Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn in the US, the Middle East, and South Asia Jibreel Delgado Abstract A number of far-right politicians and conservatives in the United States continue to argue that the First Amendment’s freedom of be- lief does not apply to Islam because it is not a religion in the western sense of the term, but a way of life that includes politics. By pro- viding definitions from both western sociologists of religion and conservative political lobbyists and think tanks, I show that most experts on religion in the United States define religion as a way of life that governs behavior in the public sphere. I also argue that these definitions match similar definitions, offered by Muslim scholars in the Middle East and South Asia for the last fifty years, of the Ara- bic word dīn, typically translated as “religion.” By tracing the ori- gins of the idea that dīn signifies something other than religion because of its relation to regulating public behavior, I show that ear- lier mid-twentieth century Muslim critiques of equating dīn and re- ligion had little to do with any intrinsic nature if Islam itself and far more to do with western scholarship of that period’s understanding of secularity, conceptualization of the state, and prediction of the inevitable demise of religious belief and practice. KEYWORDS: Dīn, Religion, Ethics, Politics, Islam, Islamophobia, Sociology of Religion, Law, Sharī‘ah, Theology, Taṣawwuf, Secu- lar, Dunyāwīyah Jibreel Delgado is a visiting research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh; a non-resident student research fellow at the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), Herndon, VA; and a PhD Candidate at the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson. The research for this paper was made possible, in part, by a IIIT grant. ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 1 Introduction While speaking at a Tea Party event in 2011, radio host, Baptist minister, and GOP House Candidate from Georgia Jody Hice made the following claim: “Most people think Islam is a religion, it’s not. It’s a totalitarian way of life with a religious component.”1 The following year in his book It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America, he wrote: “Although Islam has a religious component, it is much more than a simple religious ideology. It is a complete geo-political structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment pro- tection.”2 Other statements in this vein include that of Oklahoma state legis- lator John Bennett who, in an interview with Alyona Minkovski for HuffPost Live, remarked: “I would even submit to you that Islam is not even a religion. It’s a political system that uses a deity to advance its agenda of global con- quest.”3 Evangelist Pat Robertson also made a similar statement on an episode of the 700 Club for the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant [sic] on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law.”4 It might be suggested that this type of rhetoric has become the norm among many right-wing Chris- tian conservative politicians in America. And yet there is a clear contradiction here: While right-wing politicians say that Islam is not a religion, western academics, including those affiliated with conservative Christian religious institutions, define religion as a “way of life.” These definitions match similar definitions, offered by Muslim scholars in the Middle East and South Asia for the last fifty years, of the Arabic word dīn, typically translated as “religion.” By tracing the origins of the idea that dīn signifies something other than religion because of its relation to regulating public behavior, I will show that earlier mid-twentieth century Muslim cri- tiques of equating dīn and religion had little to do with the nature of Islam itself and far more to do with western scholarship of that period’s understand- ing of secularity, conceptualization of the state, and prediction of the inevitable demise of religious belief and practice. Modern Definitions of Religion Martin Riesebrodt (1948-2014) was professor emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School as well as its Department of Sociology. His most important contribution to the sociology of religion is his thesis that religion is first and foremost “based on communication with superhuman powers and is concerned with warding off misfortune, coping with crises, and laying the foundation for salvation.”5 He rejects the notion that this concept was a product 2 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 2 of western modernity and that the term should not be used to refer to any con- cept or practice from pre-modern society or outside the West, arguing that when “soccer games are seen as religious phenomena and the recitation of Buddhist sutras is not, something has obviously gone wrong” [with the study of religion in the social sciences and humanities].6 Religion is primarily de- fined as a set of practices “that are based on the premise of the existence of superhuman powers, whether personal or impersonal, that are generally in- visible” and are practiced as a means of contacting these superhuman powers in control of those aspects of existence that are beyond the direct human con- trol.7 In chapter 2 of The Promise of Salvation, Riesebrodt presents his theory of religion in three parts: defining religion, understanding it, and explaining it.8 His theory is based in part on what William James referred to as the “on- tological imagination.”9 Riesebrodt’s practice-oriented theory is distinct from the concepts of re- ligious tradition and religiousness that, as will be illustrated in the definition of dīn offered by Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdallah Draz (1898-1958), have historically fallen under the label “religion” in earlier definitions offered by western academia. Religions are first and foremost a set of practices in re- lation to superhuman powers, relegating theologies, or worldviews as Riese- brodt refers to them, to a secondary position. This leads to an avoidance of discussions regarding purity of dogma