Talal Asad the Idea an Anthropology of Islam

8/13/2019 Talal Asad the Idea an Anthropology of Islam

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The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University wasestablished in 1975 to enlarge and enrich academic studies and scholarlyresearch on the Arab world. The Center's geographical purview is the entireArab world from Morocco to Kuwait and Syria to the Sudan. Functionally,it includes the disciplines of Arabic language and literature, theology, eco-nomics, history, political science, nternational elations, philosophy, soci-ology, business administration, development, aw, and fine arts. The Centeradministers a Master's degree program in Arab studies and certificate pro-grams in Arab studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It holds anannual symposium and sponsors an annual distinguished lecture in Arabstudies, as well as hosts lecture and film programs throughout the academicyear.

The publications program of the Center consists of books, special eports,and papers by Georgetown faculty and other scholars in a wide variety ofresearch areas. Occasional papers consist of studies of particular merit whichby reason of length and specialized subject matter may not find a conventionalscholarly publications outlet. With coverage of a diversity of topics, they aredesigned to fill important gaps n the existing literature on the Arab world.

The Center seeks to facilitate the responsible expression of a variety ofideas and analyses of the Arab world and its development. In doing so, theonly position taken by the Center is that improved knowledge, understanding,and informed discussion of this region is beneficial o all concerned. Opinionsexpressed are solely those of the authors.

The director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies is ProfessorMichael C. Hudson. Ms. Zeina Azzam Seikaly is the Center's publicationsmanager. Mr. J. Coleman Kitchen, Jr. edited this paper.


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IIn recent years here has been ncreasing nterest n something alled heanthropology of Islam. Publications y Western anthropologists ontainingthe word Islam or Muslim in the title multiply at a remarkable ate.The political easons or this great ndustry are perhaps oo evident o deservemuch comment. However hat may be, here want o focus on the conceptualbasis of this literature. Let us begin with a very general question. What,exactly, is the anthropology of Islam? What is its object of investigation?The answer may seem obvious: what the anthropology f Islam nvestigatesis, surely, slam. But to conceptualize slam as he object of an anthropolog-ical study s not as simple a matter as some writers would have one suppose.

There appear o be at least hree common answers o the question posedabove: (1) that in the final analysis here s no such theoretical object asIslam; (2) hat Islam s the anthropologist's abel or a heterogeneous ollec-tion of items, each of which has been designated slamic by informants; 3)that Islam s a distinctive historical otality which organizes arious aspectsof social ife. We will look briefly at the first two answers, nd hen examineat length he third, which is in principle he most nteresting, ven hough tis not acceptable.

Eight years ago, the anthropologist Abdul Hamid El-Zein struggled with

Talal Asad is a Reader in Social Anthropology at Hull University. He received a D. Phil. fromOxford University in 1968 and has conducted extensive anthropological research on such topicsas Bedouin tribes, Arab nationalism, religion, and political systems. Dr. Asad's numerouspublications include The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe(1970), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (editor and contributor, 1973), The Sociologyof Developing Societies: The Middle East (co-editor with Roger Owen, 1983), Ideology, ClassandtheOriginof thelslamicState (inEconomyandSociety, lgs0),and TheIdeaof anon-Western Anthropology (in Current Anthropology, 1980).

Professor Asad presented this paper at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies as the1984-85 Annual Distinguished Lecture in Arab Studies.


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this question n a survey entitled Beyond Ideology and Theology: The

Search or the Anthropology of Islam. l This was a brave effort, but finally

unhelpful. The conteniiotr hut there are diverse orms of Islam, each equally

real,^each

worth describing, was linked in a rather puzzling way to the

assertion hat they are all ultimately expressions f an underlying uncon-

scious ogic. This curious slippage rom an anthropological ontextualisminto a Levi-Straussian niversalism ed him o the inalsentence fhis article:. , .Islam'as an analytical ategory issolves s well. In other words, f

Islam s not an analyiical category, here cannot, strictly speaking, e such

a thing as an anthropology f Islam.So much or an unr*.t of the first kind. One adherent f the second oint

of view is Michael Gilsenan, who, hke El-Zein, emphasizes n his recent

book Recognizing slam2 hat no form of Islam may be excluded rom the

anthropologist's nterest on the grounds hat it is not the true Islam' His

.ugg riion that he different hings hat Muslims hemselves egard as slamicshould be situated within the ife and development f their societies s indeed

a sensible ociological ule, but t does not help dentify slam as an analytical

object of study. Th. id u he adopts rom other anthropologists-that slam

is simply what Muslims everywhere ay t is-will not do, if only because

there are everywhere Muslims who say that what other people ake to be

Islam s not really Islam at all. This paradox cannot be resolved simply by

saying hat he ctaim as o what s Islam will be admitted y the anthropologist

onty where t applies o the informant's ownbeliefs and practices, because

it is generally mpossible o definebeliefsand practices n terms of an solatedsubject. A Muslim's beliefs about he beliefs and practices f others are his

own beliefs. And like all such beliefs, hey animate nd are sustained y his

social elations with others.Let us turn then to an answer of the third type. One of the most ambitious

attempts o address his question s Ernest Gellner's Muslim Society,3 n

which an anthropological model s presented f the characteristic ways in

which social structure, eligiousbelief, and politicalbehavior nteract with

each other n an Islamic otality. In what follows, shall deal n some detail

with this text. My purpose, however, s not to assess his particular work,but to use t to exirait theoretical roblems hat must be examined y anyone

who wishes o write an anthropology f Islam. As it happens, many elements

in the overall picture presented y Gellner are to be found also in other

writings-by anthropoiogists, rientalists, olitical scientists, nd ournal-

ists. n lookingat thii text one s therefore lso ooking at more han a unique

account. But the picture t presents s of less nterest han the way it has

been put together-the assumptions t draws on and he concepts t deploys'

il

There s in fact more than one attempt o conceptualize slam n Gellner's

text. The first of these nvolves an explicitcomparison etween Christianity

and Islam, each broadly conceived as differinghistorical configurations f


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power and belief, one essentially ocated n Europe, he other n the MiddleEast. Such a conceptualization s central o Orientalism, ut it is also o befound implicitly in the writings of many contemporary anthropologists.

One sign of this is the fact that anthropological extbooks on the MiddleEast-such as Gulick'so or Eickelmsn'ss-devote heir chapter on Reli-

gion entirely to Islam. Although Christianityand Judaism are also ndige-nous o the region, t is only Muslim beliefand practice hat Western anthro-pologists appear o be interested n. In effect, or most Western anthropol-ogists, Sephardic Judaism and Eastern Christianity are conceptuallymarginalized and represented s minor branches n the Middle East of ahistory that develops elsewhere-in Europe, and at the roots of Westerncivilization.

My disquiet about his notion of Europe as the true locus of Christianityand he Middle East as he true ocus of Islam does not come primarily rom

the old objection o religion being epresented s he essence f a history anda civrTrzation an objection which even some Orientalists ike Becker advancedlong ago).u My concern as an anthropologist s over the way this particularcontrast affects he conceptualization f Islam. Consider, or instance, heopening paragraphs f Gellner's book. Here he contrast between slam andChristianity s drawn n bold, familiar ines:

Islam s he blueprint f a social rder. t holds hata set ofrules xist, ternal,divinely ordained, and independent of the will of men, which defines he properordering of society. . . .

