Abstract
This article will examine the concept of orthodoxy as it appears in the work of Talal Asad and two of his interlocutors, namely Ovamir Anjum and Shahab Ahmed. In response to Ahmed’s critique of Asad which attempts to dislocate orthodoxy as constitutive of Islam, this article employs the distinction Anjum draws between local and universal orthodoxy and theorizes it from a discourse-theoretical perspective. Hence, it will be argued that universal orthodoxy is central to Islamic discursive tradition because it is the limit which preserves Islam’s singularity and allows it to exist as a unified universe of meaning. Furthermore, against Ahmed’s contention that orthodoxy cannot account for Islamic philosophy1 and Sufism as Islamic discourses because it is an inherently exclusionary concept, I will demonstrate that exclusionary limits are necessary for the formation of all discourses including Sufism and Islamic philosophy. Displacing orthodoxy effectively amounts to subverting the singularity of Islam and reproduces the pitfalls of anti-essentialist approaches.
Highlights
The essentialist and anti-essentialist approaches continue to dominate the study of Islamicate cultures and societies
Conceptualizing Islam as a discursive tradition cannot, in the final analysis, coherently account for the presence of a complex array of discourses as Islamic in their different socio-historical contexts, mainly because it lends itself to the restrictive notion of orthodoxy which reduces the domain of Islam in a given local context to the domain of what has been authoritatively constituted as Islam in that context and, in the process, it excludes a range of other expressions and practices from Islam
When our conception of discourse is expanded to include the textual as well as the extra-textual, and discursive exclusion is no longer restricted to the law derived from textual interpretation, it becomes evident that (1) Islamic orthodoxy is crucial to all Islamic discourses and (2) “explorative discourses” are exclusionary
Summary
The essentialist and anti-essentialist approaches continue to dominate the study of Islamicate cultures and societies.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
