The Idea of An Anthorpology of Islam Talal Asad
The Idea of An Anthorpology of Islam Talal Asad
The Idea of An Anthorpology of Islam Talal Asad
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For three decades, Talal Asad's work on the question of religion, and on
the entanglements of this question with the sensibilities ofmodern life,has
steadily overturned dominant paradigms in anthropology. Critiquing the
textualization of social life, his work has redirected analysis away from
the interpretation of behaviors and toward inquiry into the relation of
"
practices towhat he has termed a "discursive tradition. Asad introduced
this concept inmaking an intervention in the anthropology of Islam, yet
important across a number of fields (anthropology,
religious studies, postcolonial studies, critical theory) concerned with eth
ics and religion inmodernity. It was first elaborated in the paper below,
it has also become
the particular
I
In recent years
called
there has
the anthropology
or "Muslim"
in the
the word
"Islam"
containing
at a remarkable rate. The political reasons for this
great industry are perhaps too evident to deserve much comment.1
thropologists
title multiply
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However
of
gation? The answer may seem obvious: what the anthropology
Islam investigates is, surely, Islam. But to conceptualize
Islam as
as
not
a
as
matter
the object of an anthropological
is
study
simple
some writers would
There
appear
answers
to the ques
tion posed above: (i) that in the final analysis there is no such
theoreticalobject as Islam; (2) that Islam is the anthropologist's
label for a heterogeneous
collection
has
totality which
organizes
various
aspects
of social
life.
We will look brieflyat thefirsttwo answers,and thenexamine
even
at lengththe third,which is inprinciple themost interesting,
though
it is not acceptable.
a brave effort, but finally unhelpful. The contention that there are
diverse forms of Islam, each equally real, each worth describing,
was linked in a rather puzzling way to the assertion that they are
universalism
for an answer
isMichael
Gilsenan,
who,
adherent
like El-Zein,
of the
em
because
it is
is presented
model
Society, in which an anthropological
of the characteristic ways inwhich social structure, religious belief,
Muslim
and political
interact with
behavior
total
many
elements
fore also
presents
the assumptions
account.
it deploys.
II
There
is in fact more
Gellner's
configurations
ed in Europe, the other
of many
the Middle
East?such
contemporary
anthropologists.
or Eickelman's?devote
their
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and Eastern
are conceptually
Christianity
marginalized
that develops
civilization.
elsewhere?in
Europe,
concern
Constantine,
and
in which
ecclesiastical
missionaries,
have
Christian
emperors
administrators, Church
all sought by using power
in varying ways
to
inwhich men
and women
ofMuslims.
to make
comparisons
of themost valuable
histories
in his account
of the madrasa
is one of
system.8 This
studies of contemporary
Islam that
with European
history, and conse
implicit comparisons
our understanding.
enrich
quently
employs
anthropological
analyses
rament of confession and the medieval
turyWestern Europe,
different connections
of monastic
Inquisition
institutions that stand in contrast
to the very
in the medieval
oping moral
subjects and regulating subject populations.
a
too large
subject to be expounded here, even in outline,
worth touching on by way of illustration.
Modern
the classical
historians
and postclassical
periods
thatMuslim
displayed
This
is
but it is
scholars
in
no curiosity about
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different
Christianity,and that in this theirattitudewas strikingly
from the lively interest shown
by their Christian
contemporaries
too.10What
indifference toward
Lewis
ples of Islam continued until the dawn of the modern age to cher
conviction of
ish?as many in East and West
still do today?the
and
immutable
is best ap
less to learn."11 Perhaps that was so, but our question
proached by turning it around and asking not why Islam was un
curious about Europe but why Roman Christians were interested
in the beliefs and practices of Others. The answer has less to do
with cultural motives allegedly produced
by the intrinsic qualities
or by the collective experience of military encoun
of a world-view
ters, and more with
munities
about African
and Asian
societies.
