A Phenomenological Approach to the Study of Lived Islam and Muslimness

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CHAPTER 13
A
Phenomenological
Approach
to
the
Study
of
Lived
Islam
and
Muslimness
Emin
Poljarevic
1
Introduction
This
chapter suggests
a
phenomenological approach
to
studying
lived
Islam
as
a
broad, multilayered, and complex
historical
phenomenon
that consists of
a
range of practices and theological understandings of
global Muslim popu-
lations. It
suggests
a
methodological approach where researchers’ intentions
and consciousness about studied phenomena is contextualized within the
broader
civilizational
project
of
Islamdom.
This
means
that scholars of
Islamic
Studies are encouraged to
reflect
more systematically on their intentions in
relation to the analytical questions regarding Muslim communities and indi-
viduals, and
Islam as
a
multifaceted
tradition
more
broadly.
1
Islamdom is here
briefly
defined
in the light of the understanding of the
scholar
who
coined
the
term,
Marshall
G.S.
Hodgson, as Islamicate civilization
based
a
theory
of
civilization.
Islamdom represents an
aggregate
of
collective
claims to power,
collective
action, and
influence
in Muslim majority contexts
and in
a
range of fields. This means that Islam as
a
religious tradition has
contributed greatly
to
the evolution of
a
dynamic systems of cultural,
social,
economic, political systems that are rooted in distinctive sets of
guiding prin-
ciples,
ethics,
and theological premises.
2
At the same time, the
aggregate
of
understandings of these characteristics and oftentimes contested principles
have
both been affected
by
and also,
influenced
a
wide range of other com-
1
This does not
suggest tha t
Muslims are somehow
exceptional and separate from social
real
-
ity. On the contrary; lived experiences, embodied practices, emotional experiences, modes
of
habitus, symbolic and
political acts and discourses are all relevant in
varying
ways in the
analysis of
meanings and expressions of
Muslimness. The same could be
said
about
broad
categories such
as
“Christians"
or
“Atheists,”
for
that
matter.
2 The smallest common denominator for the vast number of people and groups who self-
identify as Muslims is the recognition of
tawhid
and the (pre-)historical institution of
prophethood
as
expressed in the Quranic
text.
Moreover, this includes understanding that
the Qur’an represents
the last
divine communication
to
humans.
©
EMIN POLJAREVIC, 2023
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2023 Emin
Poljarevic
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Poljarevic

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
peting and correlating religious and philosophical traditions
intellectually,
discursively, and
practically.
This
means
that Islam can
be studied
as
din
in
the (Weltanschauung) broad
sense of that word, but also as
a
range of expressions of what
din
means to
its
devotees, including
other
interlocutors.
3
The argument
here,
without
in-
depth discussion due to the format of the
text,
is that the somewhat fuzzy
term Islamdom presents arguably
the most effective
way
of
conceptually out-
lining the borders of contents and meanings of the term Islam. More impor-
tantly, Islamdom
as
a
conceptual
canopy
covers
a
wide
range
of
what Islam
means
to its adherents together
with their adversaries and competitors. This
includes the
diversity
of
their intellectual and theological understandings,
practices, power-relations, and projects
within
a
range
of
religious, legal,
socio-political, economic, and other
structures through
time and space.
4
This
suggests
that
a
researcher
within
the
field
of
Islamic Studies ought
to
be
famil-
iar
with
some, if
not
most, elements
that are constitutive of
Islamdom, at
least in
relation
to its
history
and/or
contemporary
context.
The chapter seeks to take note of
findings
in
recent scholarship within the
field
of
Islamic Studies and
develop
a
potential
way
out
of the
blurr of
the
per
petually descriptive studies of religion
and
method-centered social sci-
ences that has become common practice within this nebulous scholarly
field.
This is done
with
a
particular epistemic notion in mind. This notion is
highlighted
by
the late Pierre Bourdieu, who suggested that in any
social
field
including an academic
and
epistemic
field
there are certain
modes of
habitus
and
forms of
capital that need
to be considered as guiding
mecha-
nisms for
those participants in
the
field.
5
This
means that scholars are not
blank
slates
who relate to the
studied
object
in
an
neutral
fashion,
but
rather
co-creators
of
research
content
and
thereby
new
knowledge
by
the mere fact
of
interacting
with
humans,
texts,
and phenomena of
interest. Islamic studies
scholars, as various experts in other
fields
of
knowledge,
are
deeply
familiar
with
aspects
of
Islam
understood differently and on
the range of
epistemic
and even ontological premises. The processes of
interaction
with
“objects”
of
study
is
a
two-way
streak
as
it
were.
More concretely, consider the following vignette generated from
my
field
research in
an
Islamicate society.
Back in 2009, in downtown Cairo, shortly after the sunset, I, as
a
researcher, had an encounter with
a
group of six young individuals who
initiated
a
noisy conversation in
a
local coffeehouse. The topic of the
main part of the 2-hour conversation is whet her it is permissible for
a
Muslim
polity
to try
to
establish, or rather, support, the establishment of
liberal democratic order in
a
Muslim majority society. In the mid-point
of the conversation, I identify three distinguishable positions that seem
to
manifest during the conversation. Two of the individuals
involved
in
the conversation dismissed the idea that liberal democracy is
a
relevant
option for their own society [Egyptin the
21st
cent.]. Three other individ
-
uals
in various ways argue that democracy is both Islamically desirable
and even mandated as
a
process
by
which to transfer political power
from one government to another [government rooted in popular
will].
One participant maintains
a
position that political power, democratic or
authoritarian ought to be
“totally”
separated from Islam, primarilydue to
the corrupt nature of
politics
and liberalism in relation
to
the timeless
and universalistic nature of
Islam
[a sort of quietism]. All three con-
stellations of participants made irregular references to
a
number of the
Quranic verses and prophetic narrations, and
also
some contemporary
and historical [religious] authorities. The conversation yields no coher-
ent agreement, and it comes to an unhurried stop as the
call
to prayer
is sounded from
a
nearby mosque. All of the
six
individuals are
slowly
leaving
the coffeehouse and walking towards the mosque for an evening
prayer.
What
we
can understand from the vignette depends fundamentally on the
kind of
description provided. Nevertheless,
a
reader’s own cultural, social, his-
torical,
philosophical, scholarly etc. competence
also
play
a
crucial
role
in
processing the description
above.
In addition, what is the question that one
might
pose to
such
a
scene, including
a
person’s
intentions,
interests, and
rela-
tions with the subject matter. All of it guides the process through which an
observer decodes
a
multitude of
expressions, its meanings, relationships with
the
location
and
time
within
which
it
all
takes
place.
Add
to
this
the
lack
of
suf-
ficient
description of
perceived
participants’ emotional
states, expressed
body
language, their
clothes, and
modes
of
personal
interaction, including
informa-
tion about their culture
specific
visual clues that could further contextualize
meanings of
the discusses
topic. Such considerations are rarely,
if
ever,
explic-
itly
discussed
in
scholarly
texts
written
by
scholars of
Islamic
history
and
other
adjacent
subject
areas.
This
is
a
problem.
The problem consists of several levels, one of
which is the habitual blur-
ring of descriptive studies of religion and method-oriented social sciences
3
Abbasi, Rushain,
“Islam
and
the
Invention
of
Religion:
Study
of
Medieval
Muslim Discourses
on
Din,”
Studio.
Isiamica
116
(2021):
1-106.
4
This
tentative
and
general
argument
rests
on
an
understanding
of
Hodgson
Ventures
of
Islam,
1,
57-60,
and
it
is informed
by Salvatore,
Armando, The
Sociology
of
Islam:
Knowledge,
Power
and
Civility
(Hoboken,
NJ:
Wiley
2016).
5
See Bourdieu, Pierre, The Rules of
Art: Genesis
and Structure of
the
Artistic Field
(Stanford:
Stanford University
Press,
1996).
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267 268
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
approaches in
a
number of studies within Islamic Studies discussed below.
This
arguably unsystematic blurring of
social sciences, such as sociology and
political science with humanistic
fields
such as history and religious studies,
has become common practice within what can be described
as
the nebu-
lous
field
of Islamic Studies today.
This
process of blurring is at the same
time (re)creating an academic
field
that experiences an epistemic crisis of
sorts. The crisis consists largely out of
difficulty
to establish
a
firm
epistemic
ground upon which to
evaluate
and effectively analyze
a
range of evolution-
ary
processes of
Islamdom, including
the diversity
within
Islamicate societies,
and the range of
expressions of
Muslimness.
