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Challenging the 'ulamâ' Hegemony'1
1. Introduction: Knowledge, Images and Power
In an attempt to locate the efficacy of ideological symbols in religious discourse, Turner has suggested that for some religious traditions like Islam and Christianity, the perception of the origins act as a constraint within which social groups articulate their religious beliefs and ideas. The historical development of beliefs and dogmas within these religious traditions are tempered by a need to justify the present in relation to an ideal past. For Muslims in particular, the biography of the Prophet (sîrah) and his sunnah (sayings and doings) determine the limits of an Islamic articulation. Perceptions of these origins represent the necessary language that makes a social or political movement religious. But the variations in the forms of articulation depend on the "selection" of material from a wide corpus. Needless to say, the particular selection is a product of social conditions.
Turner focuses primarily on the constraints that a perception of origins places on social groups articulating Islam. Conversely, knowledge and access to the material sources of Islam (sîrah, sunnah) provides the social actor with the tools that empower Islamic social action. A particular conception of Islamie origins drawn from a wide and divergent corpus is a necessary key to claim the right to define Islamic social action. It is not a sufficient condition for the success of the idea; but a necessary key for an Islamic claim. The Islamicity may only be a signal for sociologists or anthropologists, but it is the essential ingrethent of legitimacy and efficacy for the Muslim actor.
The study of Islam in society has been viewed as a continuous oscillation between pure Islam that reproduces the origins and "syncretist" Islam that is prepared to accommodate the local religious and political conditions within which it finds itself. In the modern sociology of Islam, this approach and its variations has a long and brilliant pedigree, (Gellner 1969, Voll 1982:29-31, Antoun 1989:23-26).2 Similar notions have guided the field of research. In West Africa, for example, the Jihâd movement of Uthman Dan Fodio is understood as a puritanical movement that sought to entrench scripturalist Islam against a syncretistic Islam and West African Religion. Similarly, Mahdist Islam was also an indigenous Islamic movement that...