Judaism and Christianity are also blueprints of a social order, but rather lessso than Islam. Christianity, from its inception, contained an open recommenda-tion to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. A faith which begins, and forsome time remains, without political power, cannot but accommodate tself to apolitical order which is not, or is not yet, under its control Christianity,which initially flourished among the politically disinherited, did not then presumeto be Caesar. A kind of potential for political modesty has stayed with it eversince those humble beginnings. . . . But the initial success of Islam was so rapidthat it had no need to give anything unto Caesar.

If one reads carefully what is being said here, one must be assailed by avariety of doubts. Consider he long history since Constantine, n whichChristian emperors and kings, ay princes and ecclesiastical dministrators,Church eformers and colonialmissionaries, ave all sought by using powerin varying ways o create or maintain he social conditions n which men andwomen might ive Christian ives-has this entire history nothing o do withChristianity? As a non-Christian, would not presume o assert hat neitherLiberation Theology nor the Moral Majority belong o the essence f Chris-tianity. As an anthropologist, owever, find it impossible o accept hat

Christian practice and discourse hroughout istory have been ess ntimatelyconcerned with the uses of political power for religious purposes han thepractice and discourse f Muslims.

I want to make t clear hat have nothing n principleagainst omparisonsbetween Christian and Muslim histories. ndeed, one of the most valuable


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features f the recent book by Fischer on IranT s the nclusionof descriptive

material rom Jewish and christian histories n his account of the madrasa

system. This is one of the very few anthropological tudies f contemporary

tstam hat employ mplicit comparisons ith European history' and conse-

quently enrich our understanding.But one should go beyond drawingparallels, as Fischer does, and attempt

a systematic explJration of differences. or this reason' my own research

ou.. the past hiee years has been concerned with detailed anthropological

analysestof monastlc itual, the sacrament f confession, nd he medieval

Inquisition n twelfth-century Western Europe, which stand n contrast o

the very different connections etween power and religion n the medieval

Middle East. Of particular note is the fact that Christians and Jews have

usually ormed anintegral part of Middle Eastern ociety n a way that s not

true of non-christian populations n Europe. My claim here s not the amiliar

and valid one hat Muslim rulers have n general een more olerant of non-Muslim subjects han christian rulers have of non-christian subjects, but

simply that medieval Christian and Muslim authorities religious and,.poliiical ) must have had o devise very different strategies or developing

moral subjects nd regulating ubjectpopulations. his s too large a subject

to be expounded ere, even n outline, but it is worth touching on by way of

illustration.Modern historians have often observed hat Muslim scholars n the clas-

sical and post-classical eriods displayed o curiosity about Christianity' and

that n this heir attitude was strikinglydifferent rom he ively nterest hownby their christian contemporaries n the beliefs and practices not only of

Islam but of other cultures oo.e What is the reason or this intellectual

indifference oward Others? The explanation iven by Orientalists uch as

Bernard Lewis is that the early military successes f Islam bred an attitude

of contempt and complacency oward Christian Europe' Masked by the

imposingmilitarymiglitof the Ottoman Empire, he peoples f Islam contin-

ued until the dawn oi the modern age o cherish-as many n East and West

stilldo today-the convictionof the mmeasurable nd mmutable uperiority

of their civilization o all others. For the medievalMuslim rom Andalusia oPersia, hristian Europe was still an outer darkness f barbarism nd unbe-

lief, rom which he sunlitworld of Islam had ittle to fear and ess o learn' r0

Perhaps hat was so, but our question s best approached y turning t around

and asking not why Islam was uncurious about Europe but why Roman

Christians were nterested n the beliefsand practices f Others' The answer

has less to do with cultural motives allegedly produced by the intrinsic

qualitiesof a worldview or by the collective experience f military encoun-

ters, and more with structures fdisciplinary ractices hat called or different

kinds of systematic nowledge. fter all, Christian ommunities ivingamongMuslims n the Middle East were not noted or their scholarly uriosityabout

Europe either, and Muslim travelers often visited and wrote about African

and Asian societies. t does not make good sense o think in terms of the

contrasting ttitudes fIslam and Christianity, n which a disembodiedindif-


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ference faces a disembodied desire to learn about the Other. One oughtinstead to be looking for the institutional conditions for the production ofvarious social knowledges. What was regarded as worth recording about other beliefs and customs? By whom was it recorded? In which socialproject were the records used? Thus, it is no mere coincidence that the most

impressive catalogues of pagan belief and practice in early medieval Chris-tendom are those contained in the Penitentials (handbooks for administeringsacramental confession to recently-converted Christians) or that the succes-sive manuals for inquisitors in the later European Middle Ages describe withincreasing precision and comprehensiveness he doctrines and rites of here-tics. There is nothing in Muslim societies to parallel these compilations ofsystematic knowledge about internal unbelievers simply because he dis-ciplines that required and sustained such information are not to be found inIslam. In other words, forms of interest in the production of knowledge areintrinsic

to various structures of power, and they differ not according to theessential character of Islam or Christianity, but according to historicallychanging systems of discipline.

Thus, beyond my misgivings about the plausibility of historical contrastsin terms of cultural motives-such as potential for political modesty onthe one hand, and theocratic potential on the other-lies another concern,namely that there may well be important differences which the anthropologiststudying other societies ought to explore, and which may too easily beobscured by the search for superficial or spurious differences. The problemwith the kind of contrasts

ofIslam

with Christianity drawn by Gellner is notthat the relations between religion and political power are the same in thetwo. Rather, the very terms employed are misleading, and we need to findconcepts that are more appropriate for describing differences.

NISo far we have looked very briefly at one aspect of the attempt to producean anthropology

of Islam: the virtual equation of Islam with the Middle East,and the definition of Muslim history as the mirror image (Gellner) ofChristian history, in which the connection between religion and power issimply reversed. This view is open to criticism both because t disregardsthe detailed workings of disciplinary power in Christian history and becauseit is theoretically most inadequate. The argument here is not against theattempt to generalize about Islam, but against the manner in which thatgeneralization is undertaken. Anyone working on the anthropology of Islamwill be aware that there is considerable diversity in the beliefs and practicesof Muslims. The

firstproblem

is therefore one of organizing this diversity interms of an adequate concept. The familiar representation of essential slamas the fusion of religion with power is not one of these. But neither is thenominalist view that different instances of what are called Islam are essen-tially unique and sui generis.


