Islam, Politics, Anthropology

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

Notes on Contributors vii

1 Benjamin Soares & Filippo Osella Islam, politics, anthropology 1

2 Samuli Schielke Being good in Ramadan: ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians 23

3 Hatsuki Aishima & Armando Salvatore Doubt, faith, and knowledge: the reconfiguration of the intellectual field in post-Nasserist Cairo 39

4 Magnus Marsden A tour not so grand: mobile Muslims in northern Pakistan 54

5 Kai Kresse Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery 72

6 Rosa De Jorio Between dialogue and contestation: gender, Islam, and the challenges of a Malian public sphere 91

7 Lara Deeb Piety politics and the role of a transnational feminist analysis 107

8 Julie McBrien Mukadas’s struggle: veils and modernity in Kyrgyzstan 121

9 Irfan Ahmad Genealogy of the Islamic state: reflections on Maududi’s political thought and Islamism 138

10 Maimuna Huq Talking jihad and piety: reformist exertions among Islamist women in Bangladesh 156

11 Daromir Rudnyckyj Market Islam in Indonesia 175

12 Filippo Osella & Caroline Osella Muslim entrepreneurs in public life between India and the Gulf: making good and doing good 194

13 Gregory Starrett Islam and the politics of enchantment 213

Index 231

Filippo Osella is a Reader in Anthropology at the University of Sussex, UK. For the past 20 years, Osella has conducted research in South India, and more recently in a number of West Asian Gulf countries. His current research focuses on the emergence of Islamic reformist movements and the rise of a new Muslim middle class in Kerala.

Benjamin Soares is an anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden, The Netherlands. Soares' publications include Islam and the Prayer Economy (2005) and two edited volumes, Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa (2007) and Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa (2006).

Anthropology has enjoyed a lengthy - and at times problematic - engagement with Islam and Muslim societies. 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 highly charged atmosphere of the post-9/11 world. Working with an intentionally broad understanding of politics, the volume considers not just the state, formal politics, and organizations, but also everyday politics and micropolitics - arenas where anthropology is especially adept at analysis. Essays explore contemporary ways of being Muslim and the complex politics of Muslim self-fashioning, and consider current debates about religious practice and ethics, the nature of the state, citizenship, and Muslims’ efforts to simply get by in the current historical conjuncture. Challenging formalist models of political participation in the social sciences, widespread assumptions about Muslim exceptionalism, and the recent so-called 'ethical turn,' the volume highlights the complexities, contingencies, and contradictions in the political engagements of contemporary Muslims in a variety of locales in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Provocative and timely, Islam, Politics, Anthropology represents a valuable contribution to understanding the place of Islam in the 21st century world.