Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute SpecialIssue Book Series, Islam, Politics, Anthropology offerscritical reflections on past and current studies of Islam andpolitics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches toexamining Islam in the post-9/11 world. Challenges current and past approaches to the study of Islamand Muslim politics in anthropology Offers a critical comprehensive review of past and currentliterature on the subject Presents innovative ethnographic description and analysis ofeveryday Muslim politics in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, andNorth America Proposes new analytical approaches to the study of Islam andMuslim politics

Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Special Issue Book Series, Islam, Politics, Anthropology offers critical reflections on past and current studies of Islam and politics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches to examining Islam in the post-9/11 world. Challenges current and past approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim politics in anthropology Offers a critical comprehensive review of past and current literature on the subject Presents innovative ethnographic description and analysis of everyday Muslim politics in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and North America Proposes new analytical approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim politics

Acknowledgements p. ix 1 Introduction p. 1 2 Islam: Beliefs, History and Rituals p. 13 3 From Studying Islam to Studying Muslims p. 31 4 Studying Muslims in the West: Before and After September 11 p. 53 5 From the Exotic to the Familiar: Anamneses of Fieldwork among Muslims p. 71 6 Beyond the Stereotype: Challenges in Understanding Muslim Identities p. 89 7 The Ummah Paradox p. 103 8 The Dynamics of Gender in Islam p. 117 9 Conclusion p. 139 Glossary p. 147 References p. 151 Index p. 173

An analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. The author's exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are linked within the context of such movements.

Muslim Societies in Africa provides a concise overview of Muslim societies in Africa in light of their role in African history and the history of the Islamic world. Roman Loimeier identifies patterns and peculiarities in the historical, social, economic, and political development of Africa, and addresses the impact of Islam over the longue durée. To understand the movements of peoples and how they came into contact, Loimeier considers geography, ecology, and climate as well as religious conversion, trade, and slavery. This comprehensive history offers a balanced view of the complexities of the African Muslim past while looking toward Africa's future role in the globalized Muslim world.

This collection of arresting and innovative chapters applies the techniques of anthropology in analyzing the role played by Islam in the social lives of the world’s Muslims. The volume begins with an introduction that sets out a powerful case for a fresh approach to this kind of research, exhorting anthropologists to pause and reflect on when Islam is, and is not, a central feature of their informants’ life-worlds and identities. The chapters that follow are written by scholars with long-term, specialist research experience in Muslim societies ranging from Kenya to Pakistan and from Yemen to China: thus they explore and compare Islam’s social significance in a variety of settings that are not confined to the Middle East or South Asia alone. The authors assess how helpful current anthropological research is in shedding light on Islam’s relationship to contemporary societies. Collectively, the contributors deploy both theoretical and ethnographic analysis of key developments in the anthropology of Islam over the last 30 years, even as they extrapolate their findings to address wider debates over the anthropology of world religions more generally. Crucially, they also tackle the thorny question of how, in the current political context, anthropologists might continue conducting sensitive and nuanced work with Muslim communities. Finally, an afterword by a scholar of Christianity explores the conceptual parallels between the book’s key themes and the anthropology of world religions in a broader context. This volume has key contemporary relevance: for example, its conclusions on the fluidity of people’s relations with Islam will provide an important counterpoint to many commonly held assumptions about the incontestability of Islam in the public sphere.

In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.

This book aims to bring together some of the most sophisticated recent anthropological work on the ways in which Pakistan's citizens from diverse social and regional backgrounds set to the task of being Muslim, and contribute to the dynamic role played by Islam in the country's political and social life.

Radical Arab nationalism emerged in the modern era as a response to European political and cultural domination, culminating in a series of military coups in the mid-20th century in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. This movement heralded the dawn of modern, independent nations that would close the economic, social, scientific, and military gaps with the West while building a unity of Arab nations. But this dream failed. In fact, radical Arab nationalism became a barrier to civil peace and national cohesion, most tragically demonstrated in the case of Syria, for two reasons: 1) national armies militarized nationalism and its political objectives; 2) these nations did not keep pace with the intellectual and political and cultural and social progress of European nations that offered, for example, freedom of speech and thought. It was the failure of radical Arab nationalism, Addi contends, that made the more recent political Islam so popular. But if radical nationalism militarized politics, the Islamists politicized religion. Today, the prevailing medieval interpretation of Islam, defended by the Islamists, prevents these nations from making progress and achieving the kind of social justice that radical Arab nationalism once promised. Will political Islam fail, too? Can nations ruled by political Islam accommodate modernity? Their success or failure, Addi writes, depends upon this question.