The Study of Islam and Importance of 'The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam" in South-East Asia

"The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences".

Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed; it's the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

The move from a focus on Islam as a theological concept to an interest in local definitions of what Islam can signify for people who practice it to led towards agency and content with the works of Clifford Geertz, Talal Asad and Dale F. Eickelman. The prerequisites of this academic shift have been discussed in depth by Dale F. Eickelman in his groundbreaking textbook ‘The Middle East. An Anthropological Approach (1981), which emphasises that Islam as an abstract category can be understood in a number of ways by the practicing Muslims of the world. This stance had a consequence for the academic approach, and Eickelman’s and other scholars’ works from the 1970s can correctly be described as the anthropological turn in the study of Islam - or rather of Muslims.

Eickelman and Piscatori's volume Muslim Politics (1996) was likewise a turning point as it shifted frocus from ideology to agency. In several studies Talal Asad has underlined the importance of the intellectual history of the study of religion and especially its consequences for the study of Islam. In this context 'The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (1986) and Genealogy of Islam (1993) should be mentioned because of the impact these studies have had on disciplinary self-reflection and on interdisciplinary bridge-building. The latter has also been instrumental in more recent understandings of religion as the result of evolving and changeable discursive practices, intimately linked to power.

Many studies in this process deserve to be mentioned. In 'Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East (1993), a collection of articles edited by Donna Lee Bowen and Evelyn A. Early, religious practice and performance are linked to other forms of cultural expression and social interaction.

Sociologist in National University of Singapore (NUS), Prof. Syed farid Alatas emphasize the theme Features and Problems embedded The discourse on 'the indigenization of the social sciences', particular where anthropology, psychology and sociology are concerned, has been in existence for a little over twenty years. Indigenization was and continues to be a response to what many non-Western social scientists perceive as 'the inability of Euro-American social science to constitute a relevant and liberating discourse in the context of Asian, African and Latin American societies'. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that much of such social science was assimilated uncritically outside of their countries of origin among students, lecturers, researchers and planners. While the problem of irrelevance and its concomitants raised in the discourse on indigenization had been recognized by non-Western scholars as early as the beginning of this century, the term ‘indigenization’ has only gained currency since the 1970s. It could be said that indigenization is a relatively new term that addresses a problem recognized quite some time ago.

Such example for Islam in Asian Anthropology raises important questions regarding the nature of anthropology, and particular the production and consumption of anthropological knowledge in Asia. Instead of assuming a universal standard or trajectory for the development of anthropology in Asia, the contributors to this volume begin with the appropriate premise that anthropologies in different Asian countries have developed and continue to develop according to their own internal dynamics. With chapters written by an international group of experts in the field include Eyal Ben Ari, Jan van Bremen and Syed Farid Alatas, Asian Anthropology will be a useful teaching tool and a fascinating resource for scholars working in Asian anthropology.

Talal Asad is a thinker in Social Anthropology at Hull University. He received a D. Phil, from Oxford University in 1968 and has conducted extensive anthropological research on such topics as Bedouin tribes, Arab nationalism, religion, and political systems. Dr. Asad's numerous publications include The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe (1970), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (editor and contributor, 1973), The Sociology of Developing Societies: The Middle East (co-editor with Roger Owen, 1983), "Ideology, Class and the Origin of the Islamic State" (in Economy and Society, 1980), and "The Idea of a non Western Anthropology" (in Current Anthropology, 1980). Professor Asad presented this paper at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies as the 1984-85 Annual Distinguished Lecture in Arab Studies.

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