ABSTRACT
Any study of religious ritual, and particularly ritual in Islam, must begin with the work of W. Robertson Smith, the predecessor in Arabic studies and fellow countryman of the 1981 Levi Della Vida medalist, W. Montgomery Watt. This chapter explores central characteristics of Muslim thought and action as they may be reflected in the mirror of ritual–not only for the eyes of the outside observer, but also for those of the Muslim observer. In this way ritual may become a new "primary text" through which Muslims can tell us as outsiders about Islam. The generic concept "ritual" is, to be sure, only slightly more susceptible to definition than "religion". This reformational bent in Islam rejects both sacramentalism and "condensed" symbols, as Douglas uses these terms. All in all, the various aspects of what the author has termed the "reformational" quality of Islamic ritual reflect a kind of symbolical economy that we do not in most traditions associate with strong ritualism.
