Islamic studies in the modern world

Islam is a religion whose essence is the doctrine of divine unity or oneness of God, and its founding texts are the Qur’ān and ḥadīth. The tawhidic paradigm makes Islam unique and the Qur’ān and ḥadīth its life-source, which is what all its adherents share in common, otherwise Islam is a heterogeneous religious tradition. Islam is spread throughout the globe and is not contained in any national culture; thus, is a universal force. With the events of 11 September 2001, Islam has become the most prominent world religion and occupies centre stage in world politics. Those who subscribe to the Islamic doctrine of divine unity are called Muslims, who are over 1.8 billion in number and internally divided along sectarian, ideological, jurisprudential, theological, ethnic and parochial lines. Whatever Muslims deem to be correct and proper belief and practice is highly contested by the lay population and scholars, demonstrating Islam’s heterogeneity. Debates surrounding Islamic orthodoxy and orthopraxy are not new developments but have accompanied Islam from very early in its history with the first such debates occurring with the emergence of the Kharijites (“those who defected from the group”) – a group that agitated against Uthman and Ali (the third and fourth caliphs of Islam) and subsequently the leaders of the Umayyad and Abbasid empires beginning in 644. What constitutes Islam as a living tradition and “Islamic knowledge” is inherently contested; therefore, there cannot be a single Islam or unified and universal Islamic knowledge, although some Muslims unreservedly make such assertion for their conceptions of both