Abstract
Inspired as much by interfaith dialogue as by ethnographic discussions of intersubjectivity, I draw some narrow debates within Indian Islam outside of their usual South Asianist and/or Islam-centric frameworks and also resist the academic injunction to purify boundaries between theology and anthropological analysis. I present ethnography from Kerala factional debates raising two vexed questions: authority of interpretation; and the matter of shirk or deviation from tauheed, or true monotheism. My analysis follows impulses towards, firstly, a de-exceptionalising of Islam via comparison, drawing ethnography towards a wider ‘Abrahamic’ framework, in an eccentric move of reading Islamic debates through moments in commentary on Christian traditions; and secondly, I engage recent theological moves toward performative and deconstructive readings of religion. In Muslim traditions, Quran and hadith as ultimate authority are supported by the methods of qiyas – analogy – and considerations of ijma – community consensus. From the beginning, Islam has recognised that, “The Quran does not speak with a tongue; it needs interpreters and interpreters are people” (Esack, 1997). Performative and deconstructive understandings of religion are perhaps then already anticipated in the Islamic tradition, unlike (Western) Christianity, which has long been restrained by a narrow focus upon either scriptura or traditio – with the third pole of ‘community consensus’ hidden from sight and not often acknowledged, matters of consensus/performativity only recently becoming recognised as a proper and legitimate part of processes of interpretation, as Dalit, queer and feminist theologies emerge and come of age.
Highlights
In the 20 years between Katherine Ewing’s careful disavowal of the ethnographer’s “temptation to believe” (1994) and Meneses, et al.’s daring proposal for an anthropological “epistemology of witness,” grounded in evangelical Christian readings of good and evil (2014), lie Simon Coleman’s sensitive discussion of the dangers of exposing oneself as an insufficiently distanced “abomination” (2008) and a bold exposure effected by Saba Mahmood and others of the partiality of the secular world-view and its claims to neutrality (Mahmood, 2006, 2008, 2009; Zine, 2004). Inspired by this trajectory and as much by interfaith dialogue as by ethnographic discussions of intersubjectivity, it is in a spirit of feeling that the time is () right that I set aside criticisms of projects of comparative religion, draw some very narrow debates within Indian Islam outside of their customary analytic framework and into a wider one, and offer some thoughts on two vexed questions dear to the heart of Muslims: authority of interpretation; and the matter of shirk or deviation from tauheed, or true monotheism
Keralam’s ulema, religious scholars, have long been holding public debates in which apparently well-defined positions backed by textual evidence are presented and where audiences are expected to be persuaded or confirmed in their judgment that one or other of the positions is rooted in correct interpretation
My ethnography of the differences and arguments between sects is predictable and does not differ from similar material about the reform process which we find over and over throughout the Muslim world (e.g. Ewing, 1997; Blank, 2001)
Summary
In the 20 years between Katherine Ewing’s careful disavowal of the ethnographer’s “temptation to believe” (1994) and Meneses, et al.’s daring proposal for an anthropological “epistemology of witness,” grounded in evangelical Christian readings of good and evil (2014), lie (on the one hand) Simon Coleman’s sensitive discussion of the dangers of exposing oneself as an insufficiently distanced “abomination” (2008) and (on the other) a bold exposure effected by Saba Mahmood and others of the partiality of the secular world-view and its claims to neutrality (Mahmood, 2006, 2008, 2009; Zine, 2004) Inspired by this trajectory and as much by interfaith dialogue as by ethnographic discussions of intersubjectivity, it is in a spirit of feeling that the time is () right that I set aside criticisms of projects of comparative religion, draw some very narrow debates within Indian Islam outside of their customary analytic framework and into a wider one, and offer some thoughts on two vexed questions dear to the heart of Muslims: authority of interpretation; and the matter of shirk or deviation from tauheed, or true monotheism. There is no need in this paper to reproduce what is an utterly banal ethnographic scenario, and I will use my space instead for analysis and argument, where I will follow firstly, my impulse towards a de-exceptionalising of Islam, making an eccentric move to read debates in Islam through Christian theologies and secondly, make a suggestion that theological insights may be useful for academics, before turning to recent moves towards performative theologies and what they might do
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