It
faces a disembodied
"desire
to learn about
the Other."
One
contained
mental
In which
in the Penitentials
confession
(handbooks
for inquisitors
of systematic knowledge
about "inter
parallel these compilations
nal" unbelievers
because
the
that
disciplines
simply
required and
sustained such information are not to be found in Islam. In other
words, forms of interest in the production of knowledge are intrin
sic to various structures of power, and they differ not according to
to
the essential character of Islam or Christianity, but according
as "potential
for
political modesty"
potential" on
the other?lies
another concern, namely that there may well be im
which the anthropologist
differences
portant
studying other societ
search
for superficial
or spurious
differences. The
problem with
differences.
ra
So farwe have
produce
image"
between
(Gellner)
of Christian
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is the
Islam
to resolve the
Islam
and non-orthodox
indifferent
ways indifferentconditions. In fact,the religionof the
memories
of oral cultures,
is therefore, for
tered country folk is highly variable. "Orthodoxy"
such anthropologists, merely one (albeit invariable) form of Islam
with the niceties
among many, distinguished by its preoccupation
of doctrine
its authority
Gellner,
ing was
egories of Islam fitnicely into the two kinds of social and politi
cal structure: shari'a
custom
among
the
tribes; 'ulama in the former, saints in the latter. Both structures are
seen as parts of a single system because they define the opponents
takes
between whom an unceasing struggle for political dominance
place. More
are Muslim,
sacred
for urban
initiallythe product of a
French
writings on segmentary
Middle
East,
and almost
history. The
in a
Islam and Christianity
in the following crisp account by Bryan
series of inversions?as
Turner:
There
IO
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it is
of criticism is important, but itwill not be pursued here. While
account
is
of
val
whether
this
Islam
anthropological
asking
worth
id fortheentire
Muslim world (or even fortheMaghrib) given the
historical
issue: What
actors as responses
to the discourse
of others,
instead of sche
and de-historicizing
their actions.
(2) Anthropological
analyses of the social structure should focus
not on typical actors but on the changing patterns of institu
matizing
tional relations
and conditions
(especially
those we
call politi
cal economies).
structure, on
superstructure
and
(ideo
an anthropological
notice that the social
reads
carefully,
structures of classi
and political
cal Muslim
society are represented in a very distinctive way. What
one finds in effect are protagonists engaged in a dramatic struggle.
one may
literate nomad
their powerful
ruler and
between
try to maintain
the sacred
law. The
pu
of the discourses
typical actors
that orient their behavior and
about
from the
11
12
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In other words,
if one re
anyway."
of Islam, nothing of any significance
is no more than a facilitating instrument of
language
that is already
in place.
This purely
is very inadequate?
that tries to describe
inadequate
Muslim
society in terms of what motivates culturally recognizable
actors. It is only when the anthropologist
takes historically defined
discourses seriously, and especially the way they constitute events,
that questions can be asked about the conditions inwhich Muslim
rulers and subjects might have responded variously to authority, to
physical force, to persuasion, or simply to habit.
It is interesting to reflect on the fact that Geertz, who
is usu
as
ally regarded as having a primary interest in cultural meanings
Gellner's
with
social causation, presents a
against
preoccupation
narrative
of Islam
Islam
spect, very different. For Geertz's
one. Indeed, being more conscious of his own highly wrought
liter
The
of Islam as a drama
of religiosity expressing
power
by omitting indigenous discourses, and by turn
ing all Islamic behavior into readable gesture.
the schematization
is obtained
V
Devising narratives about the expressions and the expressive inten
tions of dramatic players is not the only option available to anthro
East
involvement
toral mode
of production,"
that this concept
suggested
formed account
ofMuslim
tent thatMiddle
Eastern
countries
have pastoral
nomads
living in
them.14
years ago,
for example,
the possibilities
for
13
14
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East.
