Publication Name
Journal
This call for papers aims to create a space dedicated to the quantitative study of Islam and Muslims, under the label of quantitative Islam (or quantitative Islamic studies), through a curated collection of research papers demonstrating disciplinary and cross-disciplinary work.
It is aptly titled as “Quantitative Islam: Exploring the Impact of Religion in and on Individuals’ Lives and Societies.” In bringing up the term quantitative Islam as part of the theme, it conjures up the image of numbers, rather than words or texts, which may cause confusion. Islamic studies as a discipline tends to be qualitative-centric, being the dominant method/methodology paradigm, which possibly is due to its historical and cultural associations with philosophy and theology. However, Islamic studies in the broadest sense can be defined as the study of Islam and Muslims, with the addition of the term empirical in the beginning connoting a scientific approach. With this definition, the nature of the discipline itself is highly cross-disciplinary, whereby studies in sociology, anthropology, political science, management, and many others can also be said to have overlaps or be part of Islamic studies, arguably without much major contention. But as mentioned earlier, with the discipline being more relatable within and with philosophy and theology, it tends to be associated with qualitative research design, albeit not exclusively.
The key element in the theme—that is quantitative Islam—is neither to dismiss the validity of qualitative approaches in empirical Islamic studies, nor to be ostentatious in wanting to transform the discipline to be quantitative in nature. Rather than doing those, the Managing Guest Editor is advocating for a divergence from the qualitative-centric paradigm in Islamic studies to a more balanced qualitative–quantitative paradigm. To affirm this advocacy, this virtual special issue aims to demonstrate the potentiality of employing quantitative methods in the study of Islam and Muslims (or Islamic studies as the discipline of interest) through a selectively curated collection of research papers on a diverse range of topics. This is done in the hope future researchers can envision and will actualize the numerous possibilities of Islamic studies—empirically within social sciences and humanities with disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives—not just of qualitative nature but also of quantitative research design.
Guest editors
Dr. Nur Amali Aminnuddin
Sultan Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei
Contact: aminnuddin.na@gmail.com
Dr. Harris Shah Abd Hamid
Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Contact: harris75@um.edu.my