Introduction

This book offers an unprecedented critical review of studies on Islam and fieldwork among Muslim societies, and on the other, a provocative attempt to reopen a debate that has long been neglected among sociologists and anthropologists studying Muslims. It discusses how the study of Islam and Muslim societies did not attract the first anthropologists, who preferred to focus on Native American, African and Polynesian societies. The book studies Muslim communities and Islam within Western contexts and reviews some anthropological studies focusing on Muslims. It raises some questions about two terms often used within both the mass media and academic studies, Muslim community and ummah. The book reconsiders Hetherington’s re-examination of the concept of Bund and addresses what Abu-Lughod has called the most investigated of the ‘zones of theorizing’: the harem.