Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of several of the chapters of this book have appeared before. Thus large parts of Chapter 4 were published in “What Do Human Rights Do?” Theory and Event, vol. 4, no.
4, December 2000 (Johns Hopkins University Press). Chapter 2 is a revised version of “Agency and Pain: An Exploration,” published in Culture and Religion, vol. 1, no. i, May 2000 (Curzon, UK). Chapter 3 is a revised and expanded version of “On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment,” first published in Social Research, vol. 63, no. 4, Winter 1996 (New School for Social Research). Chapter 5 first appeared under the title “Muslims and European Identity: Can Europe Represent Islam?” in Cultural Encounters, edited by E. Hallam and B. Street (Roudedge, 2000). Chapter 6 first appeared in Nation and Religion, edited by P. Van der Veer and H. Lehmann (Princeton, 1999). The remaining portions of the book were not published previously, although Chapter 1 is based on the Rappaport Annual Distinguished Lecture in the Anthropology of Religion, delivered to the Religion Section of the American Anthropological Association in March 2000, and Chapter 7 on the ISIM Annual Lecture delivered in October 2000 to the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World in the University of Leiden.Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the many friends and colleagues who have read the book as a whole or in part: Hussein Agrama, Engin Akarli, Steven Caton, William Connolly, Veena Das, Charles Hirschkind, Baber Johansen, Webb Keane, Boris Nikolov, Saba Mahmood, John Milbank, David Scott, George Shulman, Hent de Vries, Jeremy Waldron, and Michael Warner. I have benefited much from exchanges with them, both written and oral. But I am also conscious of having failed to meet many of their criticisms, and to respond adequately to all their probing questions.