{"id":14605,"date":"2026-06-20T15:05:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/?p=14605"},"modified":"2026-06-20T15:06:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:06:38","slug":"tradition-and-ideology-can-we-know-true-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/tradition-and-ideology-can-we-know-true-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Tradition and Ideology: Can We Know ‘True Islam\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many years, “Islam” remained something akin to a riddle in classical anthropological studies. Unlike the study of doctrine, jurisprudence, or text, Islam<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>or more precisely, the historically instantiated Islams in specific societies<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>was an object insufficiently defined both conceptually and methodologically. What is it that makes this or that society Islamic, despite cultural, class, and social differences? Is it possible to find a link between a Muslim African tribe in Nigeria and a Muslim town in Malaysia? If we insist on the doctrinal commonality among all Muslim societies, we arrive at a reductionist view, one that compresses highly pluralistic societies into a single factor, which is religion and doctrine<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>an approach that closely resembles a fundamentalist view of life. On the other hand, if we focus on plurality and difference, “Islam” as a theoretical object dissolves, and no meaning remains for describing these societies as Islamic. This is the case if we consider cultural, ethnic, and geographical diversity in the present alone; so how would the problem look if posed temporally and historically? That is, if the question is: what keeps these societies Muslim, despite all the political and social changes they have undergone across eras and in different places?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In general, classical anthropologists attempted to provide descriptions that sought to be “balanced” for Muslim societies, combining the observation of plurality and change with a focus on commonalities and Islamic features that possess a degree of stability, such as religious rituals, core beliefs, and Islamic symbols. Meanwhile, others rejected considering “Islam” as an anthropological object from the outset, attempting instead to study societies with a Muslim religious majority away from labeling them with the adjective “Islamic.” They looked into their material culture, symbolic world, and historical developments without granting central importance to the fact that they are Muslim, or considering this sufficient to distinguish them from other societies that differ from them religiously.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It seemed as though this “riddle” had found a solution in the study by British-Pakistani scholar Talal Asad, <\/span><\/span>The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam<\/i><\/span><\/span>, which was considered foundational in its field and opened horizons for an entire research domain. It offered an anthropological definition of “Islam” as a “discursive tradition” in which orthodoxy<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>the teaching of “correct doctrine”<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>occupies a central position, and as an “instituted practice, set in a particular context and a particular history, in which Muslims are treated as Muslims. There is no essential difference on this point between classical Islam and modern Islam.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Asad is not concerned with defining the content of the “correct doctrine,” and he acknowledges the heterogeneity of the Islamic heritage, but he is fundamentally interested in the social and authoritative practice, transcending societies and time, through which Muslims learn, via a number of discourses, how to be Muslims, what correct Islamic practice is, and how to commit to it. This practice is based on viewing the present as a point connecting the past (the entrenched Islamic tradition) and the future (how the practice continues and adapts to different conditions). Not all practices and ideas are Islamic, even if practiced in Islamic societies; what makes an Islamic practice worthy of its name is that it is “governed by the diverse traditions of Islam; and informed by Muslims” as a collective. Asad, then, seeks to establish an anthropology of Islam itself, not of Islamic societies in general. Notably, he emphasizes that his anthropological model for defining “Islam” is “illiterate Muslims” and their practices, not Islamist movements. By “illiterate,” he means models such as the Sufi sheikh, the local jurist, or the uneducated father or mother. He is not concerned here with a contradiction between a “modern Islam” and a “popular Islam,” for he sees both concepts as irrelevant to the anthropology of Islam he is attempting to establish; they are two modern political concepts. Rather, he refers to social authority and discursive tradition, which cannot be reduced to a state or an institution, and which make Islamic practice possible in any time and place.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps Talal Asad<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s concept of the “anthropology of Islam” was misunderstood, and he himself contributed to this misunderstanding in some of his later statements and positions. To many, he appeared to reduce Islamic societies to the domain of “correct doctrine,” seeming closer to the fundamentalists and refusing to see the plurality and historicity of Islamic societies in favor of a religious essentialism or “Islamic authenticity.” However, these assumptions only hold true if Asad<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s subject were Islamic societies, which is incorrect. He explicitly asserted that “a coherent anthropology of Islam cannot be established if it is based on the idea of a final social blueprint, or on the idea of an integrated social totality within which social structure and religious ideology interact.” His question is specifically an epistemological one: “What makes a practice or a discourse part of Islam?”, and not a sociological or political question of the type: “What is the nature of conflicts in Islamic societies?”