ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a case for not merely an elective but a strategic and necessary affinity between the projects of critical ancient world studies and critical Muslim studies if they are to fulfil their respective and mutual decolonising ambitions, institutionally and epistemologically. Both classics and Orientalism inscribed and buttressed the Eurocentric order of things which colonialism not only legitimated but naturalised. In contrast, both the projects of critical Muslim studies and critical ancient world studies are founded upon a radical interrogation of Orientalism and classics. Reframing the ontological rather than ontic readings of the Islamicate, the critical of critical Muslim studies discloses the politics of Muslimness and its disavowals. The chapter offers three incursions that envisage expanding the range of examples by which we can begin to imagine an epistemic order that signals a post-Western horizon as the shared aim of both projects.
