion section should be concise and to the point.
Conclusions that are too lengthy often have unnecessary information in them. The
conclusion is not the place for details about your methodology or results. Although you
should give a summary of what was learned from your research, this summary should be
relatively brief, since the emphasis in the conclusion is on the implications, evaluations,
insights, and other forms of analysis that you make.
2. Failure to comment on larger, more significant issues: In the introduction, your task
was to move from general [the field of study] to specific [your research problem].
However, in the conclusion, your task is to move from a specific discussion [your
research problem] back to a general discussion [i.e., how your research contributes new
understanding or fills an important gap in the literature]. In short, the conclusion is where
you should place your research within a larger context [visualize your paper as an
hourglass—start with a broad introduction and review of the literature, move to the
specific analysis and discussion, conclude with a broad summary of the study’s
implications and significance].
3. Failure to reveal problems and negative results: Negative aspects of the research
process should never be ignored. Problems, drawbacks, and challenges encountered
during your study should be summarized as a way of qualifying your overall conclusions.
If you encountered negative or unintended results [i.e., findings that are validated outside
the research context in which they were generated], you must report them in the results
section and discuss their implications in the discussion section of your paper. In the
conclusion, use your summary of the negative results as an opportunity to explain their
possible significance and/or how they may form the basis for future research.
4. Failure to provide a clear summary of what was learned: In order to be able to discuss
how your research fits back into your field of study [and possibly the world at large], you
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need to summarize briefly and succinctly how it contributes to new knowledge or a new
understanding about the research problem. This element of your conclusion may be only
a few sentences long.
5. Failure to match the objectives of your research: Often research objectives in the social
sciences change while the research is being carried out. This is not a problem unless you
forget to go back and refine the original objectives in your introduction. As these changes
emerge they must be documented so that they accurately reflect what you were trying to
accomplish in your research [not what you thought you might accomplish when you
began].
6. Resist the urge to apologize: If you have immersed yourself in studying the research
problem, you presumably should know a good deal about it, perhaps even more than your
professor! Nevertheless, by the time you have finished writing, you may be having some
doubts about what you have produced. Repress those doubts! Don't undermine your
authority by saying something like, “This is just one approach to examining this problem;
there may be other, much better approaches that....” The overall tone of your conclusion
should convey confidence to the reader.
4.4.9 Bibliography
An annotated bibliography is a list of citations related to a particular topic or theme that include a
brief descriptive and/or evaluative summary. The annotated bibliography can be arranged
chronologically by date of publication or alphabetically by author, with citations to print and/or
digital materials, such as, books, newspaper articles, journal articles, dissertations, government
documents, pamphlets, web sites, etc., and multimedia sources like films and audio recordings,
dissertations, government documents, pamphlets, web sites, etc., and multimedia sources like
films and audio recordings.
In lieu of writing a formal project or research work, your professor may ask you to develop an
annotated bibliography. You may be assigned to write an annotated bibliography for a number of
reasons, including: 1) to show that you understand the literature underpinning a research
problem; 2) to demonstrate that you can conduct an effective and thorough review of pertinent
literature; or, 3) to share sources among your classmates so that, collectively, everyone in the
class obtains a comprehensive understanding of key research about a particular topic. Think of
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an annotated bibliography as a more deliberate, in-depth review of the literature than what is
normally conducted for a project, research work or a dissertation.
On a broader level, writing an annotated bibliography can be excellent preparation for