. He speaks of the claim by certain parties to a normative authority in defining “Islam” within a diverse Islamic tradition that contains many debates and conflicts. Yet, Asad remains (or should have remained) within the boundaries of his subject, which must not be generalized to the social whole.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We say “should have” because Asad himself, and his many students<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>such as Saba Mahmood and Charles Hirschkind, who proliferated across English-speaking universities around the world<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>did not remain within the boundaries of that subject. Or rather, their studies on “Islam,” “piety,” and “tradition” were taken as an expression of the essence of Islamic societies, an impression they did not reject but often confirmed indirectly. With the rise of the tendency toward “critique of Western-centrism” and the “white man,” and the transformation of “postcolonial studies” into something of an academic fashion funded by dozens of grants<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>in addition to the desire to “defend Islam against Western racism,” especially after the events of September 11<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>the Asad school became closer to an Islamized “discursive tradition” in the heart of Western universities. It reduces societies to Islam, and reduces the latter into a binary conflict between marginalized Muslims and the dominant, superior, Eurocentric colonial white man. It is a regrettable end to a methodological attempt that appeared promising in its beginnings and provided many useful concepts.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Talal Asad introduced two other important concepts. The first, in his foundational study itself, is the concept of the “homogeneity of tradition.” Its core idea is that Islamic traditions are not homogeneous, and any attempt to present them as such only comes within the condition of what he termed modern “industrial capitalism.” This system works to construct a domain of discursive and legal homogeneity due to its unprecedented capacity to control people’s lives and extend its authority and discourses into the deepest details. This requires a homogeneity in discourses, and the ability to classify, analyze, and produce knowledge. In contrast, the laws of traditional Islam were only capable of organizing a specific part of the social whole and always existed alongside other traditions, authorities, and laws, which gave them a character of fragmentation, heterogeneity, and mixing with many other customs. Consequently, the attempt to produce a “homogeneous Islamic tradition” by Islamists and Islamist movements is a product of modernization, which has its own methods of remembering a specific tradition and forgetting another to produce a comprehensive, homogeneous traditional structure. These attempts become a subject for the “anthropology of Islam” when they enter the field of struggle over the normative definition of the “correct doctrine” that makes Muslims Muslim and their practices Islamic.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The second concept presented by Asad in his later books is the “production of the domain of religion in the secular age.” Its essence is that “religion,” as a defined domain separated from the rest of society’s systems<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>such as politics, economics, law, and morality<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>is a product of modern sovereignty. Before it, this separation did not exist, and “religion” was intertwined with everything social. Secularized sovereignty pushed religion into a “private sphere” and made it one of multiple facts. Asad studied personal status law in Egypt as an example of pushing religion into the private sphere, as it is the primary legal domain for the presence of Islam under the authority of the state. Even when Islamists attempt to bring religion out of the private sphere and impose it on society, they do so using the language and frameworks of modern sovereignty. That is, they attempt to transform it into a political narrative, a codified law, a mass culture, and a “societal morality” backed by laws. In short, they turn it into a modern political ideology. The question here is no longer “What makes a practice Islamic according to tradition?”, but rather “How is the nation-state, the public space, the law, urban space, education, and the media Islamized?”. This is a type of “secularization of Islam”<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning its transformation into a homogeneous political and legal discourse that fits modern sovereignty and its concepts. This is a secularized sovereignty relating to the state apparatus, the people, and the sovereign territory defined by borders, rather than to the divine or religious tradition. We live in a “secular age,” whether we are Islamists or non-Islamists, and this is a reality that cannot be bypassed.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Can we, then, answer the question “What is Islam” amidst this complex circumstance? Is it the conflict over the normative claim to define the correct tradition, or the conflict over secularized sovereignty, or a complex mixture of both? Are the extremist Islamic phenomena we live through<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>such as terrorism, incitement, militia activity, genocide, and the suppression of freedoms<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>a result of “Islam,” or is it innocent of them? Is our problem in religious tradition or in politics? And perhaps we can even ask: Does “Islam” represent Islam?