or correctness in ritual, and the equation of these with religion, in favor of a study of the whole of these systems of practice whether or not they are deemed orthodox, unorthodox, heterodox, authentic, or heretical by a particular clerical body. Religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism, refer to the “cultural ways of life” to which a system of sym- bols provides continuity over time and by which systems of practices relating to superhuman powers are encompassed. Religiousness is a subjective cate- gory regarding the individual appropriation of religiosity that can be socially conditioned within a religious community. It is also a product of religion that, for the sake of Riesebrodt’s sociological theory, must be clearly distinguished from religion itself along with religious tradition. In defining religion, two other important terms are presented and defined: religious tradition and litur- gies. Part of Riesebrodt’s terminological distinction among religion, religious- ness, and religious tradition are reminiscent of the type of distinctions Marshall Hodgson was hoping to make by referring to that which is “Islamic” as op- posed to that which is “Islamicate.”10 I agree with Riesebrodt’s centralizing of worship over metaphysics and ethics as, in the case of Islam, these two concepts, the first being that of meta- physics or theology, falls under the Muslim philosophical tradition of kalām, Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 3 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 3 which often concentrates on the study of monotheism and (memorization of) God’s names and attributes, and the second being that of ethical or moral phi- losophy, in Islam ‘ilm al-akhlāq, are made religious when “performed” as worship (‘ībādah). For Riesebrodt, liturgies, meaning “institutionalized rules and guidelines for humans’ interactions with superhuman powers,” is the pri- mary locus for the meaning of religion, as opposed to a work of speculative rational theology. Liturgies are the collection of rules and meanings for human communication with superhuman powers. These interventionist practices, as Riesebrodt calls them, include, among others, prayer, sacrifice, and chanting, and are related to discursive practices and behavior-regulating practices. In the case of Islam, a sociological study should entail the study of such rituals as prayer, supplication, pilgrimage, and animal sacrifice as well as the rules governing them and how they are practiced within Muslim communities. The discursive practices, including the more fundamental aspects of theology as outlined in creeds, assist in the transmission of interventionist practices, their understanding, and their explanation. It is in that aspect of religion having to do with behavior-regulating prac- tices that one finds a great level of confusion regarding the interplay, or lack thereof, between religion and politics, the public and the private sphere. Riese- brodt states that practices of behavior-regulation “pertain to the religious re- shaping of everyday life with respect to superhuman powers” that revolve around “the avoidance of sanctions or the accumulation of merits.”11 Included among these practices are one’s treatment of others, eating customs and diet, marriage and burial rites, dress codes, and specific times allocated for specific acts of worship. He astutely observes that while many of these practices of behavior regulation are not worship rituals in and of themselves, it is only their being practiced at the behest of these superhuman powers that legitimates them. Interpreted in such a way, they can develop a significance like that ac- corded to the interventionist practices of liturgies: “[E]thical behavior or the intensive study of sacred texts can be interpreted as a form of religious service and thus take on the quality of an interventionist practice.”12 When he states that “it is as if the limits were constantly in flux” as regards the secularity and religiousness of these practices, he touches upon a dialectical problem into which other sociologists of religion, such as José Casanova, have delved quite deeply. Indeed, it parallels earlier discussions regarding the dis- tinction between that which is dīnī (religious) and that which is dunyawī (worldly), or the dichotomy of mu‘āmalāt (social transactions) and ‘ībadāt (rit- ual worship) to be found in premodern Muslim scholarly discourse.13 It is at this level of religious practice, that of behavior regulation, that religion and 4 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 4 secularity blur, as all social interactions, including economic transactions and infrastructure, as well as governance and the establishment and enforcement of laws, are conducted by humans informed by some notion of what is or is not properly regulated behavior. In sum, the three types of religious practices (interventionist, discursive, and behavior regulating) relate to one another so as to comprise religion in such a way that interventionist practices lay at the center. Riesebrodt provides a convincing reason as to why interventionist practices take center stage in the concept of religion: Those sociologists of religion and religious studies experts who lend primacy to the behavior-regulating practices present religion as a mere subcategory of morality and ethics. I would add that by making these practices primary, many of them consequently conflate religion with politics. When discursive practices are made central, religion is identified first and foremost as a subcategory of philosophy, a scholastic theology and the construction of worldviews by classes of priests or clergy who claim authority over it, while the overwhelming majority of religious practitioners, who do not belong to those classes, play an insignificant role. Riesebrodt’s emphasis on worship practices highlights religion as a “sys- tem of warding off misfortune, overcoming crises, and providing blessings and salvation.”14 These three themes can be identified in religions throughout history and across cultures and geography. The construction of theological worldviews and the regulation