conducting a larger research project by allowing you to evaluate what research has already been
conducted and where your proposed study may fit within it. By reading and critically analyzing a
variety of sources associated with a research problem, you can begin to evaluate what the issues
are and to gain a better perspective on what scholars are saying about your topic. As a result, you
are better prepared to develop your own point of view and contributions to the literature.
4.4.10 Features of Bibliography
 Encourages you to think critically about the content of the works you are using, their
place within the broader field of study, and their relation to your own research,
assumptions, and ideas;
 Provides evidence that you have read and understood your sources;
 Establishes validity for the research you have done and of you as a researcher;
 Gives you an opportunity to consider and include key digital, multimedia, or archival
materials among your review of the literature;
 Situates your study and underlying research problem in a continuing professional
conversation;
 Provides an opportunity for others to determine whether a source will be helpful for their
research; and,
 Could help researchers determine whether they are interested in a topic by providing
background information and an idea of the kind of scholarly investigations that have been
conducted in a particular area of study.
In addition, writing an annotated bibliography helps you develop skills related to critically
reading and identifying the key points of a research study and to effectively synthesize the
content in a way that helps the reader determine its validity and usefulness in relation to the
research problem or topic of investigation.
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4.4.11 Types of Bibliography
1. Descriptive: This annotation describes the source without summarizing the actual
argument, hypothesis, or message in the content. Like an abstract, it describes what the
source addresses, what issues are being investigated, and any special features, such as
appendices or bibliographies, that are used to supplement the main text. What it does not
include is any evaluation or criticism of the content. This type of annotation seeks to
answer the question: Does this source cover or address the topic I am researching?
2. Informative/Summative: This type of annotation summarizes what the content,
message, or argument of the source is. It generally contains the hypothesis, methodology,
and conclusion or findings, but like the descriptive type, you are not offering your own
evaluative comments about such content. This type of annotation seeks to answer these
types of questions: What are the author's main arguments? What conclusions did the
author draw?
3. Evaluative/Critical/Analytical: This annotation includes your evaluative statements
about the content of a source. It is the most common type of annotation your professor
will ask you to write. Your critique may focus on describing a study's strengths and
weaknesses or it may describe the applicability of the conclusions to the research
problem you are studying. This type of annotation seeks to answer these types of
questions: Is the reasoning sound? Is the methodology sound? Does this source address
all the relevant issues? How does this source compare to other sources on this topic?
4.4.12 Choosing Sources for Your Bibliography
There are two good strategies you should use to begin identifying possible sources for your
bibliography—one that looks back into the literature and one that looks forward.
1. The first strategy is to identify several recent scholarly books or journal articles on the
topic of your annotated bibliography and review the sources cited by the author(s). Often,
the items cited by an author will effectively lead you to related sources about the topic.
2. The second strategy is to identify one or more important books, book chapters, journal
articles, or other documents on your topic and paste the title of the item in Google
Scholar [e.g., from Negotiation Journal, entering the article, “Civic Fusion: Moving from
Certainty through Not Knowing to Curiosity”], placing quotation marks around the title
so Google Scholar searches as a phrase rather than a combination of individual words.
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Below the citation may be a “Cited by” reference followed by a linked number. This link
will direct you to a list of other study’s that have cited that particular item after it was
published.
Your method for selecting which sources to annotate depends on the purpose of the assignment
and the research problem you are investigating. For example, if the research problem is to
compare the social factors that led to protests in Egypt with the social factors that led to protests
against the government of the Philippines in the 1980’s, you will have to consider including non-
U.S., historical, and, if possible, foreign language sources in your bibliography.
Strategies to Define the Scope of your Bibliography: It is important that the sources cited and
described in your bibliography are well-defined and sufficiently narrow in coverage to ensure
that you are not overwhelmed by the number of potential items to consider including. Many of
the general strategies used to narrow a topic for a research paper are the same that you can use to
define the scope of your bibliography. These are:
 Aspect—choose one lens through which to view the research problem, or look at just one facet
of your topic [e.g., rather than a bibliography of sources about the role of food in religious
rituals, create a bibliography on the role of food in Hindu ceremonies].
 Time—the shorter the time period to be covered, the more narrow the focus [e.g., rather than
political scandals of the 20th century, cite literature on political scandals during the 1930s and
the 1990s].
 Geography—the smaller the region of analysis, the fewer items there are to consider including
in your bibliography [e.g., rather than cite sources about trade relations in West Africa, include
only sources that examine trade relations between Niger and Cameroon].
 Type—focus your bibliography on a specific type or class of people, places, or things [e.g.,
rather than health care provision in Japan, cite research on health care provided to elderly men
in Japan].
 Source—your bibliography includes specific types of materials [e.g., only books, only
scholarly journal articles, only films, etc.]. However, be sure to describe why only one type of
source is appropriate.
 Combination—use two or more of the above strategies to focus your bibliography very
narrowly or to broaden coverage of a very specific research problem [e.g., cite literature only
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about political scandals during the 1930s and the 1990s and that have only taken place in Great
Britain].
In this lesson, we tried to understand the three key constituents of a good project report. In the
first section of this lesson, we highlighted the importance of a good introduction and how it gives
us an overall context of the work undertaken by the researcher. It equally emphasized the role of
a good introduction and how it leads the reader from a general subject area to a particular field of
research. It establishes the context and significance of the research being conducted by
summarizing current understanding and background information about the topic. The second
section of the lesson dealt with the importance and role of conclusion in report writing and how
it sums up the findings of a research area. This section was followed by the importance and types
of bibliography, its usage and how it manifests the diversity of the work.
1. Contextualize the idea of an Introduction?
2. Define the importance of Introduction?
3. What is the role of a good conclusion?
4. What is Bibliography and explain its role and place in a Project Report?
5. Critically evaluate the role of all the above three important aspects Project Report?
1. C.R. Kothari, Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, (Mamta Publishers: 2001)
Books, 2011)
3. Patton, M.Q., Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 2nd Ed., (Newbury Park: Sage,
1990)
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PG PROGRAMME

