Abstract
In this article we define a new concept that has not previously been theorized: non-Muslim Islam. We argue that theories and methodologies within Islamic studies produce a hierarchy between Muslim and non-Muslim productions of Islam, prioritizing the first. However, this article highlights that Islam may be produced for other purposes than belief in a deity; Islam may for example be important in producing non-Muslim identity, politics, aesthetics, narratives, etc. We therefore argue the case for studying non-Muslim Islam, because: 1) Non-Muslim Islams play an important role in Euro-American societies and are therefore interesting in and of themselves; 2) Non-Muslim Islams have a significant impact on Muslim Islams, and thus, we will not understand Muslim Islams without a clear understanding of non-Muslim Islams; 3) It is a way of insisting on an etic research epistemology. The article ends with a discussion of ethical and strategic benefits of adopting this approach.
A common way of defining the object of study within Islamic studies is provided by Edward E. Curtis, who states, “Wherever and whenever a person calls himself or herself Muslim, scholars should include this person’s voice in their understanding of what constitutes Islam” (Curtis 2002: 6; cf. Bowen 2012; Marranci 2008; Varisco 2005).1 Further, Curtis suggests that if scholars want to avoid essentialism “there is not and cannot be any one normative definition of Islamic tradition or its boundaries and limits” and he therefore urges scholars to “identify competing definitions of Islam by examining the historical interpretations of Muslims themselves” (Curtis 2002: 4). This notion of Islam being produced as discourse by Muslims, rather than as an object that has ontological existence beyond human interaction and communication, has been dominant within the anthropological study of Islam since the wide dissemination of discourse theory, somewhat propagated by Talal Asad’s (1986) working paper The idea of an anthropology of Islam (see, for example, Bowen 2016; Chan-Malik 2018; Hill 2018; Hirschkind 2009; Mahmood 2012; Masquelier 2009; Stenberg and Wood 2022; Renders 2021; Willerslev and Suhr 2018; Fadil 2019; Fadil and Fernando 2015). History of religion focused on Islam has gone through a similar development, but tends to use different terminologies (e.g., Bulliet 1994; Hodgson 1974; Robinson 2004).
Although Curtis’ definition seems clear, and despite the promising prospects of discourse theory, empirical observations do not always fit neatly into this paradigm. What does a researcher for example do when a group of Nizari-Ismaʾili Muslims believe in the Imams as avatars of the Hindu God Vishnu (Halm 1991/2004: 186), when a Muslim healing tradition seems more Hindu than Islamic (Flueckiger 2006), or when informants claim Muslim as their identity without believing in Mohammad as a prophet (Otterbeck 2010)? These are all well-known problems researchers encounter while doing fieldwork. Nadia Jeldtoft explains that while interviewing an informant,
I was constantly thinking “This woman is not Muslim.” Even though she self-identifies as a Muslim, I had trouble bending my own concept of religion to fit with her practices, because she did not do anything formally Islamic, but she did practice healing from a Japanese religious tradition.
Jeldtoft 2011: 1142–43
The dilemma of the fieldworker encountering Muslims highlights the role of theory and methodology: “in much research on Muslim identity-making, Islam often becomes the point of reference for Muslim behavior, and this is evident in, for example, how researchers choose their samples and recruit their interlocuters – that is, how they define methodologically who Muslims are” (Jeldtoft 2016: 27–28). In this quotation, Jeldtoft points to the main challenge of Curtis’ definition: how do researchers define who Muslims are, and thereby, which discourses get to count as Islamic?
We argue that Islamic studies does not need a definition of Muslim. To define people in relation to adherence to a creed is an inherently theological endeavor that requires a definition of the creed as well. Definitions of who is Muslim or not constitute theological claims to be studied; they are not discussions to be ventured into by researchers. Anyone can produce Islam, irrespective of religious identity, and it is the job of researchers to investigate the processes of such productions, even if they are produced by non-Muslims.
In this article, we theorize a new concept non-Muslim Islam and define the related phenomena non-Muslim traditions of Islam interpretation and non-Muslim Islamic authority.2 The purpose is to open avenues of research in non-Muslim Islam – Islam without the worship of Allah, so to speak. We begin the article by presenting the three most important reasons why research on non-Muslim Islam is important. This is followed by an analysis of the theoretical implications of including non-Muslim Islam as a research object, and how this constitutes a departure from discussions on Orientalism, and finally we argue that – in addition to the scientific benefits of widening the scope of Islamic studies – there are strategic and ethical advantages of including non-Muslim Islam as a research object.
