The terms ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ are part of our scientific discussions and social reality. We conduct research on Islam in the past and the present and study texts, artefacts and people in various disciplines from different perspectives and in many places. A preliminary overview of research shows that the two terms signify different things both within different disciplines and in exchanges between them. Nevertheless, the various academic fields seem to share several premises: Muslims are often viewed as a collective, Islam is regarded as a subject (or a ‘thing’) and the historical continuity of Islam is assumed. An interdisciplinary discussion of these assumptions is absent. At this conference, we look at different academic disciplines and their explicit and implicit premises about Islam. In particular, we examine how Islam has been, and is, defined and conceptualized by modern scholars from Islamic Theology, Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, History, Art History, Archaeology and Anthropology. At the same time, we explore the concept and conceptualization of Islam in different periods in history and in various sources. Through this interdisciplinary and diachronic comparison, we would like to start a discussion on what Islam could mean and how to apply the concept in our research.