Indeed,
there are no
typical tribes. My
are able or inclined to do in
Islamic drama.
possibilities of people's
"tribes" are less real than the individuals who
in
to
or "societies"
the limits and
that
whose
princi
of agency.
It is precisely because
are differently
the forms of behav
"tribes"
structured
of Muslim
society that are constructed along
Representations
an
action play have, not surprisingly, no place for peas
the lines of
are not depicted as doing anything. In
ants. Peasants,
like women,
accounts like Gellner's they have no dramatic role and no distinc
tive religious expression?in
tribes
contrast, that is, to nomadic
and city dwellers. But, of course, as soon as one turns to the con
and exchange, one can tell a rather different
story. Cultivators, male and female, produce crops (just as pas
toralists of both sexes raise animals) that they sell or yield up in
cepts of production
rent and
taxes. Peasants,
even
East,
do
economic
between
in themodern
entirely unchanging, even before their incorporation
world system. Unlike those narrators who present us with a fixed
story,
enacting a predetermined
we can look for connections, changes, and differences, beyond the
fixed stage of an Islamic theater.We shall then write not about an
cast of Islamic dramatis
Islamic
essential
in theMiddle
personae,
agent. This
no social effect?on
is essentially
Geertz has written
Islam
narratives
have
is formen
mental
within which
itself as Islam
for theWestern
scholar
to read.
VI
The anthropology of Islam being criticized here depicts a classic so
cial structure consisting essentially of tribesmen and city dwellers,
carriers of two major
forms of religion?the
normal
on
saints and shrines, and the dominant ur
tribal religion centered
the natural
15
l6
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of Islam will
minor
opments
concession
not
but
in producing
are askable
and worth
anthro
asking. But far too few would-be
matter
serious attention. Instead, they
this
of the great
to describe
cosmological
called
an emotional
about
consonant
tidiousness
rustics and
underscores
base
17
18
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is invoked more
is accorded
than once.
a moral?or,
In this account,
better, an esthet
respect one
erate enterprise. Neither collective rituals nor unquenched
desire,
neither social solidarity nor alienation, religion is here the solemn
maintenance
of public authority that is rational partly because it is
to commerce.
These different
ways of talkingabout religion?the tribal and
are inconsistent.
assertions
about motives,
and "radical"
moment's reflection
will show that it isnot the literalscope of the
shari'a
it informs and
here but the degree to which
social practices, and it is clear that there has never been
that matters
regulates
this fact
and
and
industrial
societies, whether
capitalist
or
communist.24
In 1972 Nikki
wrote:
"Fortunately, Western
scholarship
were
from
the
when
many
writing
emerged
period
... that Islam and Marxism were so similar inmany ways that one
scholar
might lead to the other."25 Perhaps that period ofWestern
Keddie
seems to have
ly innocence
we will now
turn.
VII
general argument so far has been that no coherent anthropol
ogy of Islam can be founded on the notion of a determinate social
blueprint, or on the idea of an integrated social totality inwhich
My
19
ZO
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NO.2
by the anthropologist
an
tradition that includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the
and the Hadith.
Islam is neither a distinctive social struc
Qur'an
ture nor a heterogeneous
collection
It is a tradition.
and morals.
present
Muslim
discourse
that addresses
an Islamic discursive
tradition. Nor
is an Islamic
tradition
in this
sense necessarily imitative of what was done in the past. For even
to be imi
where traditional practices appear to the anthropologist
tative of what has gone before, itwill be the practitioners' concep
tions of what is apt performance, and of how the past is related to
and Western
anthropologists
is today of
intellectuals have argued, that "tradition"
world
is a weapon,
social arrangements are really ancient when they are not is in itself
no more significant than the pretense that new ones have been in
actually they have not. Lying to oneself, as well
as to others, about the relationship of the present to the past is as
societies as it is in societies that anthropologists
banal inmodern
troduced when
are oriented
to a conception
of the past.
