I had been reading Pierre Hardot’s What is Ancient Philosophy?. When I came across this this quote on pp97–98.
Modern students study philosophy only because it is a required course; at the most, a student may become interested by an initial contact with the discipline and may wish to take exams in the subject. In any case, it is chance that decides whether the student will encounter a professor who belongs to a particular “school,” be it phenomenological, existentialist, deconstructionist, structuralist, or Marxist. Perhaps, someday, he will pledge intellectual allegiance to one of these “isms”; in any case, his adherence will be intellectual and will not engage his way of life, with the possible exception of Marxism. For us moderns, the notion of a philosophical school evokes only the idea of a doctrinal tendency or a theoretical position.
—Pierre Hardot, What is Ancient Philosophy?
This quote made me think of the Muslims I encounter whose fiqh was through buffet-style comparative fiqh (not madhhabs), and those whose access to Islam has been through academic Islamic-studies programs.