Mohamed Zacky, Mohamed Fouz
(2024)
Walaa Quisay (2023). Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality and Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
IUM JournalofReligionand CivilisationalStudies.
pp. 197-200.
E-ISSN 2637-112X
Abstract
There has been a lot of interest in studying how Muslims of Europe adapt to modernity in Western countries. In the last two decades, most of the research focused on Islamist movements, political Islam, Salafi movements, and reformist Islam in the West. However, Walaa Quisay's work goes beyond this to explore the rise of neo-traditionalism, often understudied, as an emerging alternative Islamic authority in the West. The work aims to explain how neo-traditionalism has emerged, established its authority, and engaged with modernity. It also focuses on its appeal, internal contradictions and socio-political implications. Through studying the life and discourses of three charismatic neo-traditionalist sheiks, white converts such as Hamza Yousuf, Abdul Hakim Muradand Umar Faruq Abdullah, the author mainly shows how they collectively presented Islamic traditionalism not only as the voice of pure Islam through otherising religious discourses of Salafism and reformist Islam as the products of post-colonial complexities, but also as a paradigmatic critique of modernity. Despite such grand claims, the author highlights that neo-traditionalism has ultimately ended up serving the very power structure of modernity, particularly nation-states. Neo-traditionalism in Islam inthe West is a result of an ethnographic study. The author spends years of participating, experiencing and interviewing the neo-traditionalist sheiks and followers in their spiritual sites. The chapters of the book broadly cover the emergence of neo-traditionalism, its key discourses and implications on the Muslim societies in the West and Muslim world.
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Download Statistics
Download Statistics