of both public and private behavior are impor- tant aspects of religious practice; however, they play a role secondary to and contingent upon the interventionist practices.15 Casanova cites a statement by anthropologist Mary Douglas that many in Islamic studies would do well to heed when discussing dichotomous rela- tionships, like those of Salafi and Sufi, traditionalism and modernism, or ijtihād and taqlīd: “Binary distinctions are an analytic procedure, but their usefulness does not guarantee that existence divides like that. We should look with suspicion on anyone who declared that there are two kinds of people, or two kinds of reality or process.”16 One of the most ambiguous binaries is that of public versus private, es- pecially with regards to that which is religious versus that which is secular, another binary with contested boundaries. As Casanova states, theories of sec- ularization fail to account for the many ways in which social movements and mobilizations worldwide defy easy categorization as either political or reli- gious movements. The privatization of religion with respect to the modern social order is understood as an essential characteristic of modernity, as an outcome of the freedom of conscience and the right to privacy that would lead Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 5 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 5 to a normative understanding of a modern secular state and capitalist economy freed from the clergy’s control. He identifies this binary of public and private as originating with the ancient Greek division of the city into oikos and polis. This dualistic perception of social reality, he maintains, fails to capture one of modernity’s most significant characteristics, that of the social sphere or civil society that lies between public and private proper, yet has expansionist tendencies aiming to penetrate and absorb both. The actual empirical boundaries between the three spheres, moreover, are highly porous and constantly shifting… Indeed, each of the three spheres may be said to have both private and public di- mensions.17 Jurgen Habermas, in a presentation of his views on post-secularism or the perceived resurgence of religion, which is, in reality, a continued sustained relevance of religion in the public sphere, echoes Casanova’s argument that “the loss of function and the trend towards individualization do not necessarily imply that religion loses influence and relevance either in the political arena and the culture of a society or in the personal conduct of life.”18 He refers to three phenomenon as being the primary reasons for the perceived religious resurgence after a supposed dormancy: increased global Christian missionary activity, particularly in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia; a radicalization among fundamentalist groups; and the innate potential for vi- olence in many religions being increasingly exploited by political actors such as the clerics of Iran, the Hindu nationalists of India, and the Christian Amer- ican religious right leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When mentioning those once-secularized societies that are now under- going desecularization, the United States is conspicuously absent. On the other hand, Habermas does refer to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the afflu- ent European countries. He also correctly points out that the harmony found between modernization and religiosity in the United States cannot be consid- ered an exception to the rule, as described by secularization theory, but ought to be viewed as the norm that disproves the secularization theorists’ primary assumptions. The Task Force on International Religious Freedom of the conservative Witherspoon Institute think tank summarized philosopher William P. Alston’s account of religion as follows: (1) a belief in a supernatural being (or beings); (2) prayers or communication with that or those beings; (3) transcendent realities, including “heaven,” 6 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 6 “paradise,” or “enlightenment”; (4) a distinction between the sacred and the profane and between ritual acts and sacred objects; (5) a view that explains both the world as a whole and humanity’s proper relation to it; (6) a code of conduct in line with that worldview; and (7) a temporal community bound by its adherence to these elements. Though not every religion includes all of these elements, all religions include most of them, such that we understand that religion involves a combination of beliefs, behavior, and belonging in a community.19 This task force, comprised of political scientists Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, after paraphrasing Alston, distills four core characteristics defining religion20: (1) an unseen order, as described by William James in his 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience, or ultimate reality, whether understood as transcendent or immanent; (2) the ad- justment of people’s lives to harmonize with the unseen order; (3) the human being’s ability to connect with this ultimate reality, either through reason or revelation, or a combination of the two; and (4) religion as community prac- tices that are, citing Riesebrodt, “in the context of an institutionalized social and cultural meaning.”21 This aligns with what the task force regarded as the four major dimensions of religious freedom: (1) the religious freedom of in- tellectual and spiritual inquiry, (2) the religious freedom of practical reason, (3) the religious freedom of human sociality, and (4) the religious freedom of political and legal expression.22 Religion is thus defined as the effort of individuals and communities to understand, to express, and to seek harmony with a transcendent reality of such importance that they feel compelled to organize their lives around their understanding of it, to be guided by it in their moral conduct, and to communicate their devotions to others.23 Modern Definitions of Dīn Popular works relevant to this discussion, according to Muslim intellectuals, include Ali Shariati’s Religion vs. Religion, the title of