In Honor of John L. Esposito

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• In Honor of John L. Esposito
• Seth Ward, (retired)

Readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with John L. Esposito's life and career. In 1974, he earned his Ph.D. from Temple University's Department of Religion, where he got to know Professor Leonard Swidler. Since 2016, Esposito has served on the journal's board and has contributed to the Dialogue Institute as a lecturer for visiting international students and scholars through a State Department-funded program on religious pluralism. A past president of the American Academy of Religion, of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies, he has also been a member of the World Economic Forum's Council of 100 Leaders and of the European Network of Experts on De-Radicalisation. He served as a Senior Scientist for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed by Kofi Annan as an ambassador for the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, and has served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and other agencies, European and Asian governments, corporations, universities, and media worldwide.

Professor Esposito's scholarly publications are mostly in the field of Islamic studies, yet he is a Catholic, and his main academic positions have been at Jesuit institutions, first the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, then Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he is the founding director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the Bridge Initiative: Protecting Pluralism—Ending Islamophobia in the Walsch School of Public Service. His teaching subjects in Religious Studies were a classic example of fields considered to be within the orbit of Oriental Studies: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—yet he is closely associated with the trend of overcoming the real or perceived biases involved in teaching about these religious communities. His name is on dozens of books, some as sole author, such as Islam: The Straight Path and What Everyone [End Page 263] Needs to Know about Islam; others as editor-in-chief (including several encyclopedias from Oxford University Press); or as co-author of important works.

Esposito has played a central role in the development of the academic study of Islam and in Ecumenical and Religious Studies for decades. In particular, as the final chapter in a book of essays published in his honor, begins, "Professor John Esposito has dedicated his academic career to defending the place of Muslims and Islam in the modern world, and in the United States."¹ Of course, as shown in this work, Esposito's influence extends far beyond that.

Overcoming Orientalism, edited by Tamara Sonn, honors Esposito by drawing out four conclusions: 1. Religion is a crucial tool for understanding the contemporary world; 2. Islam is not monolithic, and entities claiming they are Islamic (including the "Islamic State") do not reflect typical Islamic values; 3. ecumenical and interfaith relations are an important path forward and worthy of study and action; and 4. contemporary generic antagonism toward Islam and Muslims, including in recent European and American politics, may be understood as "Orientalism 2.0," which is reflective of the legacy of European and American biases. The essays in this volume are divided into sections devoted to these four themes of Esposito's immense professional legacy, a fitting and much-deserved honor to this consummate teacher, author, and scholar. Most of the essays note a personal relationship with Esposito or how his vision has informed their conclusions or shaped the scope of their contribution to the volume.

Tamara Sonn's important introduction reviews Esposito's career and his history of "overcoming Orientalism" that stretches back far earlier than the publication of Edward Said's volume that named the phenomenon, which is necessary reading to gain a sense of the scope of Esposito's achievements.

The two essays in the first section address the role of Religious Studies in the contemporary world. Karen Armstrong's essay, "'After Enlightenment, Return to the Marketplace': The Scholar's Responsibility for a Broken World," reviews Second Testament, Hebrew Bible, and qur'ānic materials, mentioning "traditional ways of studying ancient texts" within the framework of "dismantling the Modernist Paradigm," although...