Talal Asad has on many occasions expressed his debt to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His first reading of the Wittgenstein’s 'Blue and Brown Books' Asad describes as “one of my most engrossing experiences as a student.” Over half a century after this first encounter Wittgenstein remains a constant presence throughout Asad’s latest book, Secular Translations (2018). This paper unpacks the Wittgensteinian strand in Asad’s thinking and shows how Wittgenstein has not only been a source for critical reflection, but that the central question of normativity that characterizes Wittgenstein’s later works is central the problem Asad tackles in his seminal essay “The Idea of An Anthropology of Islam,” namely: What is Islam? The aim of this article is threefold. First, the above-mentioned essay is best known for having introduced the concept of a ‘discursive tradition.’ Though very influential, the precise meaning of this concept has remained elusive. This article aims to unpack that concept. Moreover, by linking Asad’s problem of how to conceptualize Islam to Wittgenstein’s problem of how to think about meaning, it will point to a correspondence between the latter’s conclusion that meaning is necessarily embedded in a community of language-users and the former’s argument that, in studying Islam, one should adopt the concept of a ‘discursive tradition.’ In doing so the article aims to give extra force to Asad’s claim. Second, it shows how Asad goes beyond Wittgenstein’s own investigations of normativity by linking the latter’s subtle thinking about meaning in terms of use with the work of two later thinkers. On the one hand, Asad embeds normativity a concept of a tradition inspired by Alasdair Macintyre. On the other hand, he combines Wittgenstein’s notion of meaning as use with a Foucauldian understanding of power – how power both restricts and enables of certain discourses, certain practices, and not others. Third, the article aims to demonstrate the indispensability of interdisciplinary research in the humanities. It shows why anthropology would benefit from engaging in a philosophical discussion of meaning and reference, while simultaneously making the point that philosophical problems and analysis should not remain confined to abstract disputes internal to the discipline. Such parochialism not only robs philosophy of its purpose, but may even prevent philosophers from absorbing the kind of fresh philosophical insight that is more easily developed by an ‘outsider’ like Asad.