This
multiplicity and interpreta-
tive
diversity
among
Muslims are usually interpreted as multiple iterations of
Islam,
hence some deduce that there is no Islam per se, but many different
“Islams.”
6
This is
a
perplexing
notion
as
it
obscures
the fact
that contemporary
Muslims’ negotiations
between
their
social
behavior
and
the utility
of
sources
of Islamic tradition contained in basic norms, ethics, doctrines, sources, his-
tories, contexts
etc.
are reflections of multiplicity of interpretation of Islam
and
not
fundamentally
separate
notions
of
Muslims’ experiences of
the
world,
hence Islams.
It is therefore not surprising to
find
strong contestations between various
academic circles in Islamic Studies in the Europe and North America where
some hold that notion of many Islams correspond
to
empirical observations
and others who hold interpret same social realities as iterations of
a
range of
interpretations of constitutively one polyphonic and
historically
rooted reli-
gious tradition and civilization
—
Islam. Such contestations are in many
ways
a
driving
force
behind
development
of
these dynamic
epistemic communities
and
scholarly
environments.
This
particular
driving
force
is in
a
way
a
remnant
or
a
biproduct
of
the disintegration process of
the early
20th
century
oriental-
ist
scholars’ attempts to understand the Muslim “other” and their attempts to
understand
the authenticity
of
Islamic otherness.
7
Orientalism, is here broadly understood as
a
19th
century European
collo-
nial approach to the study of
Islam
by
primarily
philologists,
anthropologists
and Islamicists. These scholars approached the study of Islamicate societies,
its histories, cultures, ethics, subjectivities, notions of
sacred and
profane
etc.
in order to both understand and subjugate
its
populations politically, ideo-
logically, and
intellectually.
8
At the same time, Orientalists,
like
specialists of
the olden days in other
subject areas later
defined
as
humanities, expressed
a
range of
personal biases in relation to the studied sources, people, and histo
-
ries.
It is worth noting that regardless of
the types of
critique
leveled
against
orientalists’
biases,
constructions, and tropes regarding
Islam
and Muslims,
Orientalism has
laid
ground for the academic endeavor to simultaneously
understand and construct the image of the Muslim “other” throughout the
20th century and into the 21st
century.
9
There is nevertheless more to this
story. Here is
a
limited
overview
which can help us understand how to more
constructively
interpret
the contents of
the
above
vignette.
2
Dislodgment
of
Orientalism
On
the one
hand,
Wael
Hallaq
provides an
astute analysis
together
with
a
seri-
ous critique of modernity both of
which are connected
to
a
meticulous crit-
icism of Orientalist approaches to Islam. Hallaq’s principal argument seems
to be that the main body of Orientalist scholars worked from the modernist
assumption of cultural superiority vis-a-vis non-Europeans (i.e. Orientals).
This is, according to Hallaq, in line with the “positivist”
way that economists
and other
proponents of
scientism
saw
the world. Economists work from the
modernistic assumptions
that depart
from ideas of
historical
materialism
ren-
dering economics as an elucidating science. Underlying these modernistic
assumptions seems to be
a
set of claims that human behavior can be pre-
dicted
much
like
other
processes
in
nature.
Hallaq’s
critique is centered
on
the
notion that Orientalists’
affinity
towards materialism and positivism empties
all
human action of ethics. This, he
claims,
creates
a
whole range of real-life
problems that stretches
far
beyond scholarly and intellectual debates about
semantics, meanings, and
imagining.
10
Zachary Lockman, on
the other
hand, traces more concretely
a
number of
polemical threads among Orientalists mapping
a
number of important Ori-
entalist contributions to Islamic Studies in the 20th
century.
For instance,
8
See
Jung, Dietrich, Orientalists,
Islamists and
the
Global
Public
Sphere:
A
Genealogy
of
the
Modem
Essentialist
Image
of
Islam, Sheffield:
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
9 Varisco,
Daniel Martin. Reading Orientalism:
Said
and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of
Washington Press,
2017),
Kalmar, Ivan.
Early
Orientalism:
Imagined
Islam and
the
Notion
of
Sublime
Power
(New
York:
Routledge, 2012).
10
Wael
Hallaq,
Restating
Orientalism:
A
Critique
of
Modem
Knowledge
(New
York:
Columbia
University Press,
2018):
183-190,
227-250.
6
See for example Otterbeck,
Jonas, “Finding
the object of
study: Islamic studies in practice,”
International
Journal
of Religion,
2,
no.
1
(2021).
7
See
Abdul
Latif,
Tibawi,
“English
Speaking
Orientalists:
a
Critique of
Their
Approach
to
Islam
and
to
Arab Nationalism,”
Muslim World 53,
no.
3-4
(1963).
Also, Kojin, Karatani, “Uses
of
Aesthetics:
After
Orientalism,”
Boundary
2
25,
no.
2
(1998):
145-160.
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269 270
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
Lockman demonstrates
how
some of
the polemical discussion between
those
focused on
presenting Muslims as inherently irrational and reactionary, such
as Frenchman Ernest Renan (d. 1892), and others, such as
Wilfrid
Scawen
Blunt (d.
1922),
who more
analytically
argued
that
Islam
as
a
system of
beliefs
and ideas is compatible with reason, and that re-interpretation of Islamic
sources is an unceasing process.
11
Lockman’s broad
overview
also
inadver-
tently presents how researchers’ closely held assumptions and intentions
guide the processes
by
which
to
investigate
phenomena
within
Islamdom.
It
is during
the second
half
of
the 20th century
when the basic premises of
French and German
late
19th
and
early
20th century Orientalist and colonial-
ism centered assumptions started
to be seriously
questioned primarily due to
the
rise
of
more comprehensive, perhaps even more holistic, studies of
Islam
i-
cate histories and
Islam
as such, led
by
Anglo-Saxon arabists and historians
such as Marshall G.S. Hodgson (d. 1968), Hamilton A.R. Gibb (d.
1971),
and
Franz Rosenthal (d.
2003).
12
They were joined
by
other scholars who were
trained in the
post-wwII
period such as
Toshihiko
Izutsu (d. 1993), Fazlur
Rahman (d. 1988),
Annemarie Schimmel (d. 2003), Fatima Mernissi (d. 2015),
Angelika
Neuwirth (b. 1943)
and
numerous
others
who
presented
serious
chal-
lenges
to
Orientalist assumptions about
Muslims and
Islam.
13
Their academic
work added considerable substance
to
the development of Islamic Studies.
It can be argued that the major substance of their scholarship incorporated
their
serious consideration of
the critical capacity of
Muslim
scholars’
knowl
-
edge production and their
methodological contribution to the study of
Islam
and
Muslims.
These and other like-minded scholar of Islam, their students, and inter-
locutors
have
generated
a
range of
epistemic challenges to the original Orien-
talist assumptions stirring
a
range of
competing
claims about
Islam, Muslims,
and expressions of
Muslimness.
14
Muslimness on
a
meta-level
of our under-
standing, points to
a
relationship
between
various expressions of
Lived
Islam,
including observance of religious rituals and other
physical
and symbolic
expressions of religiosity, but
also
expressions of particular understandings
of Islamic history,
theology,
social reality, politics, power and much more, in
various places both
by
Muslims and non-Muslims
alike.
15
Furthermore, Mus-
limness can
also
be recognized in both individual and collective
praxis
of
various understandings of
what it
means
to
be
a
Muslim in
a
particular time
and
place.
The latter group of scholars
were
seemingly more methodologically flexi-
ble and some of
them even
invested
in studying aspects of
Islamicate history
and contemporary Muslimness. This trend
was
subsequently
reflected
in the
growth and maturation of
Islamic Studies as an academic
field.
For instance,
one of
the leading scholarly
journals powered and published
by
Oxford Uni-
versity Press,
Journal
of
Islamic
Studies in its
first
issue 1990, declared its
intention with the following words. “The intention of
this
Journal is to place
Islam and the Islamic tradition as
its
central focus and
to
encourage
a
wide
interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary academic consideration of
the many
facets of this core area of
study.”
16
The passage indicates an active attempt
to unload some of
the Orientalist ideological
baggage
by
allowing
for
a
more
emic-centered study
of
the Islamicate.