(ISLAMIC STUDIES: APPROACHES AND METHODOLOGY)

DIRECTORATE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

Copyright © Directorate of Distance Education, University of Kashmir

First Edition: 2020

Course Prepared by:

Table of Contents Page No

Unit I i) Origin and Development of Islamic Studies in the Islamic 8-19

ii) Development of Islamic Studies in the Western Context 20-32

iii) Approaches in Islamic Studies: Traditional, Modern 33-46

Unit II i) Nature and Scope of Islamic Studies 47-60

ii) Islamic Studies as a Social Science and its Relationship 61-77

iii) Inter-Disciplinary Approaches 78-87

iv) Relationship with Oriental Languages and their Literature 88-103

Unit III i) Project Report Writing and its Significance 106-114

iii) Sources and Methods of Data Collection 126-135

Unit IV i) Examining and Using the Data 138-147

ii) Use of Chapterization, References, Tables and Appendices 148-161

A Note to the Students

i) Origin and Development of Islamic Studies in the Islamic Context

 To understand the origin and development of Islamic Studies

1.1.4 The idea of Religion

1.1.6 The Islamic Paradigm

1.1.7 Islamic approach to Islamic Studies

1.1.9 Let Us Sum Up

1.1.10 Check Your Progress

1. Write a brief note on the discipline of Islamic Studies?

 To trace the roots of Islamic studies in western context

Studies, as an interdisciplinary subject, are related to Islamic Civilization, History, Philosophy

1.2.5 Religious Polemics: 800–1100

1.2.6 Medieval Developments: 1100–1500

1.2.7 Islamic Studies Discipline and Era of Reformation: 1500–1650

1.2.8 Contemporary Discourse on Islamic Studies in Western Academics

1.2.9 Let Us Sum Up

1.2.10 Check Your Progress

1. Define the origin of Islamic studies discipline in western context?

 To understand the discipline of Islamic studies from traditional (Muslim) perspective

 To enquire about the Orientalist approach towards Islamic Studies

1.3.4 Traditionalist Approach

1. Exegesis written by scholars of hadith and transmitted reports.

examination of these questions, we will be able to extract many research methodologies,

1.3.5 Understanding the Tradition

1.3.6 Orientalism and Western Academia

The Palestinian-American literary scholar Edward Said’s powerful polemic, Orientalism,

1.3.8 Let Us Sum Up

1. Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York, 1978)

i) Nature and Scope of Islamic Studies

iii) Inter-Disciplinary Approaches

iv) Relationship with Oriental Languages and their Literature

 To understand the nature of Islamic Studies discipline

What is most important to recognize, though, as Ebrahim Moosa articulates, is that:

2.1.4 Islamic Education and Islamic Studies

linguistic groups of widely differing tastes and attainments.

2.1.5 Antagonistic and Revisionist Approaches to the Study of Islam

Although there is no shortage of openly non-Muslim Islamic Studies scholars working in

framework ends up advocating normative claims in many regards, for it is of course

2.1.6 Particular Challenges for Islamic Studies and Muslims

2.1.7 Let Us Sum Up

2.1.8 Check Your Progress

1. Define the discipline of Islamic Studies?

1. Martin, R. C., ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, (Oxford: Oneworld,

 To understand the role of Islamic Studies discipline

2.2.4 Islamic Studies and Larger Framework of Social Sciences