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Representing Islam<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps if the question “Are terrorism, incitement, and the suppression of freedoms a result of Islam?” were posed to Talal Asad himself, he would answer: The question carries a Western, or Westernized, normative formulation. It measures practices by modern Western concepts<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>such as incitement, suppression, and terrorism<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>that claim universality. Through this universality, it covers up the nature of conflicts, differences in power relations, and the oppressive and superior nature of modern sovereignty on a global and local level, as well as the specific meaning of actions from the perspective of their actors, and the complex combinations of the religious and the secular. This makes posing the question about “Islam” in this formula a pattern of rearranging power\/knowledge relations in favor of the center.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, relying on Asad<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s method alone might be unhelpful, because there is no place in it for this question, which deeply preoccupies all the inhabitants of the region. Posing the question is not a methodological error, as Asad might view it, for humans are subjected to killing and oppression because of claims about “Islam,” and it is the right of the oppressed and the relatives of the slain to understand what exactly harmed them, and the extent of the validity of the claim made by the perpetrators of the crime. Furthermore, the criminals’ belief that what they are doing is Islam, and indeed the correct Islam, diminishes the importance of what Asad or others consider methodologically correct. As long as the actor acts in the name of “Islam,” they have placed us, despite ourselves, at the heart of the question about Islam. Perhaps if there is a “centrism,” it is the centrism of those who do not see all of this<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>from the Asad school or elsewhere<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>and content themselves with their comfortable Western academic position and its perspectives.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It can be said that the conflict over defining the “correct Islamic doctrine” has produced, under the modern condition, an ideological perspective closer to nationalism. This has structurally transformed the nature of dealing with the Islamic tradition, making it less concerned with the “correct practice” that makes a Muslim Muslim, and more concerned with sovereignty and imposing it on others, on the state, the public space, and civil society relations. This sovereignty has become “what makes a Muslim Muslim.” It is no longer possible to understand “Islam” from the “practices of the illiterate,” to use Asad’s phrase; the educated, ideologized in the modern sense, have entered the field, marginalized all others, and imposed the domain of homogeneity on the “discursive tradition.” This makes contemporary Islam a modern ideological domain that turns the present into a connecting point between conceptions of the past (selecting from heritage and reproducing it to serve the ideological proposition) and the future (achieving ideological goals to impose sovereignty). Of course, Asad was not oblivious to this development; he hinted at or spoke of it clearly, but he did not draw sufficient logical and methodological conclusions from it. He continued to speak of “Islam” as a tradition distinct from the West and its ideologies, whereas that tradition today might be closer to “archaeological excavations,” according to the famous expression of Michel Foucault, or a highly marginalized domain in contemporary Islam. By this, it is meant that purely spiritual and ritualistic religiosity has certainly not disappeared, but it no longer occupies the forefront in producing the image of Islam and representing it in the contemporary epistemological and political arena.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

If the conflict over Islamic orthodoxy has today become a modern, thoroughly “Western” ideology, there is little meaning in stating that this contradicts the “essence of the Islamic tradition,” because history cannot be turned backward to return to the utopia of “illiterate Muslims” who produce their tradition within non-Western discursive frameworks<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>let alone that speaking of a “traditional essence” contradicts Asad’s own method, which is an anti-essentialist method.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

An “epistemological break” has occurred within the Islamic tradition, so that its subjects have become the nation-state, public space, law, and biopolitics. There is no longer another effective “Islam,” no matter how much contemporary academics search for non-Western “indigenous people,” or claim to do so. Consequently, the representations of “Islam” in our time are the ideology of a monolithic, homogeneity-imposing nature, in the manner of the “Western industrial capitalism” that Asad critiques. It is the ideology over which, and over the imposition of which, Islamist movements, states, and contemporary Muslims clash.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Just as the “Islam” Asad spoke of is not itself “Islamic societies,” the monolithic, homogeneity-imposing Islamic ideology is not all of those societies, nor is it their essence or reality. Rather, it is one side of a broad social conflict in which the ideologization of the Islamic tradition plays a central authoritative role, and consequently produces its own resistances from within the tradition and outside it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The answer to the question “What is Islam?” today may be an answer from within the Western ideological tradition concerned with modern sovereignty, but it is a dangerous answer, as it may open a wide door to a comprehensive political conflict with “Islam” itself. Can the danger of the conclusion be limited without ignoring it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Islamization and Racialization<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The swallowing of the field of “Islam” by Islamic ideology, and its preoccupation with sovereignty, makes “Islamization” one of the most important embodiments of contemporary Islam. It means imposing Islamic manifestations and symbols on the public sphere, and Islamizing laws, constitutions, procedures, and