The concept of an Islamic “tradition,” as articulated by Talal Asad, is one of the most widely used methods of discussing Islam among scholars today. Despite being criticized from different angles, the concept has withstood the test of time. But is the concept useful when discussing change or novelty in Islam? This question is particularly significant for the study of modern Islam, where the problem of how to treat change, development, and newness in Islam frequently appears. This paper has two aims: First, it analyzes recent scholarship on Islam in the modern world to show that although the idea of Islam as a tradition does not, in principle, present obstacles to accounting for change and newness in Islam, it has nevertheless been used by many scholars in a way that construes novelty, change, and development in Islam as threats to the integrity of the Islamic tradition. This makes it seem as if the Islamic tradition is ossified in the past and cannot change without losing its Islamicness. Second, it analyzes twentieth-century Arabic writings by intellectuals affiliated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to show that there is no way to account for their particular form of Islam without also attending to the question of how Islam changes. To navigate around this dilemma, this paper argues that scholars of modern Islam can and should, with caution, employ the notion of Islam as a “religion” when accounting for change, despite the important critiques of the concept made by Asad and others. This is because the concept of religion is more readily comparative than the concept of tradition, and the comparative study of religion has, in turn, demonstrated that religions can and do change without losing their coherency.