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one way in which anthropologists ave attempted o resolve he problem

of diversiiy is to adapt ttre orientalist distinction between orthodox and

nonorthodox sram o the categories f Great and Little Traditions, and hus

to set up the seeminglymore acceptable istinction etween he scripturalist,

puritanical aith of the towns, and the saint-worshipping, itualistic eligion

bf tn. countryside. For anthropologists, either orm of Islam has a claim obeing egarded S more real thanlhe other' They are what hey are' ormed

in different ways in different conditions. n fact, the religion of the country-

side s taken as a single orm only n an abstract, ontrastive ense. recisely

because t is by defiiition particularistic, ooted n variable ocal conditions

and personalities, nd authorizedby he uncheckable memories f oral cul-

tures, he slam of tn. unlettered ountryfolk s highlyvariable' Orthodoxy

is therefore, or such anthropologists, erely one (albeit nvariable) orm of

Islam among many, distinguistreo y its preoccupation ith the niceties of

doctrine and aw, tui111ingits authority rom sacred exts rather han sacredpersons.This dichotomy has been popularized y two well-known Western anthro-

pologists of Moioccan Islam, Clifford Geertz and Ernest Gellner' and by

.ol1l. of their pupils. But what made t interestingwas the further argument

that there was an apparent orrelation of this dual Islam with two types of

distinctive social structure, something irst proposed by French colonial

scholarship on the Maghrib. Classical Maghribi society, t was claimed'

consisted n the one hand of the centralized, ierarchical rganization f the

cities, and on the other of the egalitarian' segmental rganization of thesurrounding ribes. The cities were governed by rulers who continually

attempted o subdue he dissident, self-governing ribes; the tribesmen n

turn resisted with varying degrees f success, nd sometimes, hen united

by an outstanding eligious eader, even managed o supplant n incumbent

ruler. The two .ut.goii.s of Islam it nicely nto the two kinds of social and

politicalstructure ihari,alaw in the cities, variable ustom among he ribes;lrla*a in the former, saints among he latter. Both structures are seen as

parts of a single system because hey define he opponents etween whom

an unceasing trulgle for political dominance akes place' More precisely'because oth urban and ribal populations re Muslim, all owing at the very

least a nominal allegiance o the iacred exts (and so perhaps lso mplicitly

to their iterate guuidiunr), a particular style of politicalstruggle merges' t

is possible or urban rulers o claim authority over the tribes, and or tribes

to support a country-based eader who aims o supplant he ruler n the name

of Islam.To this broad schema, hich was nitially he product of a French

soci-

ology of lslam, Gellner as added, n successive ublications, number of

details drawn rom a reading f (1) he classical ociologies f religion, 2)Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddi*oh, and (3) British anthropological writings on

segmentary ineage heory. And he has extended t to cover virtually the

whole of North Africa and the Middle East, and almost he entire span of

Muslim history. The resulting icture has been used by him, and drawn on


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by others, o elaborate he old contrast between slam and Christianity n aseries of inversions-as in the following crisp account by Bryan Turner:

There is a sense n which we can say that in religion the southern, Muslim shoreof the Mediterranean is a kind of mirror-image of the northern shore, of Europe.On the northern shore, the central religious tradition is hierarchical, ritualistic,with a strong rural appeal. One corner-stone of the official religion is saintship.The deviant reformist tradition is egalitarian, puritan, urban and excludes priestlymediation. On the southern shore, Islam reverses this pattern: it is the tribal,rural tradition which is deviant, hierarchical and ritualistic. Sim ilarly, saint andshaikh are mirror-image roles. Whereas in Christianity the saints are orthodox,individualistic, dead, canonized by central authorities, in Islam the shaikhs areheterodox, tribal or associational, iv ing and recognized by local consent.rr

Even as it applies to the Maghrib, this picture has been subjected todamaging criticism by scholars with access o indigenous historical sourcesin Arabic (e.g., Hammoudi, Cornell).12 his kind of criticism is important,but it will not be pursued here. While it is worth asking whether this anthro-pological account of Islam is valid for the entire Muslim world (or even forthe Maghrib) given the historical information available, let us instead focuson a different issue: What are the discursive styles employed here to represent(a) the historical variations in Islamic political structure, and (b) the differentforms of Islamic religion linked to the latter? What kinds of questions dothese styles deflect us from considering? What concepts do we need todevelop as anthropologists in order to pursue those very different kinds ofquestions n a viable manner?

In approaching this issue, let us consider the following interconnectedpoints: (1) Narratives about culturally distinctive actors must try to translateand represent he historically-situated iscourses f such actors as responsesto the discourse of others, instead of schematizing and de-historicizing theiractions. (2) Anthropological analyses of social structure should focus not ontypical actors but on the changing patterns of institutional relations andconditions (especially hose we call political economies). 3) The analysis ofMiddle Eastern political economies and the representation of Islamic dra-mas are essentially different kinds of discursive exercise which cannot besubstituted for each other, although they can be significantly embedded inthe same narrative, precisely because hey are discourses. 4) It is wrong torepresent types of Islam as being correlated with types of social structure,on the implicit analogy with (ideological) superstructure and (social) base.(5) Islam as the object of anthropological understanding should be approachedas a discursive tradition that connects variously with the formation of moralselves, the manipulation of populations (or resistance o it), and the produc-tion of appropriate knowledges.

N

If one reads an anthropological text such as Gellner's carefully, one maynotice that the social and political structures of classical Muslim society are


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represented n a very distinctive way. What one inds n effect are protago-

nists engaged n a dramatic struggle.Segmentary ribes confront centralizedstates. Armed nomads lust after he city, and unarmed merchants ear he

nomads. Saints mediate between onflicting ribal groups, but also between

the lliteratenomad and a remote, capricious God. Literate clerics serve heir

powerful uler and ry to maintain he sacred aw. The puritanical ourgeoisieLmploys religion to iegitimize ts privileged status. The city's poor seek a

religionof eicitement. Religious eformers nite pastoral warriors against

deciiningdynasty. Demoralized ulers are destroyed y the disenchantment

of their urban subjects onvergingwith the religiousand military power of

their tribal enemies.A representation f social structure hat s cast entirely n terms of dramatic

roles ends o exclude other conceptions, o which we shall urn n a moment.

But even a narrative about ypicalactors equires naccount fthe discourses

that orient their behavior and n which that behavior can be represented ormisrepresented) y actors o each other. n a dramatic lay n the strict sense,

these discourses re contained n the very ines he actors speak. An account

of indigenous iscourses s, however, otallymissing n Gellner's arrative'

Gellnei's slamic actors do not speak, hey do not think, hey behave' And

yet without adequate vidence, motives or normal and revolutionary

behavior are continuallybeing attributed o the actions of the major protag-

onists n classical Muslim society. There are, o be sure, eferences n the

text to ..partners who speak he same moral anguage, but it is clear hat

such expiessions re merely dead metaphors, ecause ellner's onceptionof language ere s that of an emollient hat can be isolated rom the power

pro .r. tn the context of his description f the circulationof elites within-

an-immobile-structure, or example, e writes hat Islam provided com-

mon language nd hus a certain kind of smoothness or a process which, n

a more mute and brutalistic orm, had been aking place anyway. In other

words, f one removes he common anguage f Islam, nothing of any signif-

icance changes. he language s no more han a facilitating nstrument of a

domination hat s already n place.This purely nstrumental iew of language s very nadequate-inadequate

preciseiy or the kind of narrative hat tries to describe Muslim society n

i.rn1, of what motivates culturally recognizable ctors. t is only when the

anthropologist akes historically efined iscourses eriously, nd especially

the way they constitute vents, hat questions an be asked about he con-

ditions n which Muslim ulers and subjectsmight have esponded ariously

to authority. o physical orce, o persuasion, r simply o habit.It is interesting o reflect on the fact that Geerlz, who is usually egarded

as havinga primary nterest n cultural meanings s againstGellner's reoc-

cupation wiih social causation, resents narrative of Islam n his IslamObserved hat is not, in this respect, ery different.For Geertz's slam s

also a dramaturgical ne. ndeed, being more conscious f his own highly-

wrought iterary style, he has made explicit use of metaphors of political

theater. The politics of Islam n classical Morocco and in classical


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Indonesia are very differently portrayed, but each, n its own way, is por-trayed as essentially heatrical. Yet for Geertz, as for Gellner, he schema-tization of Islam as a drama of religiosityexpressing ower is obtained byomitting indigenous discourses, nd by turning all Islamic behavior ntoreadable esture.