which in the original Persian is Madhhab ‘alayhi Madhhab.24 Shariati makes no semantic distinc- tion between dīn and madhhab, which, when used in the context of Islamic jurisprudence, denotes a school of law. However, when used in other contexts and in many non-Arabic languages such as Urdu and Persian, it means a re- ligious or sectarian community. On the other hand, Ghulam Ahmad Parvez’s Islam: A Challenge to Religion posits Islam as a dīn in opposition to religion, which he refers to as madhhab. The late Ismail al-Faruqi correctly pointed out that this terminological juxtaposition contradicts how dīn is used in the Qur’an to refer to Islam as well as other religions, including that of the kāfirūn.25 Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 7 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 7 Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-79): Dīn as State In his 1941 discussion of the linguistic definition of dīn, Mawdudi identifies four core concepts: (1) the dominance of an authority in relation to (2) the obedience of the one upon whom authority is imposed, (3) the regulations imposed by the authority and the required observance of these regulations, and (4) the calling to account by the authority for the observance or non- observance of the authority’s dominance and regulations. He follows this with his conceptualization of the shar‘ī (Islamic) meaning of dīn, which he con- siders one of the most important Qur’anic terms: an entire way of life.26 According to Mawdudi, the Islamic definition of dīn has four compo- nents, all of which correspond respectively to the four core concepts identi- fied above. His wording varies only slightly from that used for the components of the linguistic meaning: (1) sovereignty (al-ḥakimīyah as opposed to al- qahr in the linguistic meaning), (2) obedience (al-iṭā‘ah), (3) a system of thought and action as opposed to laws or rules (niẓām fikrī wa ‘amalī instead of ḥudūd wa qawānīn), and (4) the system of reward and punishment meted out for one’s obedience or disobedience (al-mukāfāt as opposed to al- muḥasibah wa al-quḍā’).27 He presents several Qur’anic verses as examples of the term being used in each of these meanings and argues that certain verses present instances where dīn stands for the entire way of life (niẓām al-ḥayāt al-kāmil) and encompasses all four component meanings (al- mustalaḥ al-jāmi‘ al-shāmil), such as “Lo! Religion [al-dīn] with Allah (is) the Surrender (to His Will and Guidance) (Q. 3:19).”2828 What is most relevant to our discussion here is his argument that no other language has a word with such a comprehensive meaning. In his opinion, the term that comes closest, but which ultimately fails to completely capture this Arabic word’s far wider significance, is state. However, he never explains how he reached this conclusion. Mawdudi excludes religion from meaning the same as dīn.29 While analyzing the verse “And Pharaoh said: Suffer me to kill Moses, and let him cry unto his Lord. Lo! I fear that he will alter your re- ligion [dīn] or that he will cause confusion in the land,” (Q. 40:26),” he argues that when looking at the story of Moses and Pharaoh in its entirety, it becomes clear that dīn in this verse cannot refer merely to religion (al-naḥlah wa al- diyānah [creed and faith]), but also includes the the civil order or sociopolitical system (niẓām al-madanīyah) as well. He cites several other verses that, according to him, use dīn in its com- prehensive sense as a complete way of life (niẓām al-ḥayāt al-kāmil al-shāmil) doctrinally (‘aqadīyah), intellectually (fikrīyah), morally (khuluqīyah), and 8 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 8 practically (‘amalīyah). For Mawdudi, religion, which corresponds to naḥlah and diyānah, does not include that which is madanī, defined as that which re- lates to human society; is civil or sociocultural; or what can be termed secular (e.g., civil rights or civil liberties [ḥuqūq madanīyah]) or civil disobedience (‘asyān madanī). This conception of religion as something wholly privatized corresponds to certain scholarly views on religion that were prevalent, yet by no means universally accepted, in the West at the time, as will be discussed further in the following sections. Muhammad Abdullah Draz (1894-1958): Religiosity and Doctrine Muhammad Abdallah Draz dedicated an entire book to dīn and its meaning.30 Draz was born in Kufr el-Shaikh, the son of Abdallah Draz (1874-1932), an Azhari scholar and student of Muhammad Abduh (1850-1905) known for his critical edition of al-Shatibi’s work on the objectives of Islamic law, Al- Muwāfaqāt fī Uṣūl al-Sharī‘ah, which he co-edited with his son Muhammad. Following in his father’s footsteps, Draz graduated from al-Azhar in 1916 while at the same time studying French privately. By 1930 he had become a professor in the college of uṣūl al-dīn at al-Azhar. In 1936 he traveled to France, and in 1947 obtained a doctorate with honors from the Sorbonne. His dissertation on morality in the Qur’an was published in 1950 by al-Azhar. It was translated into Arabic only in 1973 by Abd al-Sabur Shahin, and into Eng- lish in 2009.31 His other major work translated into English is Nabā’ al-‘Aẓīm (The Quran: An Eternal Challenge). He returned to Egypt and taught at the Univer- sity of Cairo as well as the Azhar affiliate Dar al-Ulum. In 1949 he was made a member of Egypt’s Council of Senior Scholars. He passed away in 1958 while attending a conference in Pakistan, where he spoke on Islam’s view of other religions. During his lifetime he maintained links with such reformist lu- minaries as Abd al-Hamid b. Badis (1889-1940) in Algeria and the Egyptian judge Ahmad Shakir (1892-1958), the elder brother of Mahmud Shakir, whose definition of dīn I will also be examining.32 After an introductory section on the history of religions, in which he dis- cussed ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Christian and Islamic eras, and finally post-Enlightenment Europe, Draz divides his book Al-Dīn into four parts: (1) “On Determining the Meaning of Dīn,” which is most relevant to the present discussion; (2) the relationship