Three out of four of the Najdi revivalist Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab’s key theological epistles are written in a popular register. They possess the oral recitative and/or minimalistic qualities associated with popular religiosity and even Arabian vernacular poetry. Other of his minor theological texts are similarly clipped and spare, suggestive of pamphlets or mnemonic aids. Through a methodologically new treatment of these epistles, I argue that the Wahhabism of the mid-eighteenth century represents the transference of the Arabian oral tradition to the legal and theological realm, in application to a newly emergent sedentary society; that Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab’s revivalist mission reflects a taming of poesy, to mean oral communicative styles, by a scriptural tradition, and the adoption of the former’s assumptions for converting a largely preliterate people. The central artifacts of this confrontation, I suggest, can be found embedded in Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab’s popular epistles.

Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) is widely regarded as one of the most influential theorists of the radical Islamist discourse. Yet, despite a significant body of literature, Qutb’s work was never discussed from the perspective of political theology. Consequently, this paper proposes a fresh approach to the Qutbian discourse as a seminal example of a political theology of resistance focused on God’s Sovereignty (Hakimiyyah) and engaged in a complex relationship with axiological, political and religious modernity. My working hypothesis is that Qutb’s vision of God’s Sovereignty (Hakimiyyah) as the only alternative to all forms of human based sovereignty is essential for a particular tradition of anti-modern political theology that until recently was considered a Western monopoly. Here I argue that the specificity of the Qutbian political theology could be better understood via a comparative framework which takes into account the interplay between similarity and difference between commensurable discourses criticizing a shared secular modernity. Consequently, drawing on J. Z. Smith’s comparative exegesis, Martin Riesebrodt’s comparative fundamentalisms and Jan Assmann’s comparative political theology, I employ a family resemblance model comparing Qutb’s critique of modernity with a neo-Calvinist political theology. More precisely, Qutb’s Islamist political theology is compared with the anti-modern political theology developed at the fringes of the modern American evangelical discourse by another noted, yet understudied, political theologian of God’s Sovereignty: Rousas Rushdoony (1916-1991). This paper will show how Qutb and Rushdoony forged a systematic foundationalist political theology of God sovereignty that carries a totalist, militant and praxis oriented political vision which aims to re-enchant the world in distinct political terms, while rejecting the autonomy of the political. Qutb’s Hakimiyyah and Jahiliyyah and Rushdoony’s Theonomy-focused Christian Reconstructionism will appear as two dimensions of the same tradition in political theology that places God's sovereignty at the center of a worldview that is incommensurable with a secularized world and its master ideologies. They reject the post-Westfalian paradigm that made the State an independent entity from God sovereignty and conceptualized politics as a sui generis reality, and religion qua private devotion. Moreover, both are fundamentally hostile towards what they see as the modern fetishization of instrumental reason and the idolatry of man-made formulas of sovereignty. Finally, I will demonstrate that, despite some pervasive readings, Qutb’s and Rushdoony’s perspectives are theocentric not theocratic, future oriented not ruins-gazing, criticizing modernity from within, using modern concepts and rhetorical strategies, and this constitutes an essential explanation for their perennial influence.

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.

This paper is a critique of Shahab Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam as “hermeneutical engagement with Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text of Revelation to Mu?ammad” in his What is Islam?: The Importance for Being Islamic. According to this definition; the source of revelation, the text of revelation (the Qur’?n), and all subsequent engagements with the source and text of revelation should be considered as part of Islam. In fact, this tri-partite structure of revelation is the reason for the great amount of contradiction inherent to Islam. Ahmed’s aim is thus to formulate a definition of Islam according to which the internal contradictions of Islam can be made to cohere. As an Islamic tradition which greatly contradicts various Islamic traditions with normative claims, Alevism is a valuable locus for testing Ahmed’s reconceptualization of Islam to see if it can make Alevism cohere with prescriptive/proscriptive Islamic discourses, such as that of Islamic law (in addition to the explorative discourses of the discursive realm Ahmed refers to as the “Sufi-Philosophical Amalgam”). For this coherence to be achieved, Ahmed’s reconceptualization would need to be meaningful from the perspective of Alevism. A comparison with Alevi religious tenets reveals that Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization based on the concepts of Text, Pre-Text, and Con-Text posits the primacy of the Qur’?n (Text) and Mu?ammad (as the object of Revelation). However, despite the significant place of Sufi discourses in Alevi discourse, neither the Qur’?n nor Prophet Mu?ammad are central in Alevi belief and practice. The Alevis’ egalitarian view of friendship with God (wal?yah) results in the equality of Mu?ammad, Im?ms, and Alevi saints. Revelation is not unique to Mu?ammad, but rather the quality of all speech belonging to Perfect Men. As a result, we cannot speak of a meaningful difference between Text (the Qur’?n) and Con-Text (Ahmed’s category for the texts written by friends of God). Reading Shahab Ahmed’s conceptualization of Islam together with Alevism shows that extrapolating from Sunni sources (and probably one’s own beliefs) definitions of Islam which are claimed to stand for all of Islam is a methodological falsehood. I argue that including cases like Alevism to Islam’s landscape of contradictions (limited to Sunni Islam in Ahmed’s work) not only deconstructs our (in this case, Ahmed’s) existing conceptualizations of Islam, but also serves to reconceptualize Islam.

Observers of early post-revolutionary Iran were surprised to witness the politically inexperienced clerical community and their dedicated lay followers succeed in the state-building process. Domestic opposition, international isolation, and economic hardship made observers sense a looming demise, to the extent that they believed the Iraqi invasion of 1980 would serve as the final blow to the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran. To claim that religious-cultural solidarity was the key to the Islamists’ unexpected organizational success is deemed an insufficient, and even shallow, explanation. I argue, however, that religion can and should be brought back as an explanatory factor to complement, if not completely replace, structural explanations. Even though religion as a systematic constellation of beliefs and rituals is not a satisfactory analytic element, religion as shared lived experience, as a source of cultural dispositions—in a Bourdieusian sense—that harmonize collective responses to social contingencies, can expand our understanding of post-revolutionary institution building in Iran. The group of activists belonging to Shia Muslim communities close to Ayatollah Khomeini demonstrated a practical cognitive disposition for instantly recognizing each other’s cultural belonging. Thereby they created instant, strong ties that amounted to flexible formations that filled the gap of meticulously structured and controlled organizations—something which they did not have managerial experience for. I lay out the characteristics of this collective work style by studying post-revolutionary institution building in 1979-80 Iran. Through in-depth interviews with activists as well as memoirs and archival documents, I demonstrate that the Islamists’ historically shared lifeworld as Shi’a Muslims provided them with the confidence to trust a fellow Muslim activist and welcome him to the group instantaneously, without recourse to explicit principles of orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Reliance on elastically strong ties created as such allowed leaders to act against collective decisions as contingencies necessitated, endowed grassroots clusters with trust and authority, and enabled consequential decisions to be made informally to avoid organizational accountability to rival institutions.