About CIR

Previous Conferences:

Contemporary Muslim Discourses on America: Perceptions of Self & Other (2006)

Contemporary American Discourses on Islam: The Politics of Representation (2005)

Islamic Law: Questions of Authority and Change (2004)

Muhammad the Prophet in the Academy (2003)

Rooting Islam in America (2002)






Yale University’s Critical Islamic Reflections group consists of a cross-section of graduate and undergraduate students organized to pursue critical academic scholarship on topics regarding Islam and Muslim society.

The CIR group has successfully run five conferences until now (links to previous websites provided on the left). Past programs have featured leading and emerging scholars in the American Islamic context, many of whom possess backgrounds in both traditional Islamic learning and Anglo-American academia.


Mission:

The conference is designed to provide a broad framework to continually pursue a sophisticated understanding and discourse of issues pertinent to Muslims in America in light of prevailing realities. While focusing discussion around specific themes each year, we aim to examine problems against a backdrop of broader, more fundamental questions confronting Islam and other religions. Those considerations include the following:

  • What is the relationship between religious conviction and academic inquiry? What is an effective and legitimate articulation of the compatibility of faith and academia?
  • What is the nature of the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition - its scope, intellectual rigor, and comparison with contemporary Western academic methods?
  • What is the relationship between "intellectual Islam" and the wider Muslim community? Assuming there is access, how can access to academic/ intellectual Islam empower or fail to serve this majority?

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Last updated: Nov. 8, 2007 . Contact Webmaster