Intra-Muslim Polemics in South India

Description

How do we understand differences and disputes among various branches of Islam? This book places intimacies, rather than radical incompatibilities, at the centre of its in-depth ethnographic account of mass-publicized theological polemics among Sunni Muslims in the south Indian state of Kerala. What unites Muslims of different Sunni groups also divides them and incites polemics—Islam as a shared system of knowledge and practices, bonds of kinship and other social relations, and the common condition of being a beleaguered religious minority in a Hindu majoritarian democracy. Diverging from works that have focused on how Islamic practices like ritual prayers facilitate the fashioning of theologically grounded pious selves, the book argues that intra-Muslim polemics marginalize theology and have little to do with cultivating piety. Instead, polemics constitute inter- and intra-religious socialities, enable Muslims to articulate their connections to India and other imaginaries, and produce Islam as a public religion in a secular nation-state.

About the author:

Nandagopal R. Menon is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics", University of Münster, Germany.

Reviews

"Going against the grain of the theological and ethical turns in the anthropology of Islam, Nandagopal R. Menon provides a unique and pathbreaking account of religious polemics. This is an outstanding contribution to the analysis of public religion in the contemporary world." - Patrick Eisenlohr, University of Göttingen

"This is a tightly argued and confidently written book which explores in a novel and original fashion some of the central issues which have animated debates concerning contemporary Islam ... It would be hard to find any book on Kerala Islam which can compete with it in ethnographic or analytical terms." - Filippo Osella, University of Sussex

Table of contents

The Way In
1. For and Against Polemics
2. Polemics versus Apologetics: Intimacy and Publicity
3. Techniques of Authentication: Originals, Counterfeits, and Publics
4. Phatic Sociality: Voice and Strategy in Intra-Muslim Encounters
Longing for Theology