As Tapper (1995) points out, the three major approaches of Western social theory are each "flawed by their commitment to positivism, objectivity, and scientific detachment," (p. 186). Some may wonder how it could be possible to study religion with scientific detachment, since scientific detachment is partly defined by the absence of religious sentiment. If a historian is too detached, he or she cannot come to terms with the language best used to understand any given tradition: for example the "body" of Muhammad and the Prophet's tribe. Denying relevance of mystical experiences, subversive or minority views, or even non-linear representations of history would be doing a disservice to the history of religion. A scholar doesn't necessarily have to spend time in a monastery to understand Zen but it wouldn't hurt. Encounters with terms and ideologies add the missing semantic value that can make a history of religion whole and truly meaningful. If scholastic inquiry aims to present an unbiased and thorough understanding it may be essential to temporarily adopt alternative frames of reference.
At the same time, the scholarly history of religion depends on the presentation of historical material and artifacts without placing any value judgment upon those artifacts and texts. One of the problems Tapper (1995) found in the attempted construction of an Islamic anthropology was a hypocritical bias: in critiquing Western social science for its narrow-mindedness, Islamic anthropologists were themselves creating even less tenable methodologies. Any ideological approach to the social sciences can be problematic, but as Tapper (1995) shows, ideology can offer interesting and valid alternative points-of-view. Without Marxist or feminist ideologies, academic would be bereft of a thorough understanding of history and likewise, an Islamic ideology is welcome as an integral part of the history of religion.
Finding a common lexicon and agreeing upon terms remains one of the fundamental challenges...
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