At the end of 20th century, the works of Muslim traditional scholarship
started to be seen, not as mere empirical material
to
be analyzed, but also
as informative sources of theoretical insights to be seriously considered in
further studies. It
is
here that
we
can observe the dislocation of previous
methodologies in studying various aspects of Islam, including Muslimness.
The relationship between expressions and understandings of scholars and
their
interlocutors (theoretical or
empirical) became
therefore more
intimate.
For
example, the sources of
Islamic
tradition, and
its
potential
contribution
to the advancement of the study of Islam and Muslims started to be seri-
ously considered as relevant
for
the assessment of
both
specific
and universal
aspects of
Islam.
This has in turn started to
challenge
the singular and dom-
inating narrative regarding the formation of modernity
—
which is certainly
unsettling the status quo of orientalist approaches to the study of all things
Islamic.
17
In doing so, many of
the late 20th century Islamic Studies scholars
1 1
Lockman, Zachary, Contending Visions of
the
Middle
East:
The
History
and
Politics
of
Ori-
entalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
2010
(2nd
ed.),
79-93.
12 Gibb, Hamilton A.R. Modern Trends
in
Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1972
[1942];
(New
York:
Octagon Books). Hodgson, Marshall, The Venture of
Islam: Con-
science
and
History
in
a
World
Civilization,
3
(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1974).
Lockman, Contending
Visions
of
the
Middle
East,
131-134.
13 For
recent criticisms of
Orientalism see
a
series of
aesthetic analyses in Ali
Behdad and
Luke Gartlan (Eds.),
Photography’s
Orientalism:
New Essays on
Colonial
Representation
(New
York:
Getty
Publications, 2013).
1
4
Laroui,
Abdalla,
“For
a
methodology
of
Islamic studies: Islam
seen
by
G.
von Grunebaum,”
Diogenes
8,
no.
4
(1973):
12-39-
1
5
Such
a
brief
remark
has anthropological
connotations and
it
would
need
to be
explained
elsewhere due
to
the
brevity
of
this
text.
16 Nizami,
F.
Ahmad, “editorial"
Journal
of Islamic
Studies
1,
no.
1
(1990):
III.
17 See Ringer,
Monica, Islamic
Modernism and
the
Re-Enchantment of
the
Sacred
in
the
Age
of
History
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020),
El-Yousfi,
Amin, “The
Anthro-
pology of
Islam in Light of
the Trusteeship Paradigm”
in
Islamic
Ethics
and
the Trustee-
ship
Paradigm
Taha
Abderrahmane’s
Philosophy
in
Comparative
Perspectives,
Mohammed
Hashas and
Mutaz al-Khatib (Eds.) (Leiden:
Brill,
2020).
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271 272PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
challenged the ideological character of both Orientalist and neo-Orientalists’
objectification
of “the Muslim other.”
In line of such developments,
we
can observe scholarly anxiety between
exclusion
and inclusion criteria regarding the contents of Islam and where
dangers of
objectifying
and/or universalizing Islam can be
avoided
within the
framework of Islamic Studies.
This
assumed anxiety is
amplified
if
we
fur
-
ther consider that Islamic studies do not offer or contain
a
coherent method
of studying of Islamdom and its various
layers.
18
For instance, loaded ques-
tions such as “can Islam be democratic,” “has political Islam failed,” “where
is
authentic Islam,”or “is ISIS Islamic?” seem to
have
been posed in order to
investigate
or perhaps
confirm
particular assumptions about
Islam
held
by
the
one (or many) who is (are) asking such questions.
19
Answers
to such and sim-
ilar questions are diverse and range from those who argue that ISIS is “very
Islamic” to those who claim “ISIS is not Islamic at
all.”
20
These and other similar questions
tell
us that methodological approaches
in Islamic Studies are driven
by
different intentions and assumptions. To be
clear, intentions are
a
key part of any
scholar’s
work on
a
topic related to Islam
or any other similar phenomena. Some researchers are more, and some less,
aware of what their scholarly intentions are. Some scholars choose to explic-
itly declare their interests, intentions, and even associations to the studied
phenomenon.
21
Others, in the name of academic
objectivity,
neutrality and
non-confessionalism, chose not to interject any pa rt of themselves into the
study.
22
This
latter, so called etic approach, is assumed to be an
outsider’s
perspective on studied phenomena. That admirable goal aims at maintain-
ing
objectivity.
Nevertheless, the ideal of academic objectivity is ultimately
a
mirage.
Normativity is most likely inseparable from study of religion, or other
fields
such as history and
anthropology.
23
Religion according to some scholars of religion might be perceived ulti-
mately as
a
human construct and nothing more than that, which offers an
illusion of analytic distance to the subject studied.24 That is arguably only one
of several ways to express one’s interpretative horizon. I argue that the most
transparent and ethical way to proceed is
to
explicitly
declare one’s intention
-
ality
and then to temporarily bridle one’s own normative position and
allow
oneself
to
empathetically explore the phenomenon at hand. Ideally, results of
such
a
scholarly endeavor will
allow
an attentive reader to locate
a
particular
analysis within
a
specific
field
of study and thereby draw
a
more comprehen-
sive evaluation of analyses and
its
subsequent results presented.
It
is
therefore reasonable to assume that such scholarly endeavor acknowl-
edges that results of an inquiry of, presumably an aspect of Islamdom (or any
other subject for that matter), is also an analytical outcome of scholarship
from
a
particular time and place. For instance, European-centric understand-
ings of meanings of religion and secularity
have
a
hi(story). This story has
unavoidably
influenced
scholars’
thinking about Islam, that has often been
viewed,
and
still
is, as
external,
foreign, and sometimes even assumed hostile
phenomena
to,
say, European modernity, Christendom,
its
cultures, histories
etc.25
3
Re-thinking
Islamic
Studies
Coming this far, it is reasonable to assume that scholars are not studying
religions in an epistemic and contextual vacuum. Research ideas, methods,
18
See Goldstein, Warren S.,
“What
makes Critical Religion critical? A response to Russell
McCutcheon,”
Critical
Research
on Religion,
8
no.
i
(2020):
73-86,
also Kramer, Gudrun
“Religion, Culture, and the Secular:
The
Case of Islam." Working Paper Series of
the
CASHSS “Multiple Secularities
—
Beyond
the
West, Beyond
Modernities,”
23 (Leipzig
Uni-
versity,
2021),
47-56.
An important example of
this anxiety is
also
expressed in parts of
Ahmed, Shahab, What
Is Islam? The Importance of
Being
Islamic (Princeton: Princeton
University
Press,
2016).
19 See, Fuller, Graham. “Has Political Islam
Failed?”
Middle
East
Insight, January-February
1995,
Bayat,
Asef.
Making Islam
Democratic:
Social
Movements and
the
Post-Islamist
Turn
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), Juergensmeyer, Mark, “Thinking Sociologi-
cally about Religion and Violence: The Case of
ISIS,”
Sociology
of
Religion:
A
Quarterly
Review,
79, no.
1
(2018):
20-34.
20 See Wood, Graeme, “What isis Really
Wants?”
Atlantic
(2015,
March). In the article
Bernard Haykel claims for example that isis militants “are smack in the middle of
the
medieval tradition” and thus their interpretations are legitimate as any other Muslim
authority. A counterpoint is made in the same magazine, Dagli, Caner K. “The Phony
Islam of
isis,”
Atlantic
(2015,
February
27).
21 Jackson, Sherman, “Islam and the problem of Black
suffering,”
The
American
Journal of
Islamic
Social
Sciences,
34,
no.
2
(2017):
1-31.
22 See McCutcheon, Russell
T.,
Fabricating
Religion:
Fanfare
for
the
Common
(Berlin:
Walter
de Gruyter GmbH, 2018).
23 See Lewis,
Thomas A.
Why
Philosophy
Matters
for the
Study
of
Religion
—
and
Vice Versa
(Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press,
2015),
43-50.
24 McCutcheon,
Fabricating
religion,
2018.
25 See
Hallaq,
Wael.
2002.
“The
Quest
for
Origins or
Doctrine? Islamic
Legal
Studies as
Colo-
nialist
Discourse.”
ucla Journal
of Islamic
and
Near
Eastern
Law,
2 (2002): 1-32; Hammer,
Julianne. “Roundtable on Normativity in Islamic Studies: Introduction.”
Journal of
the
American
Academy
of
Religion
84,
no.
2 (2016):
25-27.
