In his “The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion” (1984; republished 1999), Donald Wiebe correctly pointed to the categorical mistakes and conceptual failures that have plagued the academic study of religion. Whether in the grand comparative studies of yesteryear or increasingly in more focused sub-disciplinary treatments, the tendency is to privilege understanding and description at the expense of explanation and analysis. Although certainly Religious Studies, speaking generally, has yet to take Wiebe's assessment seriously, I focus here on what is, perhaps, the weakest and most apologetical link in its disciplinary chain: the academic study of Islam. This sub-discipline, especially in the years post–9/11, has gained considerable capital and the interest that goes along with it.

For Wiebe, Religious Studies—and, by extension, Islamic Studies—has given up any claims to scientific disciplinarity owing to its wholesale rejection of objectivity, disinterestedness, and reductionism. What we have, instead, is nothing short of confessionalism: an academic discipline that endorses and indeed even apologizes for the religious beliefs and practices of others. Although I disagree with Wiebe's dismissal of humanistic or, what he calls, “postmodern” theorizing of religion and his desire to replace such theorizing, especially in recent years, with a more cognitive “turn,” I find myself indebted to Wiebe for his refusal to accept the status quo, his unwillingness to make the academic study of religion into a smorgasbord of world spirituality, and his fight for academic respectability.