ABSTRACT
Orre of the perplexities woven into Western studies of Islam is the confiatian of Islam as a religious system of faith and practice, paraHel in scope to Christianity, with Islam as the whole of the history and custom of Muslims, paraHel in scope to India or Christendom. In an attempt to disentangle this conceptual snar!, Marshal Hodgson has introduced a helpful distinction between Islamic as "pertaining to Islam in the proper, the religious sense" and Islamicate as "the social and cultural camplex historically associated with Islam and Muslims" (Hodgson, 1974: I: 59).
