Winner of the 32nd World Book of the Year Award (Sociology of Religion) in Iran
Examines different positions of knowledge – insider and outsider –to explore what understanding Islam means in the 21st century
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Explores the long-standing conflict between science and religion, starting with the early development of the sociology of religion
Critically examines the notion of positionality and its application in the study of contemporary Muslim religiosity
Focuses on the dynamics of islamophobia, insider-outsider knowledge, feminist activism, the development of the sociology of Islam, the demography of Muslim communities, Sharia, orientalism and post-orientalism
Key topics are explored through debates with modern philosophy, such as pragmatism, post-structuralism, postmodernism and hermeneutics
Can we understand a religion without believing and practicing it? Can we have knowledge about faith? Can people understand those different from themselves? Can outsiders ever understand the world of insiders? Examining insider and outsider positions of knowledge Bryan S. Turner explores what understanding Islam entails. He argues that understanding Islam has in recent years been dominated by political events – the Iran Hostage crisis, the fall of the Iranian Shah, 9/11, Afghanistan and the foreign policy of Donald Trump – leading to western intellectuals and public figures, many of whom know nothing about Islam, suddenly becoming experts. Turner asks how they, or how anyone, can have the authority to speak on this subject. He brilliantly elucidates the questions and problems involved in the challenge of understanding religion.
This book unpacks with classic sociological discernment key binaries in unfinished debates on knowledge production within the humanities and social sciences, like insiders vs. outsiders and understanding vs. explanation. Supported by an astutely jargon-free thematic bricolage, Turner’s tour de force combs one of the thorniest scholarly battlefields of our times. It helps carve out treasured clearings for helping the sociology of Islam out of the murky epistemic swamplands of proliferating positionalities.
Bryan Turner has long been the most accomplished and original of scholars in the sociology of Islam. In this new book, he brings his trademark mix of theoretical insight and rigorous case comparison to bear on the nature of life worlds and social change in the contemporary Muslim world. Taking exception to security-oriented approaches to "political Islam", he reminds us that there are many varieties of Muslim politics and sociability. He also offers no less original insights into how we should understand shari’a law, Muslim feminisms, interpretive positionality, and post-institutional individualism in both Western and Muslim-majority societies. Far-ranging and brilliant, this book is a ‘must-read’ for scholars and general readers interested in the rich diversity of Muslim societies today.
Bryan Turner is Professor of Sociology, Australian Catholic University; Emeritus Professor the Graduate Center, CUNY; Honorary Professor, Potsdam University; and Fellow Edward Cadbury Center, University of Birmingham. He is one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion and has also devoted significant attention to sociological theory, the study of human rights and the sociology of the body. Turner has written, co-authored or edited more than 70 books and more than 200 articles and chapters, including most recently The Religious and the Political: A Comparative Sociology of Religion (2013) and Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (2011), both published by Cambridge University Press. He is a founding editor of the journals Body & Society, Citizenship Studies and Journal of Classical Sociology.
