SHARIA WITHIN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF ISLAM
The anthropology of Islam, a subfield of the anthropology of religion, has been the venue for opposing approaches that draw an overly sharp dichotomy between “discursive tradition” and “multiple interpretive frameworks.” While sharing the disciplinary-wide commitment to relativistic, holistic, and comparative perspectives, anthropologists of Islam have debated how to understand, represent, and study Islam.1 One approach posits that researchers should study the ideas, feelings, practices, interpretations, and discourses of Muslims as they produce particular islams.
According to this view, there is no single “real” or “essentialist” Islam based on religious texts, Islamic history, and the practices of exemplary individuals, and therefore theological stances based on these sources should only be considered to the extent they enter into the interpretations and practices of Muslims being studied. Here, “Islam” is considered a “word that identifies varying relations of practice, representation, symbol, concept, and worldview” (Gilsenan 1982, 19) or a “map of discourses on how to ‘feel Muslim’ ” (Marranci 2008, 8). Gabriele Marranci goes so far as to state that “the Qur’an, the hadith, and the arkāna al-islam [pillars of Islam] would remain mute and without meaning if there were no minds, emotions and feelings informing them and making them unique through the individual professing himself Muslim” (29). Thus, this approach underscores the diverse kinds of Islam produced and embodied by various social forces and strata in society (Gilsenan 1982; Marranci 2008).On the other hand, a major contending approach posits that Islam is a “discursive tradition that includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Qur’an and the hadith” (Asad 1986, 104). This heterogeneous “tradition” has a past that articulates with present conditions, practices, and institutions and teaches Muslims the purposes and proper performance of practices (ibid.; Mahmood 2005; Deeb 2006; Hirschkind 2006).
According to Talal Asad, the proper place to begin an anthropological study of Islam is to focus on an “instituted practice into which Muslims are inducted as Muslims.” People with varying degrees of training and expertise may instruct others in these instituted practices. What is important from this perspective is not the level of the instructor’s knowledge, but rather the fact that the practice is “authorized by the discursive traditions of Islam” (Asad 1986, 105). In addition, this approach emphasizes the importance of studying the reasoning and argumentation within the tradition and the connection of particular “orthodox” interpretations with contexts of power relations (ibid.; Mahmood 2005, 116; Grewal 2014, 77). Moreover, Asad argues that the anthropologist of Islam should be concerned with the roles Muslims and non-Muslims play in these dynamic processes of power.I sympathize with both Asad’s and Mahmood’s effort to focus on contemporary articulations with an Islamic “discursive tradition,” and with Michael Gilsenan’s and Gabriele Marranci’s concern with avoiding essentialism and not designating one particular form of Islam as the “real” or “authentic Islam.” This study can be viewed as an attempt to synthesize aspects of both of these perspectives into a new approach to the anthropology of Islam (see also Daniels 2017, 1–27). There are four ways the “discursive tradition” and “multiple interpreted/embodied Islams” contention can be viewed in a new light. First, instead of viewing Islamic texts as mute and meaningless without human interpreters, it would be useful to note that these texts are embodied with knowledge from which particular Muslims and collectivities construct diverse mental representations or cultural models. Semantic study of ethical concepts demonstrates there was a shift in the underlying knowledge associated with key Arabic terms used in the Qur’an (Izutsu 1966). Many of the terms of pre-Islamic Arabic were given new meanings that reflected the transformed monotheistic worldview of the emergent Islamic tradition.
The knowledge embedded in the Qur’an and sayings and practices of Prophet Muhammad and in other related texts is tradition and real Islam, as are the diverse cultural models and embodied practices of contemporary Muslims that stem from knowledge rooted in foundational texts. Rather than attempting to propose a definition of the full range of meanings of human and historical Islam, I use an operational conceptualization of Islam as knowledge implanted in foundational texts, and as varied cultural models and other forms of mental representations and embodied practices that Muslims produce and perform by drawing on knowledge from these texts (cf. Shahab Ahmed 2016). Treating Islamic texts as meaningful in and of themselves, and as an integral part of studying religion in practice, is in accordance with the relativistic perspective that directs anthropologists to try to understand beliefs and practices from local perspectives (Bowen 2014, 8). In contrast to practitioners of some other religious traditions, Muslims generally emphasize religious texts as part of their religion. Moreover, it has been a long-standing characteristic of anthropological theory, including structural functionalism, historical particularism, and structuralism, to consider religious texts as a significant aspect of the study of religion.2 Recognizing that the Qur’an, hadith, and related textual sources embody knowledge is especially relevant to the study of sharia, because Muslims directly or indirectly look to these sources as a basis for their understandings of divine directives. However, studies of other topics, such as Saba Mahmood’s of the women’s mosque movement in Egypt or Lara Deeb’s of the Shi’i piety movement in Lebanon, also demonstrate the productivity of such a tack.Second, Muslims, drawing on knowledge embedded in religious texts, form diverse mental representations, cultural models, and embodied practices, producing a variety of local Islams. These local versions of Islamic concepts and practices connect, combine, and interpenetrate with other ideas and behavior in local social contexts.