VDevising narratives about the expressions and the expressive intentions ofdramatic players is not the only option available to anthropologists. Sociallife can also be written or talked about by using analytic concepts. Not usingsuch concepts simply means ailing to ask particular questions, and miscon-struing historical structures.

As an example, consider he notion of tribe. This idea s central o the kind

of anthropology of Islam of which Gellner 's ext is such a prominent example.It is often used by many writers on the Middle East to refer to social entitieswith very different structures and modes of livelihood. Ordinarily, wheretheoretical issues are not involved, this does not matter very much. Butwhere one is concerned, as at present, with conceptual problems, t is impor-tant to consider the implications for analysis of an indiscriminate usage ofthe term tribe.

It is the case not only that so-called tribes vary enormously in theirformal constitution, but more particularly that pastoral nomads do not have

an ideal-typical economy. Their variable socioeconomic arrangements havevery different implications for their possible involvement in politics, trade,and war. Several Marxists, such as Perry Anderson, have argued for theconcept of a pastoral mode of production, and following him Bryan Turnerhas suggested hat this concept should form part of a theoretically informedaccount of Muslim social structures because and to the extent that MiddleEastern countries have pastoral nomads iving in them.r3

The assumption hat pastoral nomads n the Muslim Middle East have atypical political and economic structure s misleading. 'o he reasons or this

are too involved and tangential o consider here, but a brief look at the issuewill remind us of concepts of social structure different from those still beingdeployed by many anthropologists and historians of Islam.

Any study of the military capabilities of pastoral nomads in relation totownsmen must begin not from the simple act that they are pastoral nomads,but from a variety of political-economic conditions, some systematic, somecontingent. Types of animals reared, patterns of seasonal migration, formsof herding arrangements, ights of access o pastures and watering points,distribution of animal wealth, degree of dependence n returns hrough sales,

on direct subsistence ultivation, on gifts and tribute from political superiorsor inferiors-these and other considerations are relevant or an understandingof even the basic question of how many spare men can be mustered or war,how readily, and for how long. Among the pastoral nomadic population Istudied n the deserts of northern Sudan many years ago, for example, the


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possibilities for mobilizing large numbers of fighting men had altered drasti-

catly from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth

primarily because of a large increase in small livestock, a shift to more

intensive and complex herding alrangements, greater nvolvement in animal

sales, and a different pattern of property rights' The point is not that this

tribal grouping is somehow typical for the Middle East' Indeed, there are notypicai tribes. My argument is simply that what nomads are able or inclined

tb^Oo in relation to settled populations is the product of various historical

conditions that define their pbtiti.ut economy, and not the expression of some

essential motive that belongs o tribal protagonists n a classic slamic drama.

In other wOrds, tribes are nO more to be regarded as agents handisCur-

sive structures or societies are. They are historical structures in terms

of which the limits and possibilities of people's lives are realized. This does

not mean that tribes are less real than the individuals who comprise them,

but the vocabulary of motives, behavior, and utterances does not belong,strictly speaking, in analytic accounts whose principal object is

tribe,

althoughiuch aicounts can be embedded in narratives about agency' It is

precisely because tribes are differently structured in time and place that

ihe motives, the forms of behavior, and the import of utterances will differ

too .Representations of Muslim society that are constructed along the lines of

un u.iion play have, not surprisingly, no place for peasants' Peasants' ike

women, are not depicted as doing anything. In accounts like Gellner's they

have no dramatic role and no distinctive religious expression-in contrast,that is, to nomadic tribes and city-dwellers. But of course as soon as one

turns to the concepts of production and exchange' one can tell a rather

different story. Cultivators, male and female' produce crops (ust as pastor-

alists of both sexes raise animals) which they sell or yield up in rent and

taxes. Peasants, even in the historical Middle East, do do something that is

crucial in relation to the social formations of that region, but that doing has

to be conceptualized in political-economic and not in dramatic terms. The

medieval agiicultural sector underwent important changes hat had far-reach-

ing consequences or the development of urban populations, of a money.*non1y, of regional and transcontinental trade.15 This is true also for the

later pre-modern period, even though economic histories talk of the changes

in terms of decline rather than growth. One does not have to be an economic

determinist to acknowledge that such changes have profound implications

for questions of domination and autonomy.

This approach to writing about Middle Eastern society, which pays special

attention to the long-term working of impersonal constraints, will be sensitive

to the indissoluble but varying connections between the social economy and

social power. It will also continually remind us that historical Middle Easternsocieties were never self-contained, never isolated from external relations,

and so never entirely unchanging, even before their incorporation into the

modern world system. Unlike those narrators who present us with a fixed

cast of Islamic dramatis personae, enacting a predetermined story, we can

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look for connections, changes, and differences, beyond the fixed stage of anIslamic theater. We shall then write not about an essential Islamic socialstructure, but about historical formations in the Middle East whose elementsare never fully integrated, and never bounded by the geographtcal limits of the Middle East. 16 It is too often forgotten that the world of Islam is a

concept for organizinghistorical narratives, not the name for a self-containedcollective agent. This is not to say that historical narratives have no socialeffect-on the contrary. But the integrity of the world of Islam is essentiallyideological, a discursive representation. Thus, Geertz has written that It isperhaps as true for civilizations as t is for men that, however much they maylater change, the fundamental dimensions of their character, the structure ofpossibilities within which they will in some sense always move, are set n theplastic period when they were first forming. rT But the fatality of characterthat anthropologists like Geertz invoke is the object of a professional writing,

not the unconscious of a subject that writes itself as Islam for the Westernscholar to read.

VIThe anthropology of Islam being criticized here depicts a classic social struc-ture consisting essentially of tribesmen and city-dwellers, the natural carriersof two major forms of religion-the normal tribal religion centered on saintsand shrines, and the dominant urban religion based on the Holy Book.

My argument is that if the anthropologist seeks to understand religion byplacing it conceptually in its social context, then the way in which that socialcontext is described must affect the understanding of religion. If one rejectsthe schema of an unchanging dualistic structure of Islam promoted by someanthropologists, f one decides o write about the social structures of Muslimsocieties n terms of overlappng spaces and times, so that the Middle Eastbecomes a focus of convergences and therefore of many possible histories),then the dual typology of Islam will surely seem ess plausible.

