Anouar Majid’s scholarship cited in article on Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s legacy

The scholarship of Anouar Majid, Ph.D., vice president for Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Humanities, is cited in an article about Marshall Hodgson’s visionary rethinking of Islam more than four decades ago. The article, titled “Genius Denied and Reclaimed: A 40-Year Retrospect on Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam” is written by Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University professor emeritus of Islamic Studies.

In the article, which appears in the Marginalia Review of Books, Lawrence provides a quote from Majid’s book Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World that he says exemplifies Majid’s focus on Hodgson’s language.

Majid’s text is quoted, in part, stating, “Although this eminent scholar made a compelling argument for the need to coin new terminology to deal with the history of ‘Islamdom,’ older prejudices continue to determine the questions asked by, and consequently the outcomes of, scholarship on Islam.”        

The Marginalia Review of Books focuses on literature at the crossroads of history, religion and theology. It is a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Read the article.