(set in a particular
context
and
Muslims.
an instituted practice?including
ritual?
ought to conform, a model conveyed in authoritative formulas, in
Islamic traditions as in others. And I refer here primarily not to the
correct model"
to which
of "modernist"
discourses
programmatic
to
Islamic movements,
but
the established
and
"fundamentalist"
practices of unlettered
A practice is Islamic because
it is authorized by the dis
cursive traditions of Islam, and is so taught toMuslims?whether
by an 9alim9 a khatib, a Sufi shaykh, or an untutored parent.31 (It
"doctrine"
may well be worth recalling here that etymologically
Muslims.
means
doctrine
therefore denotes
the
21
22
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to all Islamic
traditions.
in
and anthropologists.
Anthropologists
like El
heart of Islam,"
re
is not a mere body of opinion but a distinctive relationship?a
have the pow
lationship of power to truth. Wherever Muslims
er to regulate, uphold, require, or adjust correct practices, and to
condemn,
ic, et cetera),
and
and non-Muslims)
(from Muslims
they encounter
concern
an
the
of
of
anthropology
the resistances
are equally
and reasoning
calls "tradition
as structure"
and distinguishes
from "tradition as
as
it requires unthink
reasoning just
33]) excludes
ing conformity. But these contrasts
the work of a historical motivation,
ideology"[CJ,
between
ideological opposition
position which was elaborated
are themselves
and equations
in Edmund Burke's
manifest
"tradition"
and
"reason,"
an op
theorists who
by the conservative
followed him, and introduced into sociology byWeber.33
Reason
and argument are necessarily
involved in traditional
practice whenever people have to be taught about the point and
proper performance
meets with doubt,
largely because
we
confrontation,
intellectual position,
trying to demolish an opponent's
as of others.
of
Islamic
discursive
traditions
sary part
is a neces
If reasons
it encounters?for
theoretical
consequence
should not
sustain. The
has a powerful
23
24
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VIII
I have been arguing that anthropologists
help in this task. I now want to conclude with a final brief point.
To write about a tradition is to be in a certain narrative relation to
it, a relation that will vary according to whether one supports or
the tradition, or regards it as morally neutral. The coher
opposes
In other words,
there
pend on their particular historical position.
nor
a
a
can
as
is
there
such
not,
be,
thing
clearly
universally ac
a
ceptable account of
living tradition. Any representation of tradi
tion is contestable. What
takes, if it occurs,
whose
of moral
survival
innocence.
Notes
. See, for
example, Edward W. Said, Covering Islam (New York: Pan
theon Books, 1981 ).
2. Abdul Hamid
2.27-54.
1982).
1980).
h.
in Islam inHis
tory, ed. Bernard Lewis (New York: Library Press, 1962), 40.
12. Bryan Turner, Weber and Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1974), 70.
13. Abdallah Hammoudi,
"Segmentarity, Social Stratification, Political
Power and Sainthood: Reflections on Gellner's Theses," Economy and
Society 9, no. 3 (1980): 279-303; Vincent J. Cornell, "The Logic of
Analogy and the Role of the Sufi Shaykh in Post-Marinid Morocco,"
International Journal ofMiddle East Studies 15, no. 1 (1983): 67-93.
14. Bryan Turner,Marx and theEnd of Orientalism (London: George Al
len& Unwin, 1978), 52.
15. Talal Asad, The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a
Nomadic Tribe (London: Hurst, 1970); Talal Asad, "The Beduin as
aMilitary Force," inThe Desert and the Sown, ed. Cynthia Nelson
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Talal Asad, "Equal
ity inNomadic Systems?" in Pastoral and Production and Society,
ed. Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie des Soci?t?s Pastorales (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
16. Andrew M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
17. The changing networks of intercontinental trade that linkedDar ul
Islam to Europe, Africa, and Asia differentially affected and were af
fected by patterns of production and consumption within it (seeMau
rice Lombard, LTslam dans sa premi?re grandeur: VlII-XIe
si?cles
[Paris: Flammarion, 1971]). Even the spread of contagious disease
with its drastic social and economic consequences connected Middle
Eastern political units with other parts of theworld (seeMichael W.