For example, some claim to have
a
high level of
certainty in their assessment of
the reasons why some Muslim groups in
disparate places, act
the
way
they
do:
See
Lewis,
Bernard. “The
Return
of
Islam,”
Le
Debat,
14,
no. 7
(1981):
17-38, Bernard Haykel,
“On
the Nature of
Salah Thought and
Action,”
in
Global
Salafism:
Islam’s
New
Religious
Movement, ed. Roel
Meier (London: Hurst, 2009).
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273 274PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
theories, and questions posed are all
influenced
by
academic
traditions, diffu-
sion of
critical ideas, increased diversity
of
scholars, shifting
perspectives, and
not
in
the least, methodological
innovations.
The ongoing
evolution
of
Islamic
Studies
seem
to
have
prompted
scholars
to
become
more
self-reflective
regard-
ing these various elements of
knowledge production
which inevitably
affects
their
own
work.
In order
to illustrate this point,
reflect
upon
the above vignette once more.
Would
your
understanding
of
the scene
change if
I
provided
more
information
to the existing description? If
so, in
which
way
would
it change? Consider
the
following information
that has
been
added
to
the original scene:
All
of
the
young men
are members of
a
local usrah,
“family,”
of
the Mus-
lim Brotherhood in an upscale Cairo neighborhood. All of
them are also
university students in medical and engineering faculties at Cairo and
al-Azhar universities. Two of them are dressed in
jalabiyas,
long, tra-
ditional
white
robes,
while
the rest are dressed in multi-colored shirts,
sweaters,
and
jeans. Three of them wear beards, while three others are
clean shaven.
These
few
descriptive lines
have
provided, I would assume,
a
critical amount
of information, which
have
an
effect
on an informed
reader.
How has this
affected
his/her understanding of the initial reading of the vignette? An
answer to such
a
question provides an important
cognitive
context within
which the reader understands the relationship between his/her “reading” of
the scene, including the contents of the conversation and the youth them-
selves
and. the
particular
expressions of
Muslimness in
the scene.
To illustrate this point further, it is useful to apply
a
similar experiment
to Orientalists’ descriptions of
what,
who,
when, and where
classical
Muslim
theologians discussed their various understandings of
the basic doctrines of
Islam.
26 Some of these cataloguing works done
by
Orientalist scholars are
increasingly complemented with critical and normative studies of the con-
tents of
Muslim
theological discourses,
which
signals
a
gradual
epistemic shift
among
a
number Islamic Studies scholars. For example,
a
number of emic-
oriented scholars are
critically
exploring the normative contents and scope
of contentions relationships between authorities (traditional,
secular,
reli-
gious
etc.)
and Muslims (groups and individuals),
by
positioning themselves
on the normative spectrum produced
by
these relationships.
27 A number of
such
scholars seek
to
extrapolate
what the contents of
these
conflicts
and dis-
agreements
mean
theologically
and
otherwise for
lager
contemporary
Muslim
communities.
28
These and other examples point
toward
the development of
hybrid forms of
the production of
knowledge of
Islamdom. Herein theologi-
cal
analyses are increasingly
considered as
legitimate forms of
Islamic Studies
scholarship.
29
At the same time, it is important to note that this hybridity in study of
Islam
is not new. This latest tendency is
however
reflective
of the increased
confessional and ethnic
diversity
among scholars within the large parts of
the English-speaking scholarship on Islamdom. The hallmark of this
diver-
sity, I argue, is noticed in the increased cosmopolitan approaches of
the new
scholars of
Islamdom
who happen
to
be
Muslim.
This
diversity
seems to
have
produced
a
particular
form
of
creativity
within
the
field
where
analytical
ques-
tions are
probing
into the normative contents of
Islamic
tradition.
This
creative
approach is partly demonstrated in Carl Ernst and Richard
Martin’s edited volume
Rethinking
Islamic
Studies: From
Orientalism
to Cos-
mopolitanism from
2010,
which indicates
a
shift in the direction of
American
Islamic Studies, as conceived
by
most of the contributors to the volume.
We might be witnessing an epistemic shift away from traditional and con-
temporary Orientalist notions of
Islamdom.
30
The shift represents more of
a
widening of
the analytical scope of
scholarly inquiry
than anything else. This
analytical
scope concerns
arguably
the
width
theoretical
and
meta-theoretical
discussions regarding
the critical
approach
to
the study
of
Islamdom.
In their introductory chapter, Ernst and Martin explain that
a
scholarly
shift in thinking
about
Islam went from Eurocentric Orientalist point of
view
to gradual multicultural and/or cosmopolitan, and arguably more inclusive
27 See Chaudhry, Ayesha,
Domestic
Violence
and
the Islamic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity
Press,
2013).
28
Harvey,
Ramon, The
Qur’an
and
the
Just
Society
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2018),
Jackson, Sherman, Islam and
the
Problem
of
Black
Suffering (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity
Press,
2009), Bano,
Masooda, The
Revival
of
Islamic
Rationalism
Logic,
Metaphysics
and Mysticism
in
Modem Muslim Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2020).
29 Engelhardt,
Jan Felix,
“Beyond
the Confessional/Non-Confessional
Divide
—
The Case of
German
Islamic
Theological
Studies,”
Religions
12,
no.
2
(2021):
1-12.
30
It should
be noted
that this shift is strongly
criticized by
some scholars
who
consider
the
whole enterprise
as
seriously flawed. For
instance, several authors in Ernst and
Martin’s
volume writing about
the
Prophet Muhammad are criticized for being apologetics: “vir-
tually all of these ‘hagiographies’ provide
subjective
and highly apologetical accounts,
but do so under
the guise of
objectivity,”
Hughes, Aaron
W.
Theorizing
Islam Disciplinary
Deconstruction
and
Reconstruction (Oxon: Routledge,
2014):
11.
26 See
Watt,
Montgomery, Islamic
Philosophy
and
Theology:
An
extended
Survey (Edinburg:
Edinburgh University Press, 1985),
which
seems to be
a
more focused version of
Goldziher, Ignaz, [transl. Andras and Ruth Hamori] Introduction to
Islamic
Theology
and
Law
(Princeton:
Princeton
university
Press,
1981).
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275 276
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
and polyphonic approach. This gradual widening of interpretative horizons
according to them depends partly on increasing resonance of critical dis-
cussions of
Talal Asad, Charles Taylor,
Kwame Anthony Appiah, and others,
among
the increasing
number
of
scholars of
Islam,
many
of
whom
are
Muslim
themselves.
31
This resonance
is noticed
primarily
in
ever
more
widening
scope
of interdisciplinary approaches to historical analyses of scriptural and
legal
tradition, religious doctrines
etc.,
including empirical studies
based on obser-
vations of
peoples
practices,
but
also
theoretical and
conceptual
engagements
with
both
local and
global
Muslim discourses and
varieties of
expressions and
understanding
of
Muslimness.
32
One important
case that might
demonstrate
this
shift
is
A.
Kevin
Reinhart’s
volume,
Lived
Islam:
Colloquial
Religion
in
a Cosmopolitan
Tradition.
Reinhart
offers three-partite critique of three predominant perspectives on Islam in
previous Orientalist scholarship. The first
critique is
leveled
against
the essen-
tialist and reificatiory approaches to Islam prevalent among some Muslim
or non-Muslim scholars. The driving idea here is usually an ambition
to
dif-
ferentiate between the “real” and
“false”
Islam.
An important marker in the
distinction is
a
particular
scholar’s
own conceptualization of what consti-
tutes the presumed essence of
Islam.
33
The second critique is aimed at those
scholars who are focused on regional manifestations of “Islam in”
a
partic-
ular place and/or region. The main assumption at
play
in this case is that
“Islam is”
an ideal form to which Muslims in
a
particular time and
place
are
striving
towards.
34
Reinhart’s
third and most important critique is directed
towards
some
analytically
confused
notions
which
conceptualize
Islam
as
doc-
trinally
and
practically
so diverse
and
disembodied
there
is
useless
of
speaking
about
Islam (in singular),
but
that there
are “many
Islams,”
all
represented
and
reflected
in
Muslims’ practices and
thoughts.
35
These critiques are directed against analytical perspectives that largely
ignore
religious experiences
and
components
of
religious
traditions
composed
of
phenomena
that enable
religiously
committed
people
to
communicate
with
one another and understand the world in
a
coherent
way
over
the centuries.
