Articulating Islam: Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds

Magnus Marsden is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was previously a Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and Graduate Officer in Research at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge (2002-2007). He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and is the author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (Cambridge, 2005), and with Benjamin Hopkins Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (Hurst, 2011). Konstantinos Retsikas is a lecturer in the Anthropology of South East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He has conducted fieldwork in East Java, Indonesia and his publications include articles in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Indonesia and the Malay World, and South East Asia Research.

• Introduction.- Magnus Marsden & Konstantinos Retsikas.- Shurafâ as cosmopolitans: Islam, genealogy and hierarchy in the Central Sahara  Judith Scheele.-  Death and the spirit of patriarchy in western India  Edward Simpson.- . On the skills to navigate the world, and religion, for coastal Muslims in Kenya Kai Kresse.- Beyond Islam: tradition and the intelligibility of experience Johan Rasanayagam.- Becoming sacred: humanity and divinity in East Java, Indonesia Konstantinos Retsikas.-  Self-similarity and its perils Gabriele vom Bruck.- The universal and the particular in rural Xinjiang: ritual commensality and the mosque community Chris Hann.-  Apolitical "Islamisation"? On the limits of religiosity in montane Morocco Matthew Carey.-  Integrity and commitment in the anthropology of Islam Morgan Clarke.-  Fieldwork in Pakistan and Afghanistan compared Magnus Marsden.- 11.Afterword: De-exceptionalising Islam   Simon Coleman.

From the reviews: "The papers are written in the frame of the debate about what constitutes an anthropology of Islam, and appropriately, respond with and from ethnographic work. ... With its range of geographical contexts and authorial perspectives, it is a valuable contribution to thinking within the anthropology of Islam. ... it raises issues that will help our understanding of other religions and of humanity." (Moyra Dale, Aseasuk News, Issue 54, 2013)