1 Why Study Non-Muslim Islams?
In the following, we will highlight the three most important reasons for studying non-Muslim Islams: 1) Non-Muslim Islams play an important role in Euro-American societies and are therefore interesting in and of themselves;3 2) They have a significant impact on Muslim Islams, and thus, we will not understand Muslim Islams without a clear understanding of non-Muslim Islams; 3) It is a way of insisting on an etic research epistemology.
1.1 Non-Muslim Islams Are Important in Euro-American Societies
First, non-Muslim Islams play an important role in Euro-American societies and are therefore interesting in and of themselves, even if they are not oriented towards worship of Allah. Curtis remarks that even “the very definition of freedom, goodness, beauty, and justice invoke Islam and Muslims in one way or another” (2014). In other words, Islam plays a role in the production of important concepts in society, and thus we should expect all humans – Muslim and non-Muslim – to produce Islam because doing so is part of producing discourse in these societies. For example, in his Cairo speech, former President Barack Obama made his efforts to define Islam explicit, declaring al-Qaida and the Taliban heretics based on his interpretation of the Quran 5:32:
Their actions are irreconcilable … with Islam. The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as – it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.
Obama 20094
In the speech Obama also stated that “partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.” He constructed a “true” Islam that is compliant with US foreign policy interests, one that is “not part of the problem in combating violent extremism” but rather “an important part of promoting peace.” In his defining a non-Muslim Islam, Obama echoes prior American presidents and a segment of European political leaders in the aftermath of 9/11 (Mamdani 2004). However, the notion of arguing theology with Muslims to further US-political interests is not new. In 2003, the RAND corporation for example suggested that the US venture into theological discussions with extremists to “challenge their interpretation of Islam and expose inaccuracies” (Bernard 2003: xii). This constitutes what we call a non-Muslim tradition of Islam interpretation to highlight the history, structure, and power dynamics of non-Muslim productions of Islam (Bourdieu 1986: 15).
However, politicians with other political agendas than Obama preach different non-Muslim Islams, belonging to different non-Muslim traditions of Islam interpretation. To take a European example, when arguing the case for curtailing Muslim migration to Denmark, the former member of Parliament representing the Danish People’s Party, Martin Henriksen,5 explains about the Quran 5:32,
If one reads the whole verse, then one understands that the commandment about not killing a human … applies to the Jews. So, it is simply … Allah who commands the Jews, Israel’s people, that if they kill a human then it is equal to killing the whole of humankind, and I can read it [to you]. It is sura 5 verse 32, where it says ….
Henriksen 2020
Contrary to Obama, Henriksen argues that the commandment not to kill is addressed to Jews, and thus, it does not apply to Muslims. Therefore, he concludes, Muslims cannot legitimately argue that Islam is a peaceful religion based on this verse; an argument that echoes non-Muslim Islams preached by other European opposition parties such as the French Front Nationale, the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid, the German Alternative für Deutschland, and the Austrian Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, just to name a few. Interestingly, Henriksen is fully aware that Muslims may disagree with him,
But I would also like to underline that I do know that in fact there are many Muslims who do not know their own scripture, who do not know the Quran very well, and who do not know the hadiths very well, and who think that Islam is a religion of peace. But go read your own scripture, then you will realize that this is not at all the case.
Henriksen 2020
In other words, Obama and Henriksen – two politicians active in very different contexts – reach opposing interpretations of the Quran 5:32 that fits well with their political agendas. Both positions are theological and categorize a segment of Muslims as heretics: Obama frames a zealous segment of people who invest a significant amount of energy and most of their identity in being Muslims (Taliban, al-Qaida, etc.) as being outside Islam whereas Henriksen argues the opposite: that Muslims making claims about Islam being a peaceful religion have misunderstood Islam; in his eyes the zealots got it right. Even if Obama and Henriksen interpret the Quran in very different ways, they both present themselves to the public as de facto authorities on Islam, but non-Muslim, and they venture into theological debates as non-Muslim Islamic authorities, providing scriptural evidence (dalil) based on their engagement with the Quran (for another European politician, who adresses Obama’s non-Muslim Islam directly, see Wilders 2012).
