M.H. Ilias - Research in the Islamic Context: Political and Methodological Reflections from South Asia, Indian Ocean, and the Arab World

This book explores some of the political and methodological directions that collectively lead to the repositioning of Islam in social science research as both an epistemic/ontological category and as a method.

Chapters by experts in the field explore research in the Islamic context vis--vis these two distinct yet somehow interrelated frames. The question being raised here is how Islam as socio-religious notion is related to Islam as a theoretical/methodological framework. Taking cues from the experience of contributors, this book also examines the question if current methodologies or frames of references are pluralized enough to accommodate the question of Muslims or could the scholars themselves create alternative directions around the dominant spaces. The book offers ethnographic studies of Muslim communities mostly in minority settings and engages with a number of issues researchers encounter when dealing with the lived or everyday Islam.

This book is essential reading for anyone engaged in the study of Muslims in the contemporary world. It will appeal to scholars of religious studies, studies of Islam in the West, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and research methods.

M.H. Ilias is currently Professor and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences at Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), India. His areas of research interest include Islamic movements in South Asia, religion and state in the Gulf states, Hadrami migration on the Malabar Coast, South Asian migration to the Gulf region, religion and visual culture in West Asia, sociology of conflict, Gandhian philosophy, and Muslims and new media.

21. Indian Philosophy and Meditation

Perspectives on Consciousness

Rahul Banerjee and Amita Chatterjee

22. Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters

The Relevance of Ancient Wisdom for the Global Age

Edited by Ming Dong Gu

23. The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions

Devi as Corpse

Anway Mukhopadhyay

24. Divinizing in South Asian Traditions

Edited by Diana Dimitrova and Tatiana Oranskaia

25. Christianity in India

The Anti-Colonial Turn

Clara A. B. Joseph

26. Chinese Theology and Translation

The Christianity of the Jesuit Figurists and their Christianized Yijing

Sophie Ling-chia Wei

27. Christianity in Northeast India

A Cultural History of Nagaland from 1947

Chongpongmeren Jamir

28. Theories of the Self, Race, and Essentialization in Buddhism

The United States and the Asian Other, 1899-1957

Ryan David Anningson

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Asian-Religion-and-Philosophy/book-series/RSARP

Edited by

M.H. Ilias

First published 2023

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2023 selection and editorial matter, M.H. Ilias; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of M.H. Ilias to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-1-032-15601-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-15603-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-24491-2 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003244912

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

For my teacher at the lower classes in Madrassa, Maulawi Valiyakath Abdul Kareem known popularly as Kareem Maulawi, who took us to the world of jinn and other wonders in Islam.

1. M.H. ILIAS

2. ULRIKE FREITAG

3. A.K. RAMAKRISHNAN

4. SAMULI SCHIELKE

5. ARSHAD ALAM

6. SAAD AHMAD

7. HILAL AHMED

8. JULTEN ABDELHALIM

9. GRY HVASS PEDERSEN

10. TANWEER FAZAL

11. MUHAMMED SHAH SHAJAHAN

12. UMMUL FAYIZA

13. K.M. SEETHI

14. ABDUL JALEEL P.K.M.

15. M.H. ILIAS

1. .

2. .

Julten Abdelhalim obtained her doctorate in political science from Heidelberg University, Germany. Before that, she had studied and taught at the universities of Cairo, Egypt, Freiburg, Germany, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and Jawaharlal Nehru, India. Her PhD thesis has been transformed into a book titled Indian Muslims and Citizenship: Spaces for Jihd in Everyday Life (Routledge, 2015). Her research interests include citizenship studies, revivalist Islamic movements and gender issues, democratic transformation, and youth in India and the Arab World.

Saad Ahmad received his PhD degree from the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been trained in disciplines such as political science and International relations. Saad Ahmad is currently working on his book titled Discourses of Salafism and Ijtihad in the Arab World. He has worked at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He was also a part of Contending Modernities, a project of the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame. His areas of primary interests include Islamic philosophy, theology, and culture.

Hilal Ahmed is Associate Professor at CSDS, New Delhi. He works on political Islam, Muslim politics of representation, and politics of symbols in South Asia. His recent publications include Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (Routledge 2014), Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islam in India (2019), Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in Contemporary India (with Peter R. deSouza and Sanjeer Alam, 2019). Ahmed is also currently working on a book project on the politics of Muslim political representation in postcolonial India. Ahamd is the Associate Editor, South Asian Studies, Journal of the British Association of South Asian Studies. He was a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies-Nantes (IAS-Nantes, France, 20182019), Visiting Fellow at the Victoria University Wellington (20132014), Visiting Asia Fellow, University of Dhaka (2011), and Vising Professor at the University of Pune. Ahmad writes for newspapers and portals in English and Hindi. He has produced two documentaries,