The Idea of An Anthropology of Islam

"Let us begin with a very general question. What, exactly, is the anthropology of Islam? What is its object of investigation? The answer may seem obvious: what the anthropology of Islam investigates is, surely, Islam. But to conceptualize Islam as the object of an anthropological study is not as simple a matter as some writers would have one suppose."

— by Talal Asad

“Let us begin with a very general question. What, exactly, is the anthropology of Islam? What is its object of investigation? The answer may seem obvious: what the anthropology of Islam investigates is, surely, Islam. But to conceptualize Islam as the object of an anthropological study is not as simple a matter as some writers would have one suppose.”

Read the original paper here.

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