Filippo Osella & Benjamin Soares 
Islam, Politics, Anthropology 

Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Special
Issue Book Series, Islam, Politics, Anthropology offers
critical reflections on past and current studies of Islam and
politics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches to
examining Islam in the post-9/11 world.

* Challenges current and past approaches to the study of Islam
and Muslim politics in anthropology

* Offers a critical comprehensive review of past and current
literature on the subject

* Presents innovative ethnographic description and analysis of
everyday Muslim politics in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and
North America

* Proposes new analytical approaches to the study of Islam and
Muslim politics

Table of Content

Notes on Contributors vii

1 Benjamin Soares & Filippo Osella Islam, politics, anthropology 1

2 Samuli Schielke Being good in Ramadan: ambivalence, fragmentation, and the moral self in the lives of young Egyptians 23

3 Hatsuki Aishima & Armando Salvatore Doubt, faith, and knowledge: the reconfiguration of the intellectual field in post-Nasserist Cairo 39

4 Magnus Marsden A tour not so grand: mobile Muslims in northern Pakistan 54

5 Kai Kresse Muslim politics in postcolonial Kenya: negotiating knowledge on the double-periphery 72

6 Rosa De Jorio Between dialogue and contestation: gender, Islam, and the challenges of a Malian public sphere 91

7 Lara Deeb Piety politics and the role of a transnational feminist analysis 107

8 Julie Mc Brien Mukadas’s struggle: veils and modernity in Kyrgyzstan 121

9 Irfan Ahmad Genealogy of the Islamic state: reflections on Maududi’s political thought and Islamism 138

10 Maimuna Huq Talking jihad and piety: reformist exertions among Islamist women in Bangladesh 156

11 Daromir Rudnyckyj Market Islam in Indonesia 175

12 Filippo Osella & Caroline Osella Muslim entrepreneurs in public life between India and the Gulf: making good and doing good 194

13 Gregory Starrett Islam and the politics of enchantment 213

Index 231

About the author

Filippo Osella is a Reader in Anthropology at the University
of Sussex, UK. For the past 20 years, Osella has conducted research
in South India, and more recently in a number of West Asian Gulf
countries. His current research focuses on the emergence of Islamic
reformist movements and the rise of a new Muslim middle class in
Kerala.

Benjamin Soares is an anthropologist and Senior Research
Fellow at the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Leiden, The Netherlands.
Soares’ publications include Islam and the Prayer Economy
(2005) and two edited volumes, Islam and Muslim Politics in
Africa (2007) and Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa
(2006).