It is true that in addition to the two major types of religion proposed by

the kind of anthropology of Islam we are talking about, minor forms aresometimes specified. This is so in Gellner 's account, and in many others.Thus there is the revolutionary as opposed o the normal Islam of thetribes, which periodically merges with and revivifies he puritan ideology ofthe cities. And there s the ecstatic, mystical religion of the urban poor which,as ' the opium of the masses, excludes hem from effective political action-until , that is, the impact of modernity when it is the religion of the urbanmasses which becomes revolutionary. In a curious w&y, these wo minorforms of Islam serve, n Gellner 's ext, as markers, one positive, one negative,

of the two great epochs of Islam-the classical otation-within-an-immobilestructure, and the turbulent developments and mass movements of the con-temporary world. So this apparent concession o the idea that there may bemore than two types of Islam is at the same time a literary device to definethe notions of traditional and modern Muslim society.

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Now, the anthropologist's presentation of Islam will depend not only onthe way in which social structures are conceptualized, but on the way inwhich religion itself is defined. Anyone familiar with what is called thesociology of religion will know of the difflculties involved in producing aconception of religion that is adequate or cross-cultural purposes. This is an

importantpoint

because one's conception of religion determines he kinds ofquestions one thinks are askable and worth asking. But far too few would-be anthropologists of Islam pay this matter serious attention. Instead, theyoften draw indiscriminately on ideas rom the writings of the great sociologists(e.9., Marx, Weber, Durkheim) in order to describe forms of Islam, and theresult is not always consistent.

Gellner's text is illustrative in this regard. The types of Islam that arepresented as being characteristic of ''traditional Muslim society in Gellner'spicture are constructed according to three very different concepts of religion.

Thus, Ihe normal tribal religton,that

of the dervish or marabout, is explic-itly Durkheimian. It is . . concerned, we are told, with the social punc-tuation of time and space, with season-making and group-boundary-markingfestivals. The sacred makes thesejoyful, visible, conspicuous and authoritative(p. 52). So the concept of religion here involves a reference o collective ritualsto be read as an enactment of the sacred, which is also, for Durkheim, thesymbolic representation of social and cosmological structures.rs

The concept that is deployed in the description of the religion of the urbanpoor is quite different, and it is obviously derived from the early writings ofMarx on religion as false consciousness. The

city has itspoor,

Gellnerwrites, they are uprooted, insecure, alienated. . . . What they require fromreligion is consolation or escape; their taste is for ecstasy, excitement, anabsorption in a religious condition which is also a forgetting . . . (p. 48).tnIf one looks at this kind of construction carefully, one finds that what is calledreligion here is the psychological response o an emotional experience. Whatwas indicated in the account of tribal Islam was an emotional effect, but hereit is an emotional cause.In the one case he reader was told about collectiverituals and their meaning, about ritual specialists and their roles; in the otherattention is directed instead to private distress

and unfulfilled desire.When one turns to the religion of the bourgeoisie, one is confronted byyet other organizing ideas. The well-heeled urban bourgeoisie, remarksGellner, far from having a taste for public festivals, prefers the sobersatisfactions of learned piety, a taste more consonant with its dignity andcommercial calling. Its fastidiousness underscores ts standing, distinguishingit both from rustics and the urban plebs. In brief, urban life provides a soundbase for scripturalist unitarian puritanism. Islam expresses such a state ofmind better perhaps than other religions' (p. 42) 'o The echoes rom Weber'sProtestant Ethic in this passage are not accidental, or its authority is invokedmore than once. In this account, the bourgeois Muslim is accorded amoral-or, better, an esthetic-style. His distinguishing eature s the literacythat gives him direct access o the founding scriptures and the Law. In thislatter respect one is urged to see him as immersed in a moralistic, literate

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enterprise. Neither collective rituals nor unquenched desire, neither socialsolidarity nor alienation, religion is here the solemn maintenance of publicauthority which is rational partly because t is in writing, and partly becauseit is linked to socially useful activities: service to the state, and commitmentto commerce.

These different ways of talking about religion-the tribal and the urban-are not merely different aspects of the same thing. They are different textualconstructions which seek to represent different things, and which makedifferent assumptions about the nature of social reality, about the origins ofneeds, and about the rationale of cultural meanings. For this reason, theyare not merely different representations, hey are ncompatible constructions.In referring to them one is not comparing like with like.

But the main difficulty with such constructions is not that they are incon-sistent. It is that this kind of anthropology of Islam (and I want to stress here

that Gellner's eclecticism is typical of very many sociological writers onIslam) rests on false conceptual oppositions and equivalences, which oftenlead writers into making ill-founded assertions about motives, meanings, andeffects relating to religion. More important, it makes difficult the formu-lation of questions that are at once less endentious and more interesting thanthose which many observers of contemporary Islam (both conservativeand radical Islam) seek to answer.

An instructive example is the hoary old argument about the totalitariancharacter of orthodox Islam. Like Bernard Lewis and many others, Gellnerproposes

that scriptural Islam has an elective affinity for Marxism,2r partlybecause of the inbuilt vocation towards the implementation of a sharplydefined divine order on earth (p.47), and partly because of The totalismof both ideologies which] precludes nstitutionalised politics (p. 4g).

Quite apart from the empirical question of how widespread Marxist move-ments have been among twentieth-century Muslim populations,22 t must besaid that the notion of a totalitarian Islam rests on a mistaken view of thesocial effectivity of ideologies. A moment's reflection will show that it is notthe literal scope of the shari'a which matters here but the degree o which itinforms

and regulates social practices, and it is clear that there has neverbeen any Muslim society in which the religious law of Islam has governedmore than a fragment of social life. If one contrasts this fact with the highlyregulated character of social life in modern states, one may immediatelyseethe reason why. The administrative and legal regulations of such secularstates are far more pervasive and effective in controlling the details of peo-ple's lives than anything to be found in Islamic history. The difference, ofcourse, lies not in the textual specifications of what is vaguely called a socialblueprint, but in the reach of institutional powers that constitute, divide up,and govern

large stretches of social life according to systematic rules inmodern industrial societies, whether capitalist or communist.23In 1972, Nikki Keddie wrote: Fortunately, Western scholarship seems o

have emerged from the period when many were writing . . . that Islam andMarxism were so similar in many ways that one might lead to the other. 2a

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Perhaps that period of Western scholarly innocence is not entirely behindus. But the point of this example will be lost if it is seen as merely anotherattempt to defend Islam against the claim that it has affinities with a totali-tarian system. Such a claim has been challenged in the past, and even ifrational criticism cannot prevent the claim from being reproduced, the matter

is in itself of little theoretical interest. Instead, it is important to emphasizethat one must carefully examine established social practices, religious aswell as nonreligious, in order to understand the conditions that define conservative or radical political activity in the contemporary Islamicworld. And it is to this idea that we will now turn.

