Review of Tugrul Keskin, editor, The Sociology of Islam. Secularism, Economy and Politics

Excerpt

It is difficult to imagine that some 40 years ago there was no such sub-discipline as the ‘sociology of Islam’. While the anthropology of Islam has enjoyed a respectable history, the sociological study of Muslim societies was originally undertaken by scholars who were not ‘professional’ sociologists. One thinks here of the influential work of William Montgomery Watt on the social structure of early Islamic societies. In addition, the dominant paradigm of historical research in the humanities was broadly Orientalist. This neglect of Islam has changed radically for at least three reasons. The first is the rise of security studies and the resulting debates about ‘radical Islam’ and ‘political Islam’. These issues have however been largely confined to political science. The second and related reason is the world-wide revival of Islam through missions, education, pilgrimage and the urbanization of Muslim communities. These diverse movements have, perhaps been unhelpfully and misleadingly, labelled as ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. Finally there is the fact that waves of Muslims have been migrating to the West in the post-war period, giving rise to substantial Muslim minorities in Europe and North America. Some of the best sociological research has been directed towards understanding migration and urban Muslim settlement. Perhaps all three reasons for the growth in sociological studies of Islam could be simply combined under the more general heading of globalization. …