between dīn and aspects of culture and civiliza- tion (al-thaqāfah wa al-tahdhīb), such as ethics and moral behavior (al-akhlāq), Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 9 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 9 philosophy, and other fields of knowledge, (3) humanity’s natural inclination toward religion and its role in society, and (4) the origins of religious belief ac- cording to numerous schools of thought. In the latter Draz includes those of Descartes and Henri Bergson as well as what he refers to as the “school/doctrine of revelation” (al-madhhab al-ta‘līmi aw madhhab al-waḥīy) to which he ob- viously belongs. The book ends with a section entitled “The Position of Islam Regarding Other Religions and Its Relationship to Them,” which was also the title of his final lecture given at the conference in Pakistan. The first part of the book is further divided into four sections: linguistic meaning, customary meaning, substantive elements, and psychological ele- ments. He begins by taking it as a given that Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, idol worship, and other religions all fall under the term dīn. That being the case, its meaning must encompass all of the elements shared by these traditions. Next, he comments on some of the difficulties re- lated to ascertaining the meaning of terms through dictionary definitions. For example, the average Arabic dictionary defines dīn as milla that, as one quickly learns upon locating the latter term, is defined as dīn. Classical ety- mological dictionaries may not simplify matters. For example, in such works as Al-Qamūs al-Muḥīṭ or Lisān al-‘Arab, a word has historically meant one thing as well as its opposite. Therefore, dīn means both rulership and servitude, glory and abasement, coercion and beneficence, obedience and disobedience, along with both Islamic monotheism and anything one believes. Draz identifies three formulations of dīn that signify three distinct mean- ings: dāna/yadīnu, dāna lahu, and dāna bihi. The first form means to possess or own, to rule over (malakahu, ḥakamahu, and sāsahu) as well as to conquer, call to account, judge, and reward or punish. One example comes from the Qur’an’s first chapter, “māliki yawm al-dīn,” meaning “king or master of the Day of Judgment.” The second form, dāna lahu, means obedience and servi- tude, whereas the third verbal construction, dāna bihi, signifies belief in some- thing or way of practice (‘aqīdah wa madhhab). Accoring to Draz, the creed and opinion that one sticks to would be referred to as madhhab naẓarī, whereas that which is taken as one’s custom and way of living or lifestyle, way of life, lifeway, and so on is referred to as madhhab ‘amalī. To put it succinctly, Draz states that dīn signifies the relationship between two parties, one of which is glorified and mightier than the other. All meanings included here have to do with this relationship’s governing order (al-dustūr al-munāẓim). This binding obligation (ilzām) at the core of the meaning of dīn is further divided into that which is financial (dayn) and that which is be- havioral (dīn) by changing the first short vowel. Draz takes a moment to crit- 10 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 10 icize some of the Orientalists who claimed that this word, in all of its uses, was taken from either Hebrew or Persian. In fact, he argues that perhaps this claim originates from some tendencies toward shu‘ūbīyah, which in the con- text of mid-twentieth century Orientalism, specifically the entry of the Ency- clopedia of Islam First Edition, can only be translated as racism, for it “seeks to divest the Arabs from any virtue, including linguistic.”33 Returning to the subject at hand, he identifies the third usage of dīn, adopt- ing a specific belief and practice as one’s way of being, as the usage that most succinctly captures the meaning of religion as it is used in the study of religion. It is ultimately divisible into (1) the subjective state that one refers to as reli- giosity (tadayyun) and (2) the objective fact of a religious doctrine, comprised of principles, customs and rituals, artifacts and scriptures, taken by a given community as its members’ belief system and social praxis. One should note that Riesebrodt was adamant that religiousness and religious tradition, two terms that seem to correlate with tadayyun and the phrase used for doctrine (al-mabādī’ i‘tiqādan aw ‘amalan), be clearly differentiated. While he dis- tinguishes between interventionist, discursive, and behavior-regulating prac- tices, Draz locates all of these practices under religious doctrine. Mahmud Muhammad Shakir (1909-97): Dīn as Culture Scholars and intellectuals have made numerous attempts to discern the true meaning of culture and its relationship to religion. Two examples are Riese- brodt’s theory of religion and its being distinguished from religious tradition, and Marshall Hodgson’s Islamic/Islamicate distinction. The Egyptian intel- lectual Mahmud Muhammad Shakir presented his own definition of culture, which must be considered in order to understand “the positions of present- day Islamic orthodoxy, should any idea of a ‘dialogue’ be contemplated” by western scholars of the Arab and Muslim-majority countries and scholars from within the Arab intellectual tradition.34 Other than Majdi Wahba’s 1989 article and the 2009 work by Ahmad Atif Ahmad, very little has been written about Shakir in English-language scholarship.35 His two most important works on culture are his 1964 Abāṭīl wa Aṣmār (Lies and Fabrications)36 and his 1987 Risālah fī al-Ṭarīq iā Thaqāfatinā37 (A Treatise on the Way to Our Culture). Here I will examine his definitions of culture, civilization, and religion. In his Abāṭīl wa Aṣmār, Shakir argued that there is a struggle between po- litical forces representing western civilization and the people of the Arab and Muslim-majority countries. The most dangerous arena for this battle is that Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 11 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 11 of culture, which takes place in literature and ideological writings. While