Dois, The Black Death
in theMiddle
East
[Princeton,NJ: Princeton
Itwould not be necessary
25
26
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balanced
(New Haven,
e.g.,
Janet Abu-Lughod,
"Varieties
of Urban
Experience,"
in
Middle
in twentieth-century cit
sie" than among the lower urban social strata. "Scripturalism" based
on literacy? But the literacy of merchants is very different from the
literacy of professional "men of religion" (see Brian V. Street's excel
lent book, Literacy in Theory and Practice [Cambridge: Cambridge
and Kegan Paul, 1967), 232-34. Since the idea of government con
trol of the economy has never been part of classical Muslim theory,
but is central to classical Marxism, there is here a crucial opposition
between the two.
23. Apart from the important communist parties in Iraq and Sudan (nei
therof which commanded a massive following),Marxism has had no
real roots among contemporary Muslim populations. States like the
People's Democratic Republic of Yemen are exceptions that prove the
rule. (See also Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. E. Wimbush, Muslim
National
Communism
[Chicago: University of
an
account
of protracted resistances against
Chicago Press, 1979] for
Russian imperial power.) Marxist ideology has been associated with
some Westernized
intellectuals and some authoritarian states, but
never with 'ulama or thewell-heeled urban bourgeoisie, who are sup
27
28
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has
an out-and-out
spectral
aspect:
one
cannot
step
into
the street
or
drink a glass of water or get into a tram without touching the per
fectly balanced levers of a gigantic apparatus of laws and relations,
setting them inmotion or letting themmaintain one in the peace and
quiet of one's existence. One hardly knows any of these levers,which
extend deep into the innerworkings and on the other side are lost in
a network the entire constitution of which has never been disentan
gled by any living being. Hence one denies their existence, just as the
common man denies the existence of the air, insisting that it ismere
emptiness." The Man without Qualities, vol. 1 (London: Seeker and
Warburg, 1954), 182.
2.5. Nikki Keddie, Scholars, Saints and Sufis (Berkeley:University of Cali
fornia Press, 1972), 13.
F. Eickelman, "The Study of Islam in Local Contexts," Contri
butions toAsian Studies 17 (1984):
27. In outlining the concept of tradition, I am indebted to the insightful
writings of Alasdair Maclntyre, in particular his brilliant book After
26. Dale
CI:
innovation is ac
30. For example, see Eickelman, Middle East, chapter 9. In a short paper
that orthodoxy
in Islamic Reform"
power.
McGraw-Hill,
1967).
33. See Alasdair Maclntyre, "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narra
tive, and the Philosophy of Science," in Paradigms and Revolutions,
ed. Gary Gutting (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press,
1980), 64-65.
34. See John Dixon and Leslie Stratta, "Argument and the Teaching of
English: A Critical Analysis," inWriters Writing, ed. A. Wilkinson
(Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1986).
35. Thus, in an essay entitled "Late Antiquity and Islam: Parallels and
Contrasts"
(in B. D. Metcalf, Moral Conduct and Authority), the
eminent historian Peter Brown quotes with approval from Henri
"For in the last resort classical humanism was based on tra
Marrou:
29
30
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38. It should be stressed that the problem indicated here is not the same
as the one treated in themany monographs that purport to describe
the recent "erosion of the old unity of values based on Divine Revela
tion" that has accompanied the disruption of the "stable, indeed stat
ic, social world" of traditionalMuslim society (cf.Michael Gilsenan,
Saint and Sufi inModern Egypt [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973],
196, 192). I have argued that thatworld was never stable and static,
and hold that the concept of a complex and evolving Islamic tradition
does not presuppose a simple unity of values.