A New Anthropology of Islam (New Departures in Anthropology)

I had to get this book for my anthropology 411 class, which is the study of Islam. Overall, this book is an interesting and an informative read mainly because it explains how Muslims view their religion, but also how people who aren't Muslim view Islam, a religion that they aren't a part of but are missing from the outside. In some parts it even compares verses from the Qur'an with verses from the Bible as , making the connection that both religious books have verses that can be interpreted as encouragement for violence, but can also be interpreted as verses where god tells his ppl violence should only be put into effect when necessary. This book informs the reader about important people of Islam and traditions that they celebrate, what they do believe in and what they don't believe in, and covers a lot about the covering of women's bodies. There is a lot to learn from Bowen in this book.

This is a most interesting guide to recent work by anthropologists on Islam. It is readable, and I fould it most illuminating - e.g. in explaining some of the almost bewildering variety of forms that contemporary Islam takes. My only reservation - and this was hardly the author's fault - was that it was, inevitably, patchy in its coverage; but this was a product of the relatively limited amount of work in this field which has been undertaken. At a time at which relations between 'Western' countries and Muslim countries, and between Muslim immigrants and older-established populations, pose a range of important problems, the field that is surveyed in this volume surely merits a considerable infusion of resources (which might, indeed, be taken from those in 'security' studies who pontificate about these issues without showing much sign of knowledge of the kind that studies of this sort might give them)!

An interesting and worthwhile book: Bowen is right that it is important to be aware of differences 'at the grassroots' between different ways in which people experience Islam.Yet, this kind of anthropological differentiation can also go too far. It all depends on WHY someone is looking at Islam. If it is just a question of finding out how people in a village experience their beliefs - fine.But we may have a specific issue in mind that transcends those village experiences. If the question - for example - is: when people are in power who make explicit reference to Islam (of whatever precise variety) in their political/policy pronouncements and in the way they frame legislation, are the effects on the operation of the polity and the dynamics of society similar in those different circumstances? If the answer appears to be yes (as I believe it is), then simply insisting on the differences between different "Islams" can be deeply misleading, not least because it prevents one from considering the possible effects brought about by potential changes in the future.