Reinhart’s three critiques can
also
be understood broadly as an incomplete
summary
of
widely accessible criticisms of
both Orientalism and Eurocentric
understanding
of
Islamdom. Such criticisms
have
been
articulated
by
a
range
of
late-twentieth century scholars both from within and without the field of
Islamic Studies.
Reinhart also identifies significant tensions between analytical approaches
that tend to focus either on
universal features of
Islam
as
a
real
or imagined
tradition, or
on
particular
expressions
and
culturally
distinct
elements
of
Islam
and/
or
Muslimness
in
one
particular
place
at
a
particular
time.
If
we
are
to
take
a
satellite
photo of these approaches
we
would perhaps
also
conclude that
there are different
and incompatible
logics
at
play
here.
What can
be done?
Reinhart proposes
a
constructive theoretical framework
by
which to
navi-
gate
the complexities
of
Islam
inside or
outside of
the
framework
of
Islamdom.
For
instance,
a
scholar
of
Islam
could
maintain
an
awareness
of
the
complexity
of
lived
Islam, expressed
both
as individual and collective identity
and
praxis
of Muslimness that is connected to
a
history of Islam. This
relatively
small
adjustment in conceptualizing what it means
to
be
a
Muslim in
a
particular
place and time is placed on
a
historical continuum that is held together
with
common experiences of members of Islamicate communities. For instance,
a
researcher can explore relationships between the suggested categories of
Reinhart’s
“Standard Islam,” and various Muslims’ expressions of religiosity,
political awareness or
whatever
else
that is interesting, in Islamicate or other
socio-historical contexts. This perspectival and
conceptual adjustment
is ana-
lytically
relevant as it
allows
us to be cognizant of
the general principles that
make the category of Islamdom distinguishable from Christendom, or simi-
lar
civilizational
constructs. It
is through
this adjustment
that Islamic Studies’
scholarship can
account
both
for immense
diversity
of
Islam, and at the same
time, seriously consider the core principles that apparently
allows
Muslims
and others
to speak
about
Islamic tradition
as
a
historical, religious, territorial
etc.
phenomenon.
For example, Reinhart suggests that “Lived
Islam
is the native instantia-
tion
of
practices
and
commitments
to
which
Muslims
pledge
allegiance,
which
orient their
lives, and
which for them make the transcendent into the imma-
nent.”
36
By focusing of Lived Islam, Reinhart pushes his “anti-essentialist”
31
Ernst, Carl and Martin, Richard, Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cos-
mopolitanism (Columbia: University
of
South Carolina Press,
2010):
8-11.
32 Ibid. 14-18. See also an interesting study that demonstrates conceptual and theoretical
innovation discussed above, Ahmad, Irfan.
Religion
as
Critique:
Islamic
Critical
Thinking
from
Mecca
to
the
Marketplace
(Chapel Hill:
University
of
North Carolina Press,
2017).
33
Reinhart, A. Kevin, Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion
in
a
Cosmopolitan Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 14. As an example of this approach,
see Bayat,
Asef.
Making
Islam
Democratic:
Social
Movements and the
Post-Islamist
Turn
(Stanford: Stanford University
Press,
2007).
34
Ibid., 20,
as
an example of
this approach, see Harrison, Christopher,
France
and
Islam
in
West
Africa,
1860-1960
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
1988).
35
Ibid., 23. As an example of this approach, see Otterbeck, Jonas, “Finding the object of
study:
Islamic studies in
practice,”
International
Journal
of
Religion,
2,
no.
1
(2021).
This is
certainly
not
a
novel approach
but
actually
a
decades
old
way
of
describing the diversity
found
in
Islamicate societies.
36
Reinhart,
Lived
Islam, 167.
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277 278
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
argument further.
37 The notion of
“Lived”
consists out of three conceptually
distinct features: “Koine, Dialect, and Cosmopolitan Islam are not essences
but notional aspects, facets, characteristics,
traits,
forms,
registers,
or
features
of
the phenomenon
we
identify
as
‘Islam.’”
38
Such
dynamic
and
layered
under-
standing of
Islam
rhymes
well
with the Hodgsian civilizational approach to
Islam, where the three aspects of
Islam are expressions of
formative realities
(rather than ideals) of Islamdom in both its non-modern and modern mani-
festations.
39
The three aspects put forth
by
Reinhart attempt to capture the dynamic
relationships
between
Muslim
practices
and
their
commitments
to
(a) Islamic
rituals (Koine Islam) and which are historically recognized as such (e.g. hajj)
by
the overwhelming Muslim majorities around the
world,
40 (b) but also
diversity of Muslimness and its distinct local expressions and
specific
forms
(Dialect Islam), (c) Cosmopolitan
Islam
stands for attempts to create an
authentic image of Islam based on scriptural sources, and is represented
by
the learned
elites,
the
'ulama
class.
These three aspects are not only the contents of “Lived
Islam,” but they
also represent much of
the content of
introductory courses on Islam in
vari-
ous educational
venues, something
Reinhart
also
calls
“Standard
Islam.”
41
Both
cosmopolitan and local norm-bearing specialists normatively maintain the
Standard
Islam.
Such
an eclectic group of
Islamic scholars
has
various degrees
of
support and following among
Muslim populations, but
their scholarship is
equally
a
subject
of
scrutiny
and contentions
within and
without
Islamdom.
This
conceptualization
of
“Lived
Islam”
seems
to
have
grown out
of
existing
scholarship on Islam based on
a
number of
premises and insights that seem-
ingly
transcend
and
thereby
make irrelevant
that proverbial Religious Studies’
emic-etic divide.
“Lived
Islam”
thesis therefore opens up
a
range of
analytical
opportunities that open
up for innovative approaches to the study of
various
aspects of
the Islamicate. This thesis ultimately
needs testing and developing
in
order
to
be relevant
going
forward.
Re-conceptualizing and theorizing about religious phenomena are some
necessary steps in the right direction. However, those steps are ineffective
without properly stating and applying methodological approaches to the
studied phenomena. The suggestion here is to consider phenomenological
approach to Lived
Islam,
Muslimness and even other related dimensions of
the Islamicate contexts.
4
Methodological
Awareness
The phenomenological approach
in
this case represents one
way
out of
wide-
spread methodological confusion
within
the
field
of
Islamic Studies and even
the broader
field
of Religious Studies. Historically contingent and apparent
lack of methodological clarity within the religious studies approaches is, I
argue, these fields’ major
weakness.
For instance, at one point in time Aaron
W.
Hughes
rightly
argues that there is some confusion in
the “academic study
of religion” regarding the failure of (presumably numerous) scholars
to
dis-
criminate between theory and method. In the same breath
however,
Hughes
suddenly lumps together method and methodology, as they
were
the same
thing: “The
term
‘method’
and,
by
extension, ‘methodology’ refers
to
the schol-
arly
practices that
have
made and continue to make the academic study of
religion
possible. Sociology
is
a
method;
history
is
a
method;
discourse
analysis
is
a
method, deconstruction
is
a
method.”42 Although not
specifically
focused
on
Islamic Studies, Russell
McCutcheon
in
the same
volume,
mixes
up
the
two
concepts as well, mostly
by
conflating
a
general way
by
which to approach
a
subject
of
study
and
specific
way
which
is
used
to
generate
relevant
data
about
and
from
a
subject of
study.
43
As
a
consequence of these and other statements
by
leading scholars, it is
important
to state that sociology is not
a
method, but
a
polyphonic social sci-
ence discipline. It
is
within
this
discipline that scholars attempt
to
understand
and develop theories about human collective behavior based on empirical
37
Ibid.,
127.
38
Ibid.
39
One could also contrast Reinhart’s conceptual framework
with
Abbasi’s
long discussion
about
a
possibility of
translating
the
Arabic word
din
into English
word religion. In sum,
Abbasi argues that it
is possible
to
understand
din, as
“a
distinct
realm of
life,
comprised
primarily
of
rituals and
beliefs
which
disseminate
a
specific
worldview
to
its
adherents
to
the common
understanding
of
‘religion’
today.”
This conceptualization
of
din
is
largely
in
line with Reinhart’s attempt
to bring conceptual clarity in the study of
Islam within the
scope of
Islamdom.
40
See the edited volume Tagliacozzo, Eric and
Shawkat
Toorawa, The
Hajj:
Pilgrimage
in
Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,
2or6).