Vil

My general argument so far has been that no coherent anthropology of Islam

can be founded on the notion of a determinate social blueprint, or on the ideaof an integrated social totality in which social structure and religious deologyinteract. This does not mean that no coherent object for an anthropology ofIslam is possible, or that it is adequate o say that anything Muslims believeor do can be regarded by the anthropologist as part of Islam. Most anthro-pologies of Islam have defined their scope too widely, both those appealingto an essentialist principle and those employing a nominalist one. If one wants

to write an anthropology of Islam one should begin, as Muslims do, from theconcept of a discursive tradition that includes and relates tself to the founding

texts of the Qur'an and the Hadith. Islam is neither a distinctivesocial

structure nor a heterogeneous collection of beliefs, artifacts, customs, andmorals. It is a tradition.

In a useful article, The Study of Islam in Local Contexts, Eickelmanhas recently suggested hat there is a major theoretical need for taking up the middle ground between the study of village or tribal Islam and that ofuniversal Islam.25 his may well be so, but the most urgent theoretical needfor an anthropology of Islam is a matter not so much of finding the right scalebut of formulating the right concepts. A discursive radition is ust such a

concept.What is a tradition?26 tradition consists essentially of discourses hat

seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of agiven practice that, precisely because t is established, has a history. Thesediscourses elate conceptually to a past (when the practice was instituted,and from which the knowledge of its point and proper performance has beentransmitted) and a future (how the point of that practice can best be securedin the short or long term, or why it should be modified or abandoned), hrougha present (how it is l inked to otherpractices, institutions, and social condi-

tions). An Islamic discursive tradition is simplya tradition of Muslim dis-

course that addresses tself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future,with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present. Clearly, not

everything Muslims say and do belongs o an Islamic discursive tradition.Nor is an Islamic tradition in this sense necessarily mitative of what was

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done in the past. For even where traditional practices appear to the anthro-pologist to be imitative of what has gone before, it will be the practitioners'conceptions of what is apt performance, and of how the past is related topresent practices, that will be crucial for tradition, not the apparent repetitionof an old form.

My point is not, as some Western anthropologists and Westernized Muslimintellectuals have argued, that tradition is today often a fiction of thepresent, a reaction to the forces of modernity-that in contemporary condi-tions of crisis, tradition in the Muslim world is a weapon, a ruse, a defense,designed to confront a threatening world,27 hat it is an old cloak for newaspirations and borrowed styles of behavior.2s The claim that contemporaryideas and social arrangements are really ancient when they are not is in itselfno more significant than the pretense that new ones have been introducedwhen actually they have not. Lying to oneseH, as well as to others, about

the relationship of the present to the past is as banal in modern societies asit is in societies that anthropologists typically study. The important point issimply that all instituted practices are oriented to a conception of the past.

For the anthropologist of Islam, the proper theoretical beginning s there-fore an instituted practice (set n a particular context, and having a particularhistory) into which Muslims are nducted as Muslims. For analytical purposesthere s no essential difference on this point between classical and mod-ern Islam. The discourses n which the teaching s done, n which the correctperformance of the practice is defined and learned, are intrinsic to all Islamic

practices. It is therefore somewhat misleading to suggest, as some sociolo-gists have done,2e hat it is orthopraxy and not orthodoxy, ritual and notdoctrine, that matters in Islam. It is misleading because such a contentionignores the centrality of the notion of the correct model to which aninstituted practice-including ritual-ought to conform, a model conveyedin authoritative formulas in Islamic traditions as in others. And I refer hereprimarily not to the programmatic discourses of modernist and funda-mentalist Islamic movements, but to the establishe prctctices of unletteredMuslims. A practice is Islamic because t is authorized by the discursive

traditions of Islam, and is so taught to Muslims3o-whether by an,alim, akhatib, a Sufi shaykh, or an untutored parent. (It may be worth recalling herethat etymologically doctrine means teaching, and that orthodox doctrinetherefore denotes the correct process of teaching, as well as the correctstatement of what is to be learned.3')

Orthodoxy is crucial to all Islamic traditions. But the sense n which I usethis term must be distinguished rom the sense given to it by most Orientalistsand anthropologists. Anthropologists like El-Zein, who wish to deny anyspecial significance to orthodoxy, and those like Gellner, who see it as a

specific set of doctrines at the heart of Islam, both are missing somethingvital: that orthodoxy is not a mere body of opinion but a distinctive relation-ship-a relationship of power. Wherever Muslims have he power to regulate,uphold, require, or adjust coryect practices, and o condemn, exclude, under-mine, or replace ncorrecl ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy. The way

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these powers are exercised, the conditions that make them possible (social,political, economic, etc.), and the resistances hey encounter (from Muslimsand non-Muslims) are equally the concern of an anthropology of Islam,regardless of whether its direct object of research is in the city or in thecountryside, in the present or in the past. Argument and conflict over theform and significance of practices are therefore a natural part of any Islamictradition.

In their representation of Islamic tradition, Orientalists and anthropol-ogists have often marginalized he place of argument and reasoning surround-ing traditional practices. Argument is generally represented as a symptom of the tradition in crisis, on the assumption that normal tradition (what

Abdallah Laroui calls tradition as structure and distinguishes rom tra-

dition as ideolo gy t') excludes reasoning ust as it requires unthinking con-formity. But these contrasts and equations are themselves the work of ahistorical motivation, manifest in Edmund Burke's ideological oppositionbetween tradition and reason, 33 an opposition which was elaborated bythe conservative theorists who followed him, and introduced into sociologyby Weber.

Reason and argument are necessarily nvolved in traditional practice when-ever people have to be taught about the point and proper performance of thatpractice, and whenever the teaching meets with doubt, indifference, or lackof understanding. It is largely because we think of argument in terms offormal debate, confrontation, and polemic that we assume t has no place intraditional practice.3a Yet the process of trying to win someone over for lhewilling performance of a traditional practice, as distinct from trying to demol-ish an opponent 's ntellectual position, is a necessary part of Islamic discur-sive traditions as of others. If reasons and arguments are intrinsic to tradi-tional practice, and not merely to a tradition in crisis, it should be theanthropologist's first task to describe and analyzethe kinds of reasoning, andthe reasons for arguing, that underlie Islamic traditional practices. It is herethat the analyst may discover a central modality of power, and of the resis-tances t encounters-for the process of arguing, of using the force of reason,

at once presupposes and responds to the fact of resistance. Power, andresistance, are thus intrinsic to the development and exercise of any tradi-tional practice.