However, opposing Muslim Islams is not just a political phenomenon, it also exists among scholars. In response to a Muslim intellectual, Tarek Ziad Hussein (2015), arguing with reference to the Quran 5:32 that the killing of civilians is not allowed in Islam, Professor of Quranic studies, Thomas Hoffmann, rebutted with an opinion piece in which he stated that this verse “does not constitute a commandment to Muslims but a commandment to Jews” adding that Hussain’s arguments are “so amazingly weak that they tend towards misinformation” and are “based on Hussain’s very careless references to the Quran” (Hoffmann 2015). Interestingly, Hoffmann acknowledges the popularity of Hussain’s interpretation, which he explains is “in heavy-rotation on social media.”
Hughes (2012; 2015b; 2015a) has demonstrated how a segment of Muslim scholars are engaged in productions of Islams that are liberal, inclusive, feministic, and promoting peace. However, as demonstrated with Hoffmann, conflation of research epistemologies and theology is a phenomenon that can be found in a much broader scope of scholars than Hughes suggests; it is not just a phenomenon among Muslim scholars.
Just to be clear, we do not see a problem in scholars producing theology if it is clearly labeled as such. However, there is a clear epistemological difference between producing theology and producing research within the humanities. Theology and humanities research make very different ontological claims and it is therefore important, as Hughes argues, to make a clear distinction between theology and humanities research.6
Even though we have so far focused on politicians, they are but one group of non-Muslims who produce Islam. In fact, there are many more non-Muslim traditions of interpretation: Conspiracists (e.g., Yeʾor 2005), terrorists (e.g., Breivik 2011), political commentators (e.g., Geller 2011), critiques of religion (e.g., Spencer 2012), authors of fiction (e.g., Houellebecq 2016), and former Muslims (e.g., Ameen 2009), are but a few who produce non-Muslim Islam. Furthermore, industries such as music studios (Otterbeck, Mattsson, and Pastene 2018), news media (Abu-Lughod 2013), and films studios invest significant resources in fiction and non-fiction productions in which Muslims play roles as villains and heroes. In other words, non-Muslim Islam is ubiquitous in Euro-American societies but theory and methodology within Islamic studies remain narrowly focused on Muslim Islam.
The resources being invested in developing and disseminating non-Muslim interpretations of Islam and non-Muslim productions of Muslim identity is astounding and indicate that these are of major importance to their producers (Bourdieu 1986). However, non-Muslim Islam should not be reduced to cynical power politics, bigotry, political opportunism, prejudice, or apologetics (even if this may sometimes be the case). Rather, it should be investigated.
1.2 We Will Not Understand Muslim Islam without a Clear Understanding of Non-Muslim Islam
Second, although not framed as such, non-Muslim Islams have a significant – and well-studied – impact on Muslim Islams. In a Scandinavian context, Jonas Otterbeck (2000; 2010; 2014; 2016), Garbi Schmidt (2007), and Pia Karlsson Minganti (2012; 2014) have demonstrated that stereotypes of and prejudices against Muslims is an important motivation for young Muslims to begin studying Islam. That is, when presented with stereotypes and prejudices many Muslims begin exploring and studying Islam, thus producing a Muslim identity and a heritage that they will defend in relation to non-Muslims. Similarly, Petersen (2022) has demonstrated that non-Muslim Islams play an important role in the planning of new institutions, Pernille Friis Jensen (2019; 2022) has demonstrated that teaching in Danish mosques, among other subjects focus on defending oneself against Islamophobia, and Nadia Jeldtoft (2011) has demonstrated that even non-organized Muslims, for whom Islam does not play a significant role, find knowledge about Islam important because it has an emancipatory effect in relation to both Muslim and non-Muslim Islams. In short, non-Muslim Islams matter to Muslims as they are confronted with them and self-define in relation to them, and sometimes they even venture into theological debates with non-Muslims (Jensen 2019; 2022; Petersen 2022; Schmidt 2007). The latter is an important point as Muslims often struggle to self-define due to the asymmetrical power relation that sometimes empowers the non-Muslim majority to define the identity and beliefs of the minority (Cesari 2013; Jeldtoft 2011).