41
Ibid.,
128.
42 Hughes, Aaron
W.
“Theory
and Method in the Study of
Religion:
Twenty-Five
Years
On,”
in
Aaron
W.
Hughes (Ed.)
Theory
and
Method
in
the
Study
of
Religion:
Twenty
Five
Years
On
(Leiden:
Brill,
2013),
2.
43 McCutcheon, Russel, “Naming the Unnameable? Theological Language and the Acad-
emic Study of
Religion,”
in Aaron W. Hughes (Ed.) Theory and Method
in
the
Study
of
Religion:
Twenty
Five
Years
On (Leiden:
Brill,
2013),
96-98.
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279 280
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
studies of that
behavior,
including its religious aspects and structures sur-
rounding
it.
44
Methodology and method are not the same thing. On the one hand, the
former
signifies
the general and systematic (i.e.,
scientific)
framework, or
a
research
design, based on
generally
normative
theoretical
principles
by
which
to study
a
research problem, puzzle, and other phenomena. On the other
hand, method indicates at least three
specific
operations in the research
process.
Method represents
a
procedure through which empirical research is
conducted.
When
a
researcher
decides
upon
a
method, s/he
answers
the ques-
tions: how data is collected, then
how
the data is used to answer
a
specific
research
question, and
lastly
how
are
the results interpreted.
45
Broadly speaking, the basic premise of social sciences
is
that all research
inquiries within its various iterations begin with an intention to understand
and/or explain
a
particular social phenomenon. An initial intention of
a
researcher usually translates into
a
research question, or series of questions,
that can generate one or more postulates or hypotheses to be explored. The
research question determines
what
sort of data is
to
be collected, what the
unit
of
analysis
is,
and
what
the suitable
/discipline-based
analytical
procedure
ought to be employed.
This
representation can be described as an ideal-type
procedure and in many ways
a
standard approach to empirical studies in
social sciences, including various types of sociologies and political sciences.
At the same time, it is important to remark that the philosophical and epis-
temic
underpinnings
of
such
a
procedure
are important
(and
rarely
discussed)
considerations that determine
how
we
evaluate and categorize data and even
what can be considered
as
valid
interpretation of that same data.
46 These
underpinnings
are
also
tied
with
the
abovementioned
research
intentions
and
understanding
of
the structures of
knowledge in
a
particular
field.
Methodology in this preexisting and contextually contingent
scientific
scheme
through
which
a
researcher
approaches
an
area, object, or
phenomena
of
interest. The choice of
methodology points
a
researcher towards an
explo-
ration
of
a
selected phenomenon
through
induction or
deduction, qualitative
or
quantitative
approaches.
At
the
same
time, the choice of
methodology
indi-
cates what kind of
epistemology is at work in the study
at hand. Here
we
can
recognize what assumed characteristics of
human
knowledge and behavior
is
embedded
in
a
chosen
methodological
approach.
It is through the choice of methodology that
we
can understand that
a
particular research project
is
built
upon constructivist or
(post-)positivist
etc.
premises. A constructivist approach assumes that social reality, including its
religious aspects,
is
not more (or less) than
a
construct and
a
sum of
human
interactions. Such an assumption guides, as it
were,
a
researcher’s perception
of social phenomena and how these phenomena
exist,
interact, evolve
etc.
This
also
premises that
a
particular “religious”
phenomenon is only
analyz
-
able
within
a
context
of
social interactions and never
beyond them. Such and
similar assumptions serve as epistemic bases upon
which
a
researcher builds
his/her assumptions and conclusions, persumably in an attempt to explain
how,
where and
sometimes
even
why
people act
the
way
they
do.
A social
scientific
(constructivist) approach suggests
also
that interactions
and exchanges between persons are recognizable and observable in
several
forms: in verbal conversations,
non-verbal
or symbolic expressions, humor,
emotional states etc. and thereby
scientifically
analyzable. This means that
a
researcher
needs to select an appropriate method to gather
relevant data (a
research
instructions
of
sorts) in
order
to explore
the assumed
construction
of
a
religious phenomenon, or coherently answer initially posed research ques-
tions. Collecting data
would
here usually into conducting interviews, surveys,
observations, and/or
participating
in, for
the study
relevant, interactions.
Islamic Studies scholarship is
a
residue and offspring of
Orientalist studies
that is largely steeped in humanistic studies (humanniora). This means that
this
field
is
by
and large methodologically detached from the social sciences.
Nevertheless, some
scholars of
Islamic
Studies
have
an
ambition
to
uphold
the
scientific
standards
oftentimes
found
in
social
sciences,
which
creates
tenuous
clarifications
and even provincializations in approaching study of
Islamicate
and Muslimness.47 It
is
therefore that
we
find
some of the most poignant
works
on
Islam
and
Muslimness
being
conducted
in
fields
of
anthropology
and
sociology.
48
The methodological awareness is indeed
far
more central to the
overall
argument than what is allowed to be demonstrated in the panoramic
overview of
the contemporary
Islamic Studies scholarship presented
above.
44
Sociology
rests
upon
a
number
of
epistemological and ontological assumptions that
are
not addressed here due to the format of the
text.
However, such premises are becom-
ing increasingly
relevant in
understanding
of
the increased
tensions
between scholars of
religion in
the
21st
century.
45
See Neuman, Lawrence W, Social Research Methods: qualitative and
quantitative
approaches (London: Pearson,
2014,
7th
Ed.).
46
Neuman,
Social
Research
Methods, 2014.
47 See Stenberg,
Leif
and Philip Wood, eds.,
What
Is Islamic Studies?
European
and
North
American approaches
to
a
contested
field, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
48 Salvatore,
Armando.
2016,
The
sociology
of
Islam:
Knowledge,
power
and
civility.
John
Wiley
&
Sons;
Asad,
Talal
(2009), “The
Idea of
an
Anthropology of
Islam,”
Qui
Parle,
17(2):
1-30,
Turner, Bryan
(1974),
Weber
and
Islam, London: Routledge, and
many
others.
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281 282PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
Let us therefore consider the vignette once more, in order to demonstrate
at least one part of this argument. The above presented scene illustrates
a
slice
of reality of many young men and women in
a
number of Islamicate
societies.
This
slice
can
be studied and understood in
a
multitude of
method-
ological ways,
all
depending on
a
researcher’s
methodological training, inten-
tions, interests, types of questions posed and
level
of
analysis.
For instance,
one possible approach could be
to
focus on this scene as
a
part of
Islam-
dom and imbedded in
a
modern socio-religious urban context that reflects
an aspect of
public discourse and concerns of
youth in time and
place.
Such
an approach
would
feasibly emphasize the diversity or context-dependency
of
Muslim interpretations of
both
liberal democracy
and Islamic ethical prin-
ciples
by
a
religiously
active
group of
young people. Moreover, this approach
has
a
potential
to
challenge Rinehart’s conceptual
framework,
by
investigating
if
and
how
the data
in
the
vignette can
be
categorized
within
the three
aspects
of
Lived
Islam.
Another conceivable approach could be to
investigate
the contents of
the
conversation
and
different
ways
by
which
participating
individuals
use
Islamic
sources
and
authorities
to
construct
their
respective
understandings
of
Islamic
ethics
regarding
the contents
of
liberal democracy
in
theory
and
practice.
Yet
another potential approach could aim at investigating and evaluating
the degree of
coherence of
laypeople’s discourse on Islam and liberal democ-
racy
by
juxtaposing the political theological contents of the discourse with
ideal-type categories of
Islam
and
liberal
democracy. Such
an approach
would
arguably
be suitable to demonstrate
whether Islam is compatible with liberal
democracy, and
vice
versa.
These admittedly
truncated types of
possible ana-
lytical
approaches
to
the
information
in
the
vignette
are
only
some
suggestions
that are deduced
from
parts
of
the scholarly
jigsaw
puzzle that is Islamic Stud-
ies.
5
Methodological
Pathways
Generally speaking, Islamic Studies scholars, beside their specific specializa-
tions such
as
linguistics, historical
analyses,
hermeneutics
etc.,
have
insights
into
broad components of
Islamic tradition, its
early
history
and
other
impor-
tant aspects, which in various ways constitute that which is referred to as
Islamic. That is an important asset in sorting out methodological considera-
tions.
Let us therefore consider
a
hopefully more innovative methodological
approach
to interpreting the
vignette,
by
starting
with
a
discussion about
the
way
the observation
is framed
and
formulated
in
the first
place.
