Die Grenzen des Islam. Objekt- und Metasprachliche Differenzierungen (original) (raw)

English Abstract: Drawing on the example of the discursive field of Islam, this article poses the question of how scholarly discourse can represent object language discourses of religious distinction. This necessarily requires engagement with the intricate dynamics between object language and metalanguage. As a first step, the article discusses Talal Asad's conception of Islamic orthodoxy and its underlying concept of discursive tradition. Drawing on examples from North American Sufi discourses and the modern Turkish discourse on religion, the text discusses, as a second step, the dynamics of object language boundary construction and the confinement of "Islam" that it produces. The final part of the article introduces, in contradistinction to the static family tree model, a dynamic concept of religious tradition, which enables us to focus on the overlaps and interactions between religious formations of low density and on processes of religionization. English summary: Any engagement with groups at the margins of the Islamic discursive tradition requires consideration of the issue of the Islamicity of certain practices, ideas, and entire communities that are or have been contested among Muslims in different times and places. Negotiations of the boundaries of Islam and disputes about the acceptability of certain interpretations as “Islamic” are, however, not only part of emic discourses, but are also reflected in etic discourses on Islam. At the outset, this paper is concerned with the question of how to meaningfully represent, from a metalanguage position, object language discourses of religious differentiation within the Islamic tradition. This necessarily requires engagement with the intricate dynamics between object language and metalanguage. As a first step, the article discusses Talal Asad’s conception of Islamic orthodoxy and its underlying concept of discursive tradition. The focus here is on how to develop a metalanguage about Islam as a historical reality, without intervening normatively in the discourse on Islam. While the discursive framing of Islam constituted an important intervention in the academic study of Islam, Asad’s recognition of Quran and Hadith as authoritative reference points for the negotiation of Islamic orthodoxy in Muslim discourses has not remained unchallenged. The article explores this criticism and argues for a dynamic and open concept of religious tradition that does not presuppose specific authoritative reference points for the definition of a particular religion. Discussing examples from North American Sufi discourses and the modern Turkish discourse on religion, with particular attention to the Alevi case, the text examines, as a second step, dynamics of object language boundary setting and discursive confinements of “Islam” as they are produced at the boundaries of the Islamic tradition. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of the religious field and the constitutive role of heresy in the formation of religious orthodoxy, this section addresses the dynamics through which Islam is being reified in two specific religio-political fields. This necessitates engagement with the socio-historical environment in which inner-religious negotiations of the true meaning of religion and the limits of the licit take place. Both the North American and the Turkish examples reveal that emic discourses are often deeply ambiguous about boundaries and much more dynamic than many etic categorizations of religion. A static concept of religion allows for three main ways of positioning marginal groups in relation to a given religious field: inside, outside, and in-between. Since such a positioning (often articulated with notions such as heterodoxy and syncretism) depends on a reification of the reference point through which this positioning is undertaken, its analytical value is debatable. Inspired by the work of Daniel Boyarin, the final step of the article introduces a dynamic concept of religious tradition in contradistinction to the static family tree approach. The focus is thereby on entanglements as well as the varying degrees of social and discursive densification of religious traditions. The notion of densification places the focus on the level of consciousness that a tradition has developed with regard to its limits and the extent to which it has solidified its social boundaries. The heuristic goal of this conceptualization is to enable the etic representation of socially and conceptually less densified formations and to distinguish them from traditions with a higher degree of densification (religions). The distinction between religious traditions and religions according to their degree of densification allows for a more dynamic analysis of processes of religionization than comparatively static notions of syncretism, orthodoxy/heterodoxy, and so forth, which ultimately remain connected to the family tree model of religion. The proposed dynamic notion of religious tradition follows scholarship that shifts the perspective from boundaries to contact zones (Pratt) and from influences to conversations (Boyarin). Against the diachronic and synchronic hierarchization inherent in the family tree model, it allows for articulation of the messiness that can constitute the relationship between (religious) traditions, especially those with a low degree of densification.