Sociology of Islam : the desiderata

The anthropology of Islam has had a reasonably long, distinguished and successful history. One could think here of the work of Clifford Geertz who produced such classics as The Religion of Java (1960) and Islam Observed (1968). This anthropological tradition continues with influential modern works by Talal Asad (1993) in The Genealogies of Religion. As we know, there is no parallel tradition of the sociology of Islam. The classical foundations of sociology in Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel contributed significantly to the sociology of religion, but had little to say about Islam specifically. The rise of modern sociology of Islam is in part a response to the growth of a global Muslim diaspora in the West, but it is also regrettably a reaction to the West’s investment in security after 9/11 and bombings in London, Madrid and Bali. Consequently the sociological study of Islam appears to be inevitably controversial and politically charged, especially around the work of Olivier Roy, Giles Kepel, Mark Jurgensmeyer, Bernard Lewis and others.