While the Scandinavian studies mentioned above focus on how encounters between non-Muslims and Muslims are a driving force in Muslim productions of Islam, there are also relations in which Muslims take inspiration from non-Muslim Islam. Megan Brankley Abbas (2021: 123) has for example demonstrated the influence of the “Western” university on Islam, among other points demonstrating, “By the 1980s, the university of Chicago had emerged, alongside McGill, as a crucial academic incubator of Indonesian Islamic Leadership” (cf. Petersen 2022: 86).
Likewise, Muslims taking inspiration from non-Muslims is also a phenomenon in popular culture such as within the music industry (Otterbeck 2021a). Since its birth out of the New York street culture of the 1970s, hip-hop has evolved into a truly global artform with a diversity of discourses being expressed using Islamic semiotic resources (Ackfeldt 2019). The movement Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE) for example clearly identifies with and uses Islamic semiotic resources but they do not consider themselves Muslim (Miyakawa 2005). This caused definitional problems for both researchers and members of the hip-hop community when the American rapper and NGE member Rakim Allah was chosen as the most influential Muslim MC of all time by the leading hip-hop WebTV channel VladTV. When asked about this Rakim Allah explained,
No, we are not Muslims, but we study the same lessons. Muslims have a slightly different belief than the way – the Nation of Islam – you know, the Five Percent Nation. It is similar, but you know, the Muslim submits to the will of Allah, but we come in the divine name of Allah. So, it is a little different ….
Allah 2011
That is, Rakim Allah is not a Muslim, but he is so influential among Muslims that he is named the most influential Muslim MC.
1.3 Insisting on an Etic Research Epistemology
Third, the insider/outsider metaphor assumes a locus where the production of Islam takes place, and this is typically assumed to happen among Muslims. However, this is an unfounded assumption, because non-Muslims also produce Islam, and therefore, a researcher may as well take the position of an outsider to the production of non-Muslim Islam inside a political party. As both Muslims and non-Muslims produce Islam there is no epistemological reason to privilege one over the other. Doing so produces what Jacques Derrida (1967/1997) calls a dangerous supplement. That is, it introduces a hierarchy between Muslim and non-Muslim Islam that says more about the observers’ values and notions about appropriateness than the phenomena they observe. In other words, privileging Muslim Islam over non-Muslim Islam in research is the outcome of methodological and theoretical choices made by researchers rather than based on empirical observation.
Although it has become common for Islamic studies scholars to address the wide dissemination and power of non-Muslim Islam – even in introductory books on Islam – they never write the increasingly important standalone chapter on non-Muslim Islam. To take an example, Aaron W. Hughes (2013: 1) opens his otherwise excellent book Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam by noting that some books on Islam “seek to undermine the religion” and these “play a large role in shaping public discourse about what Islam is or, perhaps better, is supposed to be” (cf. Hallaq 2009: 1). In other words, Hughes find non-Muslim productions of Islam so important and influential that they need to be addressed in the first lines of his book, and repeatedly throughout the introduction. However, there is no epistemological reason not to state the opposite: that Muslims undermine non-Muslim Islam. Islamic feminists could for example be seen as undermining the Islam being produced on the political far-right wing, and this may explain why these two groups sometimes get into conflict with one another.7 To privilege Muslim Islam is to overlook the importance of Islam to non-Muslims who may need it to produce their own identity and a meaningful existence. Therefore, Muslim and non-Muslim Islam must be studied as competing for recognition, even if some Islams constitute simulacra (Baudrillard 1994/2020).
2 Where Is Islam?
An etic definition of Islam cannot be formulated, and while substitutes such as discursive tradition(s) (Asad 1986) or an anthropology of being Muslim (rather than an anthropology of Islam) (Schielke 2010) may be operable, they end up giving an etic answer to the problematic question: what is Islam?8 This is so because there can be no Muslim without Islam, and thus, definition of either depends on the definition of the other.
