The Making of Islamic Heritage: Muslim Pasts and Heritage Presents

Abstract

The Making of Islamic Heritage is the outcome of a research workshop and a conference at UCL Qatar and Texas A&M University at Qatar respectively—the former focusing on the “past” and the latter on the “present” of Islamic heritage. Professor Trinidad Rico, the editor of the collection, organized these academic events in 2014 and 2016. Her introductory chapter is an overall methodological assessment of the essays in the book, which examine various conceptual, disciplinary, and regional points of interaction between Islam and Heritage Studies. Rico elaborates on how the essays call for a suspension of the orthodoxies of both Islam and Heritage Studies in order to dwell on a history of the contemporary, displacing linear progressivist constructions of past and present.