A theoretical consequence of this is that traditions should not be regardedas essentially homogeneous, hat heterogeneity n traditional practices is notnecessarily an indication of the absence of an Islamic tradition. The varietyof traditional Islamic practices in different times, places, and populationsindicates the different Islamic reasonings hat different social and historicalconditions can or cannot sustain. The idea that traditions are essentially

homogeneous has a powerful intellectual appeal,35 ut it is mistaken. Indeed,widespread homogeneity is a function not of tradition, but of the developmentand control of communication techniques that are part of modern industrialsociet ies .36

Although Islamic traditions are not homogeneous, they aspire to coher-

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ence' n the way that all discursive raditions do. That they do not alwaysattain t is due as much o the constraints fpolitical and economic conditionsin which the traditions are placed as to thiir inherent imitations. Thus, nour own time the attempt by Islamic raditions o organize memory and desirein a coherent manner s increasingly emade y the social orces of industrialcapitalism, which create conditions avorable o very different patterns ofdesire and forgetfulness.3T n anthropology f Islam will therefore seek ounderstand he historical conditions hat enable he production and mainte-nance of specffic discursive raditions, or their transformation-and the effortsof practitioners o achieve oherence.3s

vnrI have been arguing hat anthropologists nterested n Islam need o rethinktheir object

of study, and that the concept of tradition will help n this task.I now want to conclude with a final brief point. To write about a tradition sto be in a certain narrative relation to it, a relation that will vary accordingto whether one supports or opposes he tradition, or regards f as morallyneutral. The coherence hat each party finds,or fails o find, n that traditionwill depend on their particular historical position. In other words, thereclearly is not, nor can there be, such a thing as a universally acceptableaccount of a living tradition. Any representation f tradition s contestable.What shape hat contestation akes, f it occurs, will be determined ot onlyby the powers

and knowledges ach side deploys, but by the collective ifethey aspire o-or to whose survival hey aie quite ndiiferent. Moral neu-trality, here as always, s no guarantee f political nnocence.

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NorBs

1. A. H. El-Zein, Beyond ldeology and Theology: The Search or theAnthropology of Is lam, inAnnual Review of Anthropology,Vl(1977) '

2. M. Gilsenan, Recognizing slam (London: Croom Helm, 1982).3. E. Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-

si ty Press, 1981) .4. J. Gulick, The Middle East: An Anthropological Perspective (Pacific

Palisades, California: Goodyear Publishing Company Inc., 1976).5. D. F. E,ickelman, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach

(Englewood Cliffs , New Jersey: Prentice-Hall nc . , 1981) .6. See J. van Ess, From Wellhausen o Becker: the Emergence of Kul'

turgeschichte n Islamic Studies, Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Prob-lems, ed. M. H. Kerr (Malibu, California: Undena Publications, 1980).

7. M. M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cam-

bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980).8. Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geerlz,

Man, XVIII , no . 2 (1983) ; Notes on Body Pain and Truth in MedievalChrist ian Ri tua l , Economy and Society, XI l , no . 3 , (1983) ; MedievalHeresy: An Anthropological View, Social History, XI, no. 2, (1986).

9. For example, G. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam (Berkeley and LosAngeles: California University Press 1962), . 40.

10. B. Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, Islam in History, ed.B. Lewis (New York: The Library Press , l9 l3) , p . 100.

11 . B. Turner, Weber and Islam (London: Rout ledge and Kegan Paul ,197 ) , p . 70.

12. Abdallah Hammoudi, segmentarity, social stratification, oliticalpowerand sain thood: eflect ions on Gel lner ' s heses , Economy and Socie ty, IX(1980) ;V.J . Cornel l , The Logic of Analogy and he Role of the Sufi Shaykh

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in Post-Marinid Morocco, International Journal of Middle East Studies,xv (1983).

13. B. Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism (London: George Allen& Unwin, 1978),, . 52.

14. T. Asad, The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a

Nomadic Tribe (London: Hurst & Co. , 1970); T. Asad, The Beduin as aMilitary Force, The Desert and the Sown, ed. C. Nelson (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1973);T. Asad, Equality in Nomadic Systems?,Pastoral Production and Society, ed. Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie desSoci6t6s Pastorales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

15. A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

16. The changing networks of intercontinental trade which linked Dar ul-Islam to Europe, Africa, and Asia differentially affected and were affected

by patterns of production and consumption within it (see M. Lombard,L'Islam dans sa premiire grandeur: VIIIe-XIe siicle [Paris: Flammarion,l97ll). Even the spread of contagious disease with its drastic social andeconomic consequences connected Middle Eastern political units with otherparts of the world (see M. W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East[Princeton: Princeton University Press,1977], especially pp. 36-37). It wouldnot be necessary to refer so baldly to well-known historical evidence if itwere not still common for eminent scholars o write of Islam as a mechan-ically balanced social structure, reflecting its own dynamic of cause and

effect, and having its own isolated destiny.17 C. Geertz,Islam Observed New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968),p. 11.

18. Gellner 's resort to the Durkheimian viewpoint on religion s not quiteas consistent as it ought to be. Thus, in one place we read that the faith ofthe tribesman needs to be mediated by special and distinct holy personnel, ,rather than to be egalitarian; rt needs to be joyous and festival-worthy, no tpuritanical and scholarly; rt requires hierarchy and incarnation n persons,not in scripts (p.41' , emphasis added). But a dozen pages ater, when Gellner

wants to introduce the idea of revolutionary tribal religion, these needshave to be made to disappear: It is a curious but crucial fact about the socialpsychology of Muslim tribesmen, he writes, that their normal religion isfor them at one level a mere pis aller, and is t inged with irony, and with anambivalent recognition that the real norms lie elsewhere (p. 52, emphasisin original).

19. Such phrases might be more plausible (but not therefore entirely valid-see, e.g., J. Abu-Lughod, Varieties of tlrban Experience, Middle EasternCities, ed. I. Lapidus [Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University

Press, 19691) f applied to the condition of poor rural migrants n a modernrnetropolis, To describe he lower strata of medieval Muslim cities, with theirorganization nto quarters, guilds, Sufi brotherhoods, etc., as being uprooted,insecure, alienated is surely a li t t le fanciful, unless, of course, one takesthe mere occurrence of bread riots in periods of economic hardship as a sign

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24/28

supposed y Gellner o be the historical carriers of scripturalist, nitarian,puritan slam. It is his mistaken attempt o connect his latter kind of Islamwith Marxism, socialism, or social radicalism terms used ndiscrim-inately) that leads him to make the implausible argument hat scripturalistrigorism or fundamentalism s admirably suited o bringing about modern-

ization n the Muslim world.23. As a succinct evocation f the powers of a modern state, he ollowing

memorable assage rom Robert Musil's great novel has scarcely been bet-tered: The fact is, living permanently n a well-ordered State has an out-and-out spectral aspect: one cannot step nto the street or drink a glass ofwater or get into a tram without touching he perfectly balanced evers of agigantic apparatus of laws and relations, setting hem in motion or lettingthem maintain one in the peace and quiet of one's existence. One hardlyknows any of these evers, which extend deep nto the inner workings and

on the other side are lost in a network he entire constitution of which hasnever been disentangled y any living being. Hence one denies heir exis-tence, ust as the common man denies he existence f the air, insisting hatit is mere emptiness. . The Man Without Qualities, Vol. I (London:Secker & Warburg, 1954), . 182.

24. N. Keddie, Scholars, Saints, and Sufis Berkeley nd Los Angeles:CaliforniaUniversity Press,1972), . 13.

25. D. F. Eickelman, The Study of Islam n Local Contexts, Contri-butions o Asian Studies, VII (1984).

26. In outlining he concept of tradition, am indebted o the insightfulwritings of Alisdair Maclntyre, in particular his brilliant book After Virtue(London: Duckworth, 198 ).

