Music

What is “music of the Islamic world”? Indeed, what is “the Islamic world”? The “world” metaphor implies coherence, at least relative to other “worlds,” and for a particular observer. Musing freely about the “Islamic world,” one might arrive at any one of the following four definitions:

The socio-cultural world of Islamic religious practice and discourse, over time and space. Though diverse, significant internal linkages lend coherence; this world is viewed – from within and without – as “Islamic.”

The elite socio-cultural world of literate, urban Muslim-majority communities that arose and flourished as a consequence of Islamic political expansion which outside observers have associated with Islam, what Marshall Hodgson called “Islamicate.”

The socio-cultural world of Muslim communities everywhere. This enormous “world” – reified mainly from an outsider perspective that views religion as providing the overriding cultural identity for all Muslims – is diverse to the point of incoherence.

The cosmos, as viewed from an Islamic perspective, i.e., the Islamic world-view, through which the universe, a temporal creation of the unitary uncreated Divine Reality (Allāh), is full of signs (āyāt) pointing to its Divine source.

Using the above definitions, “music of the Islamic world” may be defined, respectively, as the following categories: (1) religious music, used in Islamic practices; (2) Islamicate music: music of the elite culture associated with Muslim rule; (3) Muslim music: all music consumed or produced by Muslims; and (4) music symbolically encoding the traditional Islamic world-view, what might be termed “spiritual” (rather than overtly religious) music.