With inspiration from Jonas Otterbeck (2021b) we argue that the right question is: where is Islam? Thus, we substitute the problem of an etic definition of Islam with a methodology for identifying Islam. At first hand this substitution may seem subject to the same problem as Asad’s and Schielke’s approaches, but on closer inspection it defers this identifying to empirical observation, and as we will demonstrate in the following, identifying productions of Islam is a solvable methodological problem.
Islam as an object of study is only available to researchers in the form of human communication, including non-linguistic forms such as gestures, scents, visualities, sounds, etc. Even embodied Islam such as emotions are only available to researchers through informants’ communication about them (Barrett 2017; Lazarus 1994; Riis and Woodhead 2010). In other words, Islam does not manifest as a phenomenon that can be studied except in communication, understood broadly as multimodal (Kress 2009). We, therefore, suggest the following approach to identifying productions of Islam: any communication humans intend to encode as Islamic produces Islam irrespective of the identity of the encoder, and anything that is decoded as Islamic produces Islam irrespective of the intentions of the encoder. In the latter case, the decoder becomes the producer of Islam (Derrida 1977).
Thus, one can communicate using Islamic semiotic resources without producing Islam because semiotic resources are neither Islamic nor non-Islamic in and of themselves, but they have the potential to be encoded and/or decoded as Islamic (Halliday 1978; Hodge and Kress 1988; Leeuwen 2005; Vannini 2007). The already mentioned non-Muslim hip-hop artist, Rakim Allah, for example, uses Islamic semiotic resources, but his music is decoded as Islamic or non-Islamic depending on audience. Likewise, Inayat Khan may intended to produce Islam, even if this was a somewhat perennialist Islam, but his discourse is decoded as Islamic or non-Islamic depending on audience (Sedgwick 2017). In other words, Islam emerges in meaning making processes (communication), and we will therefore use social semiotics for our identification-of-Islam-strategy,
In social semiotics resources are signifiers, observable actions and objects that have been drawn into the domain of social communication and that have a theoretical semiotic potential constituted by all their past uses and all their potential uses and an actual semiotic potential constituted by those past uses that are known to and considered relevant by the users of the resources, and by such potential uses as might be uncovered by the users on the basis of their specific needs and interests. Such uses take place in a social context, and this context may either have rules or best practices that regulate how specific semiotic resources can be used, or leave the users relatively free in their use of the resource.
Leeuwen 2005: 49
To take an example, Mohammad may not have intended to produce nikah as Islamic marriage when he engaged in common Arabian tribal marriage practices, but because he did, nikah from then on had the potential to be produced as Islamic marriage. Using social semiotics as a framework we may say that Mohammad’s practice of common Arabian marriage traditions produced a “semiotic potential” that was “drawn into the domain of social communication” later in history when it was “considered relevant by the users of the resources … on the basis of their specific needs and interests.” However, as pointed out by Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (2020), in history non-Muslims have put significant energy into producing Mohammads (in the plural) that they considered relevant to their own discourse. Thus, nikah – for example in relation to the narratives about Aisha – may also be defined by non-Muslims.
Furthermore, notions of cohesion such as the Ummah, continuity with the past, and the singularity of Islam is a shared characteristic of most productions of Islam. Alasdair MacIntyre explains, “We all too often still treat the moral philosophers of the past as contributors to a single debate with a relatively unvarying subject-matter, treating Plato and Hume and Mills as contemporaries both of ourselves and each other” (1981/2014: 13). In other words, the singularity of this debate and the topic being discussed is a construct of ever new presents – a way of relating to pasts and futures. Even the most zealous Salafi Muslims, claiming that they observe Mohammad’s Islam, are producing Mohammad’s practices themselves in their present. No one can imitate the Islam that existed at the time of Mohammad because discourses die with the contexts that sustain them (Petersen 2022: 13). There is no pre-modern tribal society in existence today that could facilitate Salafists’ imitation of life in 7th century Arabia; neither would Salafists – or Muslims in general – be likely to recognize the practices of the 7th century as Islamic.
To wrap up this section on the location of Islam, we would like to point out that some of the most dominant Islams found in Euro-American societies are produced by researchers, whose productions of Islam are disseminated in society through textbooks written for the educational system, often privileging ulama’s tendency to emphasize scripture and learned traditions (e.g., Brown 2017; Rahman 1979; Rippin 2018)10 and through researchers’ role as experts on Islam and Muslims in the media.
