Recent debates on Islam in anthropology have tended to focus on discursive tradition, piety or revivalism, drawing upon the work of Talal Asad (1986, 1994) and Mahmood (2005), and “everyday Islam” or “lived Islam” (Lambek 2010, Osella and Soares 2010, Schielke 2012) which emphasizes subjective ambiguity and ambivalence towards Islamic discourse entailing enjoyment or pleasure in negation of norms. Both streams of literature appear to be in analytical agreement on a separation of religion and secular realms, although Asad himself does not suggest such a separation. This dichotomy allows little discussion on the role of pleasure and aesthetics—which is neither Islamically ordained, nor in itself considered unIslamic/anti-Islamic in Muslim social formations (e.g., Metcalf 1984).
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