The scene
that
lasts little over an hour
in
a
busy coffeehouse is infinitely more complex and
eventful
than the vignette can
come
close
to
conveying
to
the
reader.
For example, anyone who has done research and has familiarity with the
urban milieus and youth culture in the Middle East will immediately
have
a
whole
range of
assumptions
about
the contents
of
the
vignette.
These assump-
tions (whatever
they
might
be) are epistemic accumulations of
a
researcher’s
insights about Islamicate societies and its variations. Again,
a
researcher’s
intentions, scholarly training, disciplinary habitus, and previously acquired
knowledge,
guide his/her interpretative strategy and explanatory schemes.
This
cannot be emphasized enough, because methodological awareness pro-
vides an important
grounding and transparency
from
which
research process
including theoretical and methodological choices can produce or uncover
knowledge,
all
depending
on
one’s
epistemic and
ontological positioning.
Let us start
with
a
premise that Reinhart’s concepts of Koine, Dialect and
Cosmopolitan
Islam
are relevant aspects of Lived Islam within the scope of
Islamdom. The conversation in the vignette can therefore be identified
as
an
aspect
of
Dialect
Islam.
This means
that
interpretative
moment
happens
when
we
situate
an
event
(i.e.
the
vignette) into
a
cognitive
map (i.e. Dialect
Islam)
in
order
to
make (social, cultural, historical etc.) sense of
what
we
are observing.
The particular “Islamic”
dialect of
the young men in the vignette consists
out
of
three
distinguishable suggestions
on
whether
Muslims
ought
to
support
establishment
of
“liberal
democracy”
based
on
their
particular
understandings
of
both religious sources and authorities including that of
liberal democracy.
Their suggestions are not only verbal assertions but also acts of
a
particular
praxis
of
their Muslimness, or rat her expressions of
their historically contin-
gent
understandings of
these ambiguous concepts.
This brief methodological proposal
rhymes
well
with the cosmopolitan
trend of Islamic Studies presented in the
Rethinking
Islamic
Studies-volume.
It also demonstrates an assertion that the contents of the
vignette
can be
decoded through larger conceptual map placing it in
a
topography of mean-
ings that are recognizable as parts of Islamdom. To test validity of
this argu-
ment, imagine that the same conversation taking place in
a
coffeehouse in
a
major European
city
where the same number of opinionated interlocutors
discuss
whether Christians should
support
liberal democratic
order.
It
is quite
clear that our (research) intentions, epistemic assumptions, and
analytical
assertion
would
have
been (perhaps
even
radically) different.
This cosmopolitan trend within the Islamic Studies is arguably creating
a
gravitational
pull
that opens
up an analytical space
within
which
a
researcher
can
evaluate
the
contents
of
this
and
similar
vignettes
within
the larger
frame-
work
called
“Lived
Islam.”
Consider the following, one standard research pro-
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283 284PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
cedure
would
be
to
pose
a
question; how
does
a
particular “Dialectical Islam,”
such as that in
the vignette, correspond
with “Cosmopolitan Islam”?
A
couple
of relevant
follow-up
questions could be
asked:
What are the
specific
points
of
divergence and agreement
between
the
two
understandings of
Islam? And,
what are the possible reasons for difference and similarities? These questions
could be answered in
part
by
comparing
the range of
arguments presented in
the vignette, which here stand for “Dialect
Islam,”
with
a
number of
selected
sources
that
a
researcher
deems as
representative of
“Cosmopolitan Islam.”
One hypothetical conclusion is that the
two
“groups” that represent
two
dimensions of Islam (Dialect and Cosmopolitan) in this
specific
case study
have
radically
different
understanding
of
what constitutes
the
arguably
funda-
mental and unchanging
legal
rules and ordinances of
Islam an d
those which
are changeable a nd contextual aspects of
broader tradition of
Islam.
Further
analysis might suggest that these differences depend
largely on
various
levels
of
proponents’ scholarly
training, different
intentions,
priorities, expectations,
and so on.
This
conjectural
example could
stand
for
one
way
of
“doing”
Islamic Studies
today. The
next
example represents another
largely
untested methodological
approach
within
the scope of
Islamic Studies that
have
a
potential
to produce
deeper
awerness of
polyphonic and
historically
contingent
Islamdom, namely
the
phenomenological
method.
5.1
Redundant
Dichotomies between
Emic
and
Etic
In the
light
of the post-Orientalist and cosmopolitan evolution within the
Islamic Studies scholarship, the intention
her e is to briefly
present
a
phenom-
enological approach that aims at clarifying at least some of the abovemen-
tioned methodological confusions. One
way
is to problematize the conven-
tion within Islamic Studies’ scholarship of
separation between emic and etic
approaches to the study of religion, including
Islam.
The analytical
division
between subject and object of study of (lived and abstract) Islam are there
for several reasons, one of
which is ambition to und erstand and teach about
Islam, n ot “preach”
it.
This
is an inapt dichotomy in as much as it sometimes
directly
suggests
that committed Muslims, or people of
faith, are not capable
of
producing
“objective”
knowledge about
Islam or any religious tradition for
that
matter.
Such an assumption inadvertently suggests that self-proclaimed
atheists, humanists or agnostics are in better position to produce knowledge
about
Islam and
Muslims
etc.
49
Phenomenological method might provide
a
way out of this particularly
redundant
dichotomy.
This method is an intricate and
relatively
new part of
qualitative research design
that has
its roots in
the philosophical
tradition
ini-
tiated
by
Edmund Husserl and further developed
by
Martin Heidegger and
many others throughout the 20th century.
50
The main assumption here is
that the core of the phenomenological method offers
a
way
through which
a
scholar can explore
lived
experiences of
particular phenomena. The central
premise here is that
a
scholar,
as
much anyone
else,
is
a
part of the world
experiencing it in similar ways as other humans. As such, there is an ana-
lytic integration between so called, subject and object. After all,
all
humans
experience the
world
they occupy
by
orienting themselves using both their
intentions and consciousnesses. Intentions are dynamic and integral parts of
all
human experiences in the world.
This
means that both object and sub-
ject are intricately related and experienced
by
both experts and non-experts
in
their
efforts to interpret
a
phenomenon
at hand
e.g.,
Islamic rituals, acts of
perceived
kindness
or
cruelty,
art, activism.
A
phenomenon can be understood as (an analyazible) “thing”
in
the world
that appears
to
us. This appearance is manifested in the human experience
of
a
phenomenon, and
as
such,
a
phenomenon, through the human experi-
ence, becomes
a
unit of
analysis
of scholarly interpretation.
51
For instance,
the above vignette presents
a
wealth
of information about Egyptian, young,
urban,
Muslim males’ understanding
of
the political, politics, ideological
pref-
erences, Islamic tradition etc. Any of
these phenomena could also be
a
topic
of examination within
which
a
scholar’s own perception and understanding
becomes
a
part of
the
analysis
at hand. All
lived
experiences of
a
phenomena
are therefore understood to be subjective as they are experienced
by
partic-
ipating in the world, and thus should be interpreted with attention to one’s
own intentionality, historical contingency of
the phenomenon.
This
suggests
that phenomena
are much
more
than social
or
mental
constructions
resulting
from human interactions, as suggested
by
constructivists, but rather experi-
ences of
phenomena
in
the
world
within
which
a
researcher
partakes.
The vignette offers an imperfectly presented
slice
of
lived
reality through
which phenomenological method can provide a n analytic entry point. I view
this
approach
as
a
way
forward
within
an already
existing
qualitative method-
ological framework of
interpretation. Firstly,
the vignette is
a
heavily
reduced
description of reality of an event where
lived
experience of Muslimness in
50
For important overviews and introductions to phenomenology
as
a
philosophical tradi-
tion
see
Sokolowski,
Robert,
Introduction to
Phenomenology
(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity
Press,
2008),
Hopp,
Walter
Phenomenology:
A
Contemporary
Introduction
(London:
Routledge, 2020).
5
1
Vagle,
Mark d.,
Crafting
Phenomenological
Research
(Oxon: Routledge, 2014).
49
See Stenberg
and
Wood, Philip
2022;
Otterbeck
2021.
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285 286
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
relation to
a
specific question takes
place.
This
example is used cautiously to
demonstrate
a
phenomenological encounter
within Islamdom.