3 Orientalism and Non-Muslim Islam
In his influential book Orientalism Edward Said (1979/2003) pointed to systematic shortcomings in research such as biases, power asymmetries, and the role of Othering. Within Islamic studies and the larger fields of humanities and social science this perspective has generated a large body of important scholarly work (e.g., Boone 2014; Roh, Huang, and Niu 2015; Graf, Fathi, and Paul 2010), while also receiving its fair share of critique (e.g., Varisco 2017; al-ʿAzm 2019). Within the anthropological study of Islam, Said’s perspective has made researchers pay more attention to Muslim voices.
While Orientalist epistemology reverses inherited hierarchies, paying more attention to Muslim voices, it also tends to erase non-Muslim voices by labeling them Orientalist. Thus, Orientalist critique defines a set of values that it enforces as good and proper – e.g., that only Muslims ought to define Islam. We will not venture into an argument on what is good and proper, as this is a political question. However, as we have argued in the above, there is no epistemological reason to privilege Muslim over non-Muslim Islams from a research perspective, and to claim that only Muslims produce Islam contradicts empirical observation.
From the perspective proposed in this article, any discourse produced as Islamic constitutes Islam, irrespective of its producer. To be blunt, Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Muslim Islam is not more authentic than Geert Wilders’ (2012) non-Muslim Islam. However, these Islams are perceived as authentic by different groups of people. Wilder’s non-Muslim Islam cannot merely be written off as Orientalist discourse; it must be taken seriously and investigated as an Islam, authentic to his audience. In its emphasis on Othering, Orientalist critique highlights that non-Muslim productions of Islam say more about its non-Muslim producers than about Islam and Muslims, and while there may be some truth to this, it does not help us to fully understand the discourses being produced. In other words, analysis must not stop once a discourse has been labeled as Orientalist, rather that is the beginning of the analysis.
Non-Muslim Islam introduces an ideal of value neutrality and a program of de-politization to the study of Islam and emphasizes that good and bad are not research categories; they are political categories. From a research-oriented perspective, Obama’s Islam is, therefore, neither better nor worse than Henriksen’s Islam; these are just different non-Muslim Islams, which produce markedly different effects in their particular audiences. From the perspective we propose, orientalists become non-Muslim producers of Islam without this having any negative connotations.
Finally, it is important to stress that Muslim and non-Muslim Islam, on the one hand, and Islam based on research epistemologies, on the other, do not necessarily contradict one another – even if they sometimes seem to be at variance with one another – because research epistemologies lead to different ontological claims than Muslim and non-Muslim Islamic theologies.
4 The Ethics and Politics of Studying Non-Muslim Islam
Muslim Islam is not undermined by scholars taking non-Muslim Islam seriously and studying it as a phenomenon. Rather, the distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim Islam empowers Muslims to define Islam while restricting non-Muslims to define non-Muslim Islam. Thus, to make the point – as we have done above – that there is no epistemological argument for privileging Muslim Islam over non-Muslim Islam is not to take away Muslims right to define Muslim Islam; it is to give it back to Muslims.
In addition to this, Islamic studies scholars have an ethical obligation to understand and describe non-Muslims’ production of Islam that goes beyond pointing out its inadequacy when compared to research standards, or even worse, engaging in rather unscholarly and uninteresting labeling such as bigots, Islamophobes, or racists. It may very well be that some non-Muslims are bigots, Islamophobes, or racists from some perspectives, but surely there are also perspectives – such as their own – from which they are freedom fighters, standing up for democracy, Western values, and women’s rights (as these are defined within their discourse). Good scholarship is driven by curiosity; it investigates and explains phenomena rather than reacts to them.
Furthermore, politicians, journalists, debaters, and public intellectuals exert power by making themselves authorities on knowledge about Islam, and when researchers venture into arguments on this basis, they accept their claim to authority. However, scholars’ use of research epistemologies to arrive at their conclusions sets their knowledge apart from other kinds of knowledge. Instead of venturing into debates as if research-based knowledge and self-proclaimed expertise were of the same nature, researchers must study the latter’s production of Islam. There is no reason to privilege non-Muslim productions of Islam with the status of being in dialogue with scholarly knowledge, but there are many good reasons to study it.