this struggle occurs primarily within what Bourdieu would call the fields of cul- tural production, Shakir argues that this is, in reality, a political conflict38 be- cause, according to him, culture is an essentially comprehensive term and refers to two core concepts, one building from the other.39 The first core con- cept is the set of acquired values and behaviors implanted in the very self of a person. This idea corresponds to Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus.40 The sec- ond core concept is comprised of the fruits of this habitus in terms of intellec- tual production. As the creation and transmission of this habitus is done within a specific language, the importance of linguistic groups to the delineation of a culture is paramount. A culture’s primary components are its language and dīn, typically translated as religion, according to Shakir.41 The relationship between religion and culture in Shakir’s thought is quite similar to the way in which poet and literary critic T.S. Eliot imagines it.42 Eliot writes that culture is the intellectual and material embodiment of a peo- ple’s religion. However, the meaning of religion that has become normative in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not as comprehensive as dīn, according to Shakir, who examines its usage in pre-Islamic literature and in the Qur’an and Hadith texts before delineating its full meaning.43 Shakir states that for Mus- lims, dīn, in terms of its use in the Qur’an and clarification in the Prophetic teachings (Sunnah),44 can be divided into four issues: (1) law (Shari‘ah), (2) morals (adab), (3) worship and creed (‘ibādah and tawḥīd), and (4) principles of discernment and deduction (istinbāṭ and istidlāl). This last issue is closest to what is called formal logic and reason,45 and is where the disagreement be- tween the ahl al-qiyās (the legal analogists) and the ahl al-ẓāhir (the legal anti-analogists) was born.46 Shakir points out that interpreting terms and qualifying and modifying some expressions in intellectual discourse is an old problem within the Arabo- Islamic intellectual fields. This is, he maintains, especially important in con- temporary times. He therefore argues that Muslim intellectuals must consistently state that the meaning of religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition is not the same as dīn for the Muslims.47 Looking at the Makkan revelations, Shakir claims that Islam was not referred to as a dīn in this comprehensive four-part meaning, and that this full meaning was delayed in its explication.48 At this point, religion was called milla (faith community).49 In the Madinan revelations, dīn is used to refer to reckoning, like the Day of Judgment, or to obedience and subjugation and singling God out in divinity. All of these fall under theology and ritual acts of worship, and then laws, ethics, justice, and fairness within reason, as further elaborated in the Sunnah.50 12 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 12 Thus one cannot use dīn for milla, except the milla of Ibrahim, which the Qur’an explicitly states is Islam.51 He completes this portion of his argument by reminding Muslim intellectuals of their obligation to correct the principles that they use when deducing and discerning, the fourth aspect of dīn, as much and as soon as they can.52 With religion and language being the primary components of culture, Shakir categorically rejects the idea of a global culture that connects, or is shared by, all of the separate and distinct cultures (identified by their religions, sects, languages, and races). The apparent cultural borrowings are found only in those superficial matters that do not touch the culture’s core. If that core is affected, then the culture has changed. Shakir, who admits that the issue is complex and complicated, does not claim to have given an exhaustive de- scription.53 His focus is, unsurprisingly, on two cultures, namely, the Arabo- Islamic and Northern Christian European, and the impossibility of their being harmonized or amalgamated. He claims that Machiavelli’s notion of the ends justifying the means has entered into the sphere of dīn for the agents of the northern Christians’ intellectual and religious fields,54 represented by the Ori- entalists and missionaries. The belief in the sufficiency of following pure reason, which Shakir de- fines as ahwā’ (inclinations/desires), along with what he construed as post- Enlightenment Europe’s self-aggrandizement, cause its people to present their civilization as a global one, something that Shakir believes no society has ever claimed before. His explanation of western culture’s development in line with a pessimistic interpretation of Machiavelli’s thought echoes critiques made by Rashid Rida (1865-1935), one of Shakir’s intellectual mentors and the teacher of his elder brother Ahmad, of post-World War I European social sci- ence represented by Herbert Spencer and his theory of social Darwinism.55 Through colonialism, these ideas affected Muslim political, cultural, intellec- tual, and religious fields.56 Muhammad Hamidullah (1909-2002): Creed, Worship, and Perfect Religiosity The works of Muhammad Hamidullah, who translated the Qur’an, edited early Islamic texts, and in his capacity as a teacher and research scholar impacted Islamic studies in South Asia, Turkey and Western Europe, have been grossly understudied. He had a tremendous influence on Islamic studies in Turkish academia from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, a time when religious knowl- edge was being transferred from traditional modes of transmission to modern Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 13 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 13 university-style modes of knowledge production, intellectual exchange be- tween western scholars of the region (e.g., European and American Oriental- ists), and scholars working from within the tradition. All of them were seeking to synthesize classical Islamic studies and modern principles of the social sci- ences and the historical-critical method.57 The State of Hyderabad, where Hamidullah was born, was