institutions. It means producing an “Islamic body” that is considered in itself a living embodiment of Islamic ideology and presents, by its mere presence in the public space, a sign of sovereignty, making it a “signifier of hegemony,” to use the expression of the Argentine thinker Ernesto Laclau. All of this increases the danger of Islamic ideology, as it threatens to racialize Muslims<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning the transformation of specific Islamic cultural symbols into something akin to racial traits of Muslims. Contemporary Islamic ideology is also characterized by much discursive deception; it uses Islamic symbols as a method to impose hegemony and sovereignty, and when faced with resistance, it claims that they are merely “personal freedoms” and “freedom of belief.” This places its opponents in an embarrassing position from the start of the confrontation, because they appear as opponents of freedoms.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the precise political confrontation against the attempt to impose hegemony must be based on a deep understanding of contemporary Islam and Islamic ideology, and an attempt to disarm them rather than empowering them by agreeing to their core ideological assumptions. This occurs by putting forward three essential elements in the discourse rejecting Islamic hegemony: first, clarifying the nature of contemporary Islam as a modern ideology whose subject is sovereignty, hegemony, and the imposition of a domain of monolithism and homogeneity; second, rejecting Islamization and attempting to dismantle it, considering it a detraction from the political, social, and individual rights of citizens and humans at large; and third, opposing the racialization of Islam by clarifying that Islamic ideology is a historical and political construction, not racial or quasi-racial traits of Muslims, as asserted by many proponents, defenders, and opponents of contemporary Islam.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The entire conflict takes place on a “Western” ideological, cultural, and political level, whether in the camp of the Islamists or those rejecting Islamization. Therefore, speaking of a “Western-centrism,” or a “Westernized” understanding of “Islam,” is closer to conscious or unconscious ideological deception. We have all come to be in a “secular age,” including the alleged “marginalized” or “indigenous people,” and the weapon of discursive deception must be stripped from the proponents of Islamic hegemony.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But what about “Islam” as a religion? If we return to Asad’s method, even political Islam will isolate a private and specific domain for religion when it reaches power. It is a private space in which the faithful relationship with the transcendent is practiced, much narrower than what secular states isolate; the rest will be for secularized, worldly sovereignty with Islamic symbols, which will attempt to impose its monolithic images and models on real-world Muslims as subjects of sovereignty. This will expose them, themselves, to oppression, minoritization (transformation into minorities that do not match the image of the presumed Muslim “majority” and “people’s culture”), and perhaps eradication.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In all cases, opposing the monolithic hegemony of contemporary Islam is carried out on a political, cultural, symbolic, ideological, and social level<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>that is, exactly where it seeks to impose its hegemony<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>and not on a religious or textual level. Its foundation is the focus on pluralism, equal rights, freedom of belief and expression, as well as fundamental social rights, and the unconditional right to life<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning the right of humans to guarantee the continuation of their lives, whatever their belief, expression, and orientations.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As for the religious question, it is more worthwhile to leave it to Muslims themselves. If they are keen on the domain of “religion” in the secular age, they must reform their contemporary “discursive tradition” and rescue it from the fangs of monolithic ideology, so that it becomes truly a religion, and not a violent attempt to impose sovereignty. This remains their choice, but imposing political religion on others is not a “freedom” for them or for anyone else, and they must realize that<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>perhaps through a social conflict with a clear compass, distant from racialization, and rejecting ideological deception, which is sponsored by cultural and political institutions of vast funding and capabilities. This rejection may be the basis of the critique of religion in our days, and it is the “prerequisite of all critique,” to use the expression of Karl Marx.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many years, “Islam” remained something akin to a riddle in classical anthropological studies. Unlike the study of doctrine, jurisprudence, or text, Islam\u2014or more precisely, the historically instantiated Islams in specific societies\u2014was an object insufficiently defined both conceptually and methodologically. What is it that makes this or that society Islamic, despite cultural, class, and social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1648,"featured_media":14607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[1096,1315,40],"ppma_author":[1080],"class_list":["post-14605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-islam","tag-nigeria","tag-syria"],"authors":[{"term_id":1080,"user_id":1648,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mohammad-sami-al-kayal","display_name":"Mohammad Sami Al-Kayal","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-04-01-at-23.38.58.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-04-01-at-23.38.58.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14606,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605\/revisions\/14606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14605"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}