27. Thus Gilsenan: Tradition, therefore, s put together n all manner ofdifferent ways in contemporary conditions of crisis; t is a term that is in facthighly variable and shifting n content. t changes, hough all who use t doso to mark out truths and principles as essentially nchanging. n the nameof tradition many traditions are born and come nto opposition with others.It becomes a language, weapon against nternal and external enemies, a

refuge, an evasion, or part of the entitlement o domination and authorityover others. (Recogntzing slam, p. 15.)28. Or as Abdallah Laroui puts it in The Crisis of The Arab Intellectual

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: CaliforniaUniversity Press, 1976), . 35: onemight say that tradition exists only when nnovation s accepted nder hecloak of fidelity o the past.

29. For example, see Eickelman, The Middle East, Chapter 9. In a shortpaper written a decade go, Politics and Religion n Islamic Reform (Reviewof Middle East Studies, No. 2, London: Ithaca Press, 1976) emphasized

that orthodoxy s always he product of a network of power.30. Incidentally, t is time that anthropologists f Islam ealized hat thereis more to Ibn Khaldun han his political sociology, hat his deploymentof the Aristotelian concept of virtue (in the form of the Arabic malaka) sespecially elevant o an understanding f what I have called slamic radi-

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tions. In a recent essay, Knowledge, Virtue, and Action: The ClassicalMuslim Conception f Adab and he Nature of Retigious ulflllment n Islam,I. Lapidus has ncluded a brief but useful account of Ibn Khaldun's conceptof milaka (in B. D. Metcalf ed.], Moral Conduct nd Authority:The Placeof Adab in South Asian Islam lBerkeley and Los Angeles: CaliforniaUni-

versity Press, 19841 PP. 52-56).31. Cf. Doctrine in New Catholic Encyclopedia, ol. IV (New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1967).32. Laroui, op. cit . , P.33.33. See A. Maclntyre, Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and

the Philosophy of Science, Paradigms and Revolutions, d. G. Gutting(Notre Dame: Notre Dame UniversityPress, 1980), p. 64-65'

34. See J. Dixon and L. Stratta, Argument and he Teaching f English:A Critical Analysis, Writers Writing, ed. A. Wilkinson (Milton Keynes:

Open University Publications, 986).35. Thus, in an essay entitled Late Antiquity and Islam: Parallels and

Contrasts (in B. D. Metcalf, op. cit.), the eminent historian Peter Brownquotes with approval rom Henri Marrou: For in the last resort classicalhumanism was based on tradition, something mparted y one's eachers ndhanded on unquestioningly . . it meant hat all the minds of one generation,and indeed of a whole historical period, had a fundamental omogeneitywhich made communication nd genuine communion easier (p. 24). It isprecisely his amiliar concept, which Brown employs o discuss the Islamic

iradition, that anthropologists houldabandon n favor of another.36. For an ntroductory discussion f some problems elating o the control

and effects of a typically modern orm of communication, ee R. Williams,Television: echnology nd Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974).

37. The result among Muslim ntellectuals as been described y JacquesBerque thus: Dans le monde actuel et parmi trop d'intellectuels ou demilitants, on se partage entre adeptes d'une authenticit6 sans avenir et adeptesd'une modernisme ans acines. Le frangais raduit mal, en I'espdce, e quien arabe vient beaucoup mieux: anEdr l-maEir ilAaEilwa anEAr l-aEil ilA

magir. (L'Islam: Ia philosophie t les sciences Paris: Les Presses e I'U-nesco, 9811, . 68 . )

38. It should be stressed hat the problem ndicated here s not the sameas he one reated n the many monographs hat purport o describe he recent erosion of the old unity of values based on Divine Revelation which hasaccompanied he disruption of the stable, ndeed static, social world oftraditional Muslim society cf. M. Gilsenan, aint and sufi in Modern Egypt

[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 196, 192). Arecent example that addresses

some of the questions I have in mind is S. Zubaida's The ideological

conditions for Khomeini's doctrine of governmenl, Economy & Society,XI (1982), which attempts to show that Khomeini's novel doctrine of wilayat-

i-faqih, although based on traditional shi'i premises and modes of reasoning,

prrirpposes the modern concepts of nation and nation-state. Zubai-

da's argument does not require the assumption of traditional stability or

homogeneity. 22


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A Selection of Publications from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies

Contemporary North Africa: Issues of Development and IntegrationEdited by Halim Barakat, 1985

This is a collection of papers delivered at a symposium on North Africasponsored by the Center. Contributors include such prominent scholars asFatima Mernissi, L. Carl Brown, Halim Barakat, John Ruedy, Elbaki Her-messi, Dale Eickelman, I. WilliamZartman, and John Damis, among others.The authors discuss he Maghrib's position between he West and the Mash-riq, intra-regional conflicts and cooperation, structural changes n society,cultural dynamics, and the problems of development. 261pages, $15.95.

Tensions n Islamic CivilizationBy Constantine K. Zurayk, 1978 reprinted 1984)

Dr. Zurayk describes and analyzes he major formative periods in lslamiccivilization, the tensions t has experienced, and the ways it has reacted othem. Present day tensions esulting rom the forces of tradition, modernity,and nationalism are discussed. 14 pages, $3.75.

Arab Resources: The Transformation of a SocietyEdited by Ibrahim Ibrahim,1982

This study considers the range of factors affecting development in the Arabworld and examines the broad sectoral resources, the infrastructure forresource development, and the problems shaping he political economy ofArab development. Contributing authors include Nazli Choucri, George Abed,Hisham Nazer, Roger Owen, Yusif Sayigh, Janet Abu-Lughod, Philip Khoury,Dankwart Rust ow, and Charles ssawi. 304 pages , $15.95 .

All books are paperbound. Please send a check or money order payable toCCAS with each book order. Prices include postage and handling for orderswithin the United States. Prepaid orders only. A complete list of CCASpublications s available upon request.

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Washington, D.C 20057Q|D 625-3128


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AdvisoryCouncil

Ali Ghandour, Chairman J. William FulbrightAlia-The Royal Jordanian Airline Hogan & Hartson

Saif Abbas Abdulla Saeed GhobashKuwait Universitv Office

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Prof. Michael C. Hudson, Director

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George N. AtiyehLibrary of Congress

Anis BahraouiMaroc Ddv6loppement

F. M. Al-BassamArabian American Oil Company

Lucius D. BattleU.S. Ambassador Retired)

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Robert F. ConleyLockheed International Company

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Raymond D'ArgenioUnited Technologies orporation

Ahmad Muhammad Al-DhubaibKing Saud UniversitySaudi Arabia

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Prof. Hisham SharabiProf. Barbara StowasserProf. Judith TuckerDean Peter F. Krogh, ex-fficio

Mostafa Kamal HelmiArab Republic of Egypt

Albert HouraniSt. Antony's CollegeUniversity of Oxford

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Walter E. Mac DonaldMobil Oil Corporation

Mohammed Naki

Archibald B. Roosevelt. r.Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A.

Donald L. SnookEsso Middle East

Qais Al ZawawiDeputy Prime Minister for

Financial and Economic AffairsSultanate of Oman

Embassy of the State of Kuwai+r Parker T. HartMunir H' Atalla u.s. Ambassador Retired)

Texaco Middle East/Far East Issa Al Kawari


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Talal Asad the Idea an Anthropology of Islam

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