Thus, discourses connected to interpretations of foundational texts and exemplary practices, articulate with other discourses and ideas, such as secular, liberal, pluralist, and neoliberal capitalist notions, in a variety of ways. There are multiple Islamic mental representations and combinations within any one society, and these are constructed, reproduced, and transformed through socialization processes. From an anthropological, analytic perspective none of these local varieties of Islam is any more real or truly Islamic than any other. Thus, I try to abstain from prescriptive assertions about how Muslims should conceptualize human and historical Islam (cf. Ahmed 2016, 303). However, we should not be surprised that proponents of particular varieties deem their version to be more Islamic or correct than others. These facts should be an integral part of our analysis.3 In this study of sharia in Malaysia, diverse conceptions of sharia coalesce and enmesh with other cultural models, such as those pertaining to race, gender, nation, and human rights. Proponents of some of these varieties have considered others to be secular, extremist, less truly Islamic, or even, at times, infidel. Unlike some foreign scholars, I have tried to remain outside the fray of these contentious castigations, and to look instead to the role such denigrating evaluations play in sociopolitical dynamics.Third, as both perspectives have underscored the importance of power, a new anthropology of Islam must strive to refine the ways we examine the linkage of instituted practices and local Islamic ideologies to power structures and relations. It is vital to examine Muslim and non-Muslim participation in sociopolitical dynamics within Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority societies. Contemporary social theories of power have made major contributions to the way we view systems of domination and hegemony, modes of governing, and agency.4 These theories invite us to examine coercive and discursive means of influencing and governing the actions of others in society as well as agency or the “socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn 2012, 278).
Furthermore, it is important for anthropologists of Islam to explicate power relations on local, national, and global levels. In this study, I consider the UMNO-led federal government’s attempts to convince Malaysians of the correctness of its manner of instituting sharia regulations, as well as the criticism and resistance from those that favor a fuller implementation of sharia laws and those, Muslims and non-Muslims, that favor an elimination of some sharia laws. I also consider the flow of influential concepts of secularism, liberal pluralism, neoliberalism, human rights, and gender equality into Malaysian society. Moreover, I try to sketch some of the ways Malaysians, as active agents, negotiate sharia in their everyday lives.Fourth, ethnographic methods, advocated by proponents of both perspectives, should be diligently used to collect data investigating each of the three areas discussed above: diverse articulations with knowledge embedded in Islamic texts; multiple models and embodied local Islams and the manner in which they coalesce with other forms of cultural knowledge and practice; and their connections to power structures and relations. After sharply criticizing several ethnographically deficient scholars of Islam, Daniel Varisco (2005, 16) argues that our search “for the idea of an anthropology of Islam should not lead us beyond ideology and theology but rather probe these very powerful discursive traditions through thick description of ethnographic contexts.” Indeed, the ethnographic study of Muslims and non-Muslims pertaining to discourses, representations, and practices of Islam is the very heart of our subfield. Conducting fieldwork in which we participate in and observe events and engage local people in discussions about aspects of Islam and various interrelated topics is the source of our major contribution as anthropologists to the study of Islam. Whether we begin by studying the knowledge embedded in the “discursive tradition” or the mental representations of religious experts or less-tutored Muslims, what is most important is that we do either or both in ethnographic contexts (cf.
Asad 1986, 104; Marranci 2008, 42). Flexibility and adaptability is essential when using ethnographic methods. If our interlocutors are Muslim participants in a mosque movement and we are observing religious talks referring to Qur’an, hadith, and various scholarly commentaries, we would do well to begin to familiarize ourselves with these texts. On the other hand, if our interlocutors are Muslim seekers of healing at a shaman’s house, Muslim nightclub enthusiasts, or Muslim activists in secular nationalist political parties, we should begin with their activities and discourses. In this study I have done some of both. I found it useful to reference religious texts as I tried to more deeply understand the religious talks I attended in the mosques; whereas, when I spent time socializing with less-tutored and less-observant Muslims, I began with their ideas and feelings about sharia in society. I was reminded that religious knowledge is distributed unevenly and that Muslims and non-Muslims are diverse and positioned in a variety of ways in society. Moving from data collected and notes written in the field to ethnographic interpretations is a complex process involving micro description and analysis informed by a broader theoretical perspective.