Imagine
a
scenario where an Islamic studies’ scholar, perhaps yourself,
experiences the scene described in the vignette. The
scholar’s
presumed
intention is to
identifying
a
phenomenon of interest executed
by
clearly
defined
methodology
of
data
gathering, such
as
participant
observation, semi-
structured
group interview
etc.
This is followed
by
a
pre-planned
and
immedi-
ate reflection period
—
a
sort
of
initial detailed
write-up session.
The
very
next
step is to re-read and
re-write
the initial
text
by
reflecting upon the observed
situation and one’s own experiences of
the scene. This helps capture those
initial
appearances of
the identified
phenomenon
in
a
specific
context.
The supposed gap between emic and etic approaches is here extraneous
to the
scholarly
task of
deepening or
widening understanding of
a
particular
topic. The scholar is as much
a
participant in the described scene as those
young men engaged in
the discussion in
the broader context of
the scene. All
are participating in
lived
experienced of the identified phenomenon
by
the
mere fact of their conscious presence, and that is regardless of the
level
of
participation in the conversation in the
event.
This means that the
scholar’s
experiences of the particular phenomenon
contributes to the methodologi-
cal process. For
example, an experience of
phenomenon such as
Muslim
polity
is qualitatively
different
from Christian, or
secular
for
that matter,
which manifests itself differently in the
lived
experiences of individuals or
a
group of
individuals
with
whom
a
researcher
interacts
with.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that the empirical data in
a
phe-
nomenological study within the scope of Islamic Studies could include, but
not be limited to, unstructured interviews and other variations of conversa-
tions
between
a
researcher and conversation partners
—
not
mere informants,
subjects of
study,
or
alike.
Observations, conversations, and sometimes mere
(un)intentional
presence
in
a
social situation
present
experiences of
phenom-
ena through human interactions, narratives, including artistic performances,
aesthetic productions such
photography,
drawings
etc. This argument
inci-
dentaly
suggests
that phenomenological method is less suitable for historical,
legal, or
philological studies
where
a
scholar’s
experience of
a
particular phe-
nomenon
is
harder
to
contextualize
and
extrapolate
in
relation
to
a
larger
body
of
humans. In
other
words,
there
are limits to
this
approach.
Another
way
by
which phenomenological method could be employed
is
to analyze the contents of
the expanded version of the vignette
by
isolating
the “units of meaning” in the
text
and which constitute the particular phe-
nomenon of interest. This means that the processes of data gathering are
intertwined with the analyses the
identified
meaning
units.
Some phenom-
enologists talk
about
analysis
of
a
text
or
transcribed
interview
as an intuitive
process through which
a
research
gets
a
sense of what is being transmit-
ted
without attaching
his/her
meaning (such as preconceived notions) to the
analysis.
52
This
is sometimes
apparent
in qualitative and
interpretative
sociol-
ogy
and even
more so in
anthropology.
Researchers in these
fields
are trained to be purposefully reflexive about
their own role in the research process. Phenomenological method suggests
going further than that. It demands
identification
of
newness or freshness in
reading
a
particular experience of
a
part of
reality of
life. Consider, for exam-
ple, exploring aspects of
Muslimness, or
lived
Islam in
a
time and place. This
demands
a
personal and emotional investment on the part of
a
researcher
in experiencing an
identifiable
phenomenon at hand.
This
method demands
bracketing out
a
number of
previous assumptions about
a
phenomenon. The
method expects that
a
researcher
minimizes
risks
of
(mis-)guiding new
expe-
riences as much as possible, in order to come closer
to
the lifeworld and the
phenomenon
of
interest.
53
This might sound contra intuitive, but it is important for
a
researcher to
attempt to minimize “contamination” of his/her phenomenological
analysis
(shared
experience of
a
phenomenon),
by
bracketing
or
bridling
his/her
previ-
ous knowledge. The point
is
to
minimize injecting one’s
previous experiences
into
a
new
experience.
This is done
for
a
purpose
of
finding
the newness
in
the
experience of
a
phenomenon
at
hand.
Bridling can
be
done in
three distinct
steps:
1. By presenting as pure
description
of lived experience as possible (the
vignette
above
is an
inadequate example of
that).
2. An interpretation of
what the
kind of
the experience this
is
within
a
rele-
vant
context.
3. An
analysis
of
the
form
of
the experience.
54
This brief list offers
a
procedural interpretive scheme
by
which to bridle
one’s
previously
acquired insights in
a
continuous self-reflexive fashion and
contextual
awareness.
This
is done in
order
to inspire creative, innovative, in-
depth, and systematic analyses.
52 Giorgi, Amedeo. “The Phenomenological Movement and Research in
the
Human Sci-
ences,”
Nursing
Science
Quarterly,
18,
no.
1
(2005): 75-82;
Giorgi,
Amedeo.
Psychology
as
a
human
science:
A
phenomenologically
based
approach (New
York:
Harper
&
Row,
1970).
53 Dahlberg, Karin, Dahlberg, Helen and Nystrbm, Maria, Reflective
Lifeworld
Research
(Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2007,
2nd
ed.).
54
Vagle,
Crafting
Phenomenological
Research,
2014,
66-70.
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287 288
PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LIVED ISLAM AND MUSLIMNESS POLJAREVIC
A phenomenological approach in this
way
encourages and opens up
for new possibilities of understanding traditionally understood phenomena
within, in
this
case,
the scope of
Islamdom.
These possibilities
are
found
in
the
analytical
nexus
of
bridling
of
conclusive
previous
insights,
producing
detailed
descriptions of experienced phenomena, and most importantly, interpreting
these experiences of
phenomena of
interest in hope
to
produce new insights
and
understandings
(of
at
least
parts) of
human
reality.
The
empirical
data
in
a
phenomenological study
can
vary.
A
source
text
can
be one
source of
interpre-
tation and disclosure of
lifeworld and its phenomena, but so can
a
narration
of
human experiences, an oral history of
a
collective,
or
a
purportedly
heated
debate
in
an urban
coffeehouse.
6
Summary
Given
the eventful
history
of
Islamic Studies,
its
origins,
and
evolution, includ-
ing the many tensions within the field it
is
reasonable to conclude that the
methodological turmoils
will
not disappear any time soon, or ever. Never-
theless,
we
ought not to stop developing new ways through which to
understand Islamdom, Islamicate societies and the multilayered expressions
of
Muslimness.
This
chapter
suggests
that
Lived
Islam
within
the realm
of
its
dialects,
and
in
its
Koine and
Cosmopolitan
forms
can
be
approached
through
study
of
a
range
of
phenomena experienced and discovered
by
its adherents and researchers
alike, be
they
insiders or
outsiders of
the tradition
—
orientalistically
speaking.
At the same time, it is important to note that the identified points of
con-
tentions
within
the
field of
Islamic Studies
are not
merely
methodological, the
tensions are at the same time conceptual and epistemological. The field of
Islamic Studies is
still
an amorphous field
recognizable from the outside as
a
phenomenon of its own, experienced
very
differently
by
different people. In
order
to understand it, the most productive
way
is to engage with the people
and subject matters
involved
in shaping the
field.
The scholars in the various
epistemic and methodological clusters in this
field
are conscious beings that
produce research that is sometimes opposed, and
at other
times, approved
by
their peers. The acceptance/rejection criteria are seldom coherent or
clear.
It
is therefore important to clarify confusions and misconceptions in order to
make
progress.
This
chapter makes an exploratory effort to
find
a
way
forward
by
suggest
-
ing one concrete and arguably creative way through which to advance
a
part
of
this
field
—
in
particular
the part
dealing
with contemporary
expressions of
lived
Islam and
Muslimness.
The hope
here
is that there
is enough
perceptive-
ness
in
this
scholarly
community
to
create
a
centrifugal
force strong
enough
to
pull different
gravitational
clusters closer
together.
The main point in this chapter is that
lived
Islam in
a
form of Rein-
hart’s
three partite division can be studied coherently
and
creatively
through
its
potentially innumerable expressions within the scope of Islamdom and
beyond. In this case, phenomenological method contains enough analytical
consistency and potency that can be combined
with
some of the most pro-
nounced social
scientific
methodologies at work within the contemporary
Islamic Studies. Religious studies on the whole could
benefit
from phenom-
enological
method
primarily
as
it
provides more systematized method
of
data
collection including established analytical scheme, which has
a
potential to
strengthen
humaniora
on
the whole.
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