It is important to underline that scholarly knowledge is never better than the standard of its method and epistemology, and scholars who venture into ontological debates on Islam – critical or apologetical – are not engaged with scholarship as we define it. Rather, they are engaged in production of Islam as theology, and thus, their productions of Islam constitute objects of study (Hughes 2012; 2015a). This is not an argument against the legitimacy of producing theology; we merely highlight a crucial difference between disciplines.
5 Conclusion – What Needs to Be Done?
We would like to underline that despite the linguistic frame of this article, dividing Islam into Muslim and non-Muslim, we do not intend to introduce a dichotomy. Rather, we use this language to highlight non-Muslim Islam as a significant shortcoming within Islamic studies. Likewise, although we have argued the point in a Euro-American context, we do not claim that the phenomenon is confined to this region.
There is no epistemological argument for maintaining the notion that Muslim Islam is more valid than non-Muslim Islam. All that can be argued is that these are different phenomena. Researchers should not get entangled in theological disputes on who is Muslim and who is not as these definitions always lead to definitions of Islam (one cannot define one without defining the other). Instead, we have proposed a methodology of identifying Islam as something encoded or decoded in multimodal communication by people, Muslim or non-Muslim. That is, no etic definition of Islam can be formulated, but methodologies of identifying Islam can be developed.
The re-conceptualization of Islam as produced by both Muslims and non-Muslims will expand the empirical scope of Islamic studies considerably, and it will furthermore highlight non-Muslim Islam as a significant variable that has not been considered within political science, minority studies, media studies, and beyond. The amount of resources invested in producing non-Muslim Islam indicates that non-Muslims have something important at stake.
Theories and methodologies must be adapted to the, by now, common empirical observation that non-Muslims produce Islam, and this phenomenon should be studied as a separate phenomenon and included as standalone chapters in textbooks on Islam and as courses in Islamic studies programs. Otherwise, Islamic studies as a field of research ends up being blind to one of the most potent and ubiquitous productions of Islam in contemporary Euro-American societies.
Acknowledgements
Anders Ackfeldt’s work on this article has been funded by: The Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.
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We have contributed equally to this article.
Petersen (2022: 15–17) has previously used these terms in ethnographic description, but the theorization of the concepts contained in this article goes beyond his previous work.
In this article we make the case for studying non-Muslim Islam in a Euro-American context, but this is not to say that the phenomenon is confined to this region.
In the speech Obama, furthermore, quotes the Quran 33:70, 49:13, and makes an explicit reference to the story of al-Isra (sura 17).
We have chosen Henriksen, a politician concerned with domestic politics in one of Europe’s smallest nation states communicating via a video on Facebook, as a contrast to Obama, who is talking on the geopolitical scene with the world as his audience. Danish People’s party became Denmark’s second largest party at the election in 2015 but was reduced to the third largest (of ten parties in parliament) at the election in 2019 (measured on share of the vote).
It goes without saying that to adopt a researcher’s perspective is not necessarily a non-Muslim perspective. Muslims may produce research on Islam and Muslims just as well as non-Muslims.
To take an example, the female Imam in Copenhagen, Sherin Khankan performs Islamic marriages between non-Muslim men and Muslim women, endorses LGBTQ-marriage, delivers the Friday sermon, and leads Friday prayer. However, she has continuously throughout her career been accused of being an Islamist by right wing politicians and debaters, and in 2018 she even filed a lawsuit against three members of parliament for defamation in relation their framing of her as a radical Muslim and Islamist (Petersen 2022).
Curtis’ (2014) approach, quoted in the first paragraph of this article, runs into the same problem as Schielke’s approach because it points to religious identity, and by extension to creed.
Emphasis is in the original.
These are all good introductions to Islamicate texts, learned traditions, and dogma, but their titles suggest that they are much more: introductions to Islam. Within the last two decades a new type of introduction has emerged, and it makes more modest claims and defines its perspective as anthropological (e.g. Bowen 2012; Marranci 2008). Further, within the last decade, a few authors who make the bold claim to introduce Islam have begun incorporating a broader range of perspectives (e.g., Hughes 2013; Raudvere 2012), but these introductions are still few in numbers and do not include non-Muslim Islam.