Now Turning to Our Tomorrows: Decolonial Futures in the Study of Islam

Abstract

The emergence and growth of the decolonial movement in recent years has had a dramatic impact on universities around the world, inspiring new epistemic, political and ontological shifts across a wide range of disciplines. These shifts are broadly described as forming part of ‘the decolonial turn’ (Maldonado-Torres 2007: 261). As new generations of academics in the Study of Islam prepare to further the project of knowledge production in the context of post-Fallist universities, this paper seeks to address the following questions: What might it mean to decolonise the academic Study of Islam? How might decolonisation be consciously foregrounded as a future trajectory in the Study of Islam? After contextualising the academic study of Islam in South Africa and engaging with some of the major themes and concepts of decolonial scholarship, I review contemporary efforts to affect the decolonial turn in the Study of Islam through the initiation of summer schools and conferences. Applying what Sardar (2010) describes as ‘futures studies’ methodology, I propose ways to propel the decolonial turn as anticipatory intervention, based on an attempt to forecast the possible futures that await in the next five to ten years and beyond.