• ISBN13: 9780198903321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: N/A
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: September 15, 2024
• Pages: 208
• Original Price: INR 995.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 390 grams

How do we understand differences and disputes among various branches of Islam? This book places intimacies, rather than radical incompatibilities, at the centre of its in-depth ethnographic account of mass-publicized theological polemics among Sunni Muslims in the south Indian state of Kerala. What unites Muslims of different Sunni groups also divides them and incites polemics―Islam as a shared system of knowledge and practices, bonds of kinship and other social relations, and the common condition of being a beleaguered religious minority in a Hindu majoritarian democracy. Diverging from works that have focused on how Islamic practices like ritual prayers facilitate the fashioning of theologically grounded pious selves, the book argues that intra-Muslim polemics marginalize theology and have little to do with cultivating piety. Instead, polemics constitute inter- and intra-religious socialities, enable Muslims to articulate their connections to India and other imaginaries, and produce Islam as a public religion in a secular nation-state.

Nandagopal R. Menon is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics", University of Münster, Germany.