a liberal Is- lamic state with a history similar to that of al-Andalus in that, upon its down- fall, its intellectual elites were forced to disperse and thus graced many other societies with their genius.58 At its height, this state had Yemeni and African army divisions; a population of Yemenis still lives there. The first documented recording of the Hamidullah family in India appears in the 1490s as judges in the city of Madras (Chennai). All generations up until the time of the British Raj are documented as judges and experts in Islamic law working throughout western and southern India, moving every few generations to different cities in Hyderabad, Gujurat, and elsewhere. Muhammad belongs to the twenty-fourth generation. His father was a mufti and exegete who directed Hyderabad’s interest-free banking system, and his grandfather Muhammad Sibghatullah Madrasi (d. 1872) was Madras’ chief judge and a collector and copyist of early Islamic manuscripts. Many of these can be found in the special collections of leading American university libraries. When the Nizam of Hyderabad lost control of the financial, educa- tional, and legal systems to the British, the Sibghatullah family lost its social position. Although Sibghatullah signed a fatwa calling for boycotting the British in India, he did permit those of his children whom he considered to be the brightest to receive both a traditional Islamic education and a British ed- ucation in Latin, astronomy, modern sciences, and other subjects. From the 1870s until the state’s annexation by India in 1948, family mem- bers traveled to Damascus, Cairo, Yemen, and other Muslim regions to either buy or copy manuscripts and have them sent to their family homes in Madras or Hyderabad. These people, who included his two uncles Husayn Athaullah and the judge Sayyid Athaullah, were ordered to make copies of any new manuscript on the market if they could not buy it outright. Hamidullah attended Osmanlia University, founded in 1918 as India’s first Urdu-medium university and named after the last niẓām, Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967). There, he studied under the Sufi theologian, exegete, and dean of theology Muhammad Abd al-Qadir al-Siddiqi (1871-1962), who also taught the Yemeni Abd al-Rahman al-Mu’allimi (1894-1966), an editor of classical works59 whose grave is currently a shrine visited by people from Yemen and elsewhere. He then continued his studies in Europe. His first article 14 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 14 was published in 1926, in the journal Islamic Culture, edited by his teachers Muhammad Asad (1900-92) and Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936). One of his professors at the University of Bonn was famed German Orientalist Carl Brockelmann (1868-1956). He graduated in 1935 with a doctorate, and ob- tained another one from the Sorbonne the following year. In 1946, as the independent Nizamate of Hyderabad was being embargoed by the Indian military (it was annexed in 1948), Hamidullah went into self- imposed exile in Europe. In 1947, he participated in the first Pakistani Consti- tutional Assembly with Mawdudi and Sulayman Nadwi (1884-1953), two important Muslim scholars and activists. He corresponded with Mawdudi, as well as with the philosopher and poet Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), the Ger- man scholar of Sufism Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003), and Said Ramadan (1926-95), the son-in-law of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna (1906-49) and father of the Swiss Muslim philosopher Tariq Ramadan. In Turkey, Hamidullah lived in the same small hotel room throughout his time as a visiting professor (1954-79) while simultaneously holding a post in the French National Center for Scientific Research (1954-78). Counted among his Turkish students are Fuat Sezgin and Yusuf Kavakci, the father of Turkish politician Merve Kavakci, whose father-in-law was interested in Hamidullah upon his arrival in Istanbul. In fact, this man used to take Dr. Kavakci and his wife to attend Hamidullah initial talks in Turkey. Hamidullah did not return to Pakistan until the late 1970s, when President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1924-88) started writing letters to him, referring to him as his “big brother” and inviting him to become a citizen. Although he refused this request, he did visit and give a series of lectures, compiled into Khitab Bahawalpur and trans- lated by Afzal Iqbal as The Emergence of Islam. A few years later Islamabad conferred the Hilal Imtiaz award upon him – 10 million Pakistani rupees, which he donated to the International Islamic University in Islamabad. A wing of its library was subsequently named after him. His European education and ties to India’s scholarly class of India is rep- resentative of a group of intellectuals, including both Shakir and Draz, whose families had historically belonged to their societies’ religious and political elites and served as judges and administrators. With the advent of modernization, they became academics in the newly established modern secular universities and helped usher in an era of scholarship marked by publishing critical schol- arly editions of classical works from pre-modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. In 1997, after suffering a stroke, Hamidullah became concerned about outsiders expressing interest in handling and publishing his works. His subsequent moves from Paris to Pennsylvania and then to Jacksonville, FL, were kept secret. Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 15 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 15 He was especially concerned about Saudi publishers, whom he felt had ruined his French translation of the Qur’an in 1996, just as they had ruined the English translation of his friend Abdallah Yusuf Ali (1872-1953) just four years earlier. They then glutted the French market, and many companies that had relied upon publishing his French translation were forced to close their doors. Before 1979, Islamabad’s Dawa Academy published his books. Habib and Co., which was dedicated to publishing his works, was bought by a Saudi company and destroyed. The entirety of his personal library, gathered from 1946 to 2002, is held in the United States; his pre-1946 collection remains in the family’s ancestral home in Hyderabad. Hamidullah’s discussion of dīn is part six of his above-mentioned lecture series given in Pakistan during the late 1970s. He begins by defining a prophet as someone whose primary characteristic is a teacher of dīn. His description of dīn starts with the Hadith of Gabriel, found Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Saḥīḥ Muslim, as well as other Hadith collections. This hadith provides a complete summary of the term, and Hamidullah suggests that the event described therein occurred during the last year of the Prophet’s life. The version narrated on the authority of Abu Hurayrah (d. 681) and found in Saḥīḥ Bukhārī is as follows: One day while the Prophet was sitting in the company of some people, (The angel) Gabriel came and asked, “What is faith?” Allah’s Apostle replied, ‘Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, (the) meeting with Him, His Apos- tles, and to believe in Resurrection.” Then he further asked, “What is Islam?” Allah’s Apostle replied, “To worship Allah Alone and none else, to offer prayers perfectly, to pay the compulsory charity (Zakat), and to observe fasts during the month of Ramadan.” Then he further asked, “What is Ihsan (per- fection)?” Allah’s Apostle replied, “To worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you cannot achieve this state of devotion then you must consider that He sees you.” Then he further asked, “When will the Hour be established?” Allah’s Apostle replied, “The answerer has no better knowledge than the questioner. But I will inform you about its portents. 1. When a slave (lady) gives birth to her master. 2. When the shepherds of black camels start boasting and competing with others in the construction of higher buildings. And the Hour is one of five things which nobody knows except Allah. The Prophet then recited: “Verily, with Allah (Alone) is the knowledge of the Hour –.” (31. 34) Then that man (Gabriel) left and the Prophet asked his companions to call him back, but they could not see him. Then the Prophet said, “That was Gabriel who came to teach the people their religion.”60 16 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 16 Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 17 Hamidullah’s definition of religion conforms to this tripartite division of īmān, islām, and iḥsān. In the Hadith collections, īmān (faith) is comprised of the Sunnis’ six pillars of belief and islām comprises the five pillars of practice. He identifies iḥṣān (perfection) as taṣawwuf. The terms he uses to refer to these three aspects of dīn are ‘aqā’id (doctrinal beliefs), ‘ībādāt (devotional practices), and taṣawwuf, respectively.61 In the ensuing comparative analysis of Islamic conceptions of belief, wor- ship, and spirituality with those of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Ju- daism, and Zoroastrianism, the discussion is primarily polemical as regards the superiority of Islamic conceptions of monotheism, revelation, the nature of prophecy, heaven and hell, good and evil, free will and determinism, prayer and fasting, pilgrimage and charity, and so on. It includes a critique of the Austrian Orientalist Aloys Sprenger (1813-93) and his view that the Prophet suffered from epilepsy.62 In his description of taṣawwuf, Hamidullah provides the literal definition of iḥsān: “to lend beauty to an object; to beautify or to carry out a task in a beautiful way.” The shar‘ī (religious) definition is “true acceptance of God’s commands and worshipping Him with utter sincerity.”63 He then identifies sulūk and ṭarīqah, both of which have the literal definition of treading a path, as describing sincerity in performing religious acts or treading the Path of God. But the main word he uses for this aspect of dīn is taṣawwuf, which, as he states later, took on the same meaning as sulūk and ṭarīqah. He then returns to the Hadith of Gabriel and its description of iḥsān as a type of constant awareness of God’s presence. Another word used to denote this meaning is taqwā, often translated as God-consciousness. He identifies one of the conducive means to maintain this constant awareness as the superogatory fasting, prayers, and supplications taught via the Hadith literature. For Hamidullah, this seems to be the extent of taṣawwuf because he offers a subtle critique of later developments in Su- fism, first and foremost as regards the debates that ensued over the concept of waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of existence) advanced by Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240). He does not dwell on this particular matter, as his critique seems to problema- tize the issue and not to support either side. Discussion There exists an alleged “Transantlantic Network of Hate,” which is held to in- clude some academics and politicians, that is actively promoting Islamophobic prejudice and racism throughout the United States and Europe.64 One of its tac- ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 17 tics is to argue that Islam is not a religion due to its supposedly unique rela- tionship to politics and the regulation of behavior in the public sphere. And yet many of the same Christian conservatives who make this claim actively seek to promote their version of Christianity’s influence in the political sphere. Fur- ther examination reveals that definitions of religion coming from sociology, political science, and religious studies all point to a relation among the religious, the social, the public, and the political. In addition to the false binaries mentioned by Casanova is the universalist- particularist dichotomy tackled by Riesebrodt, which dilutes the definition of religion to such an extent that the Super Bowl can be considered religious, whereas any practice outside of Western Europe and its colonized derivative territories – even those occurring in the West before the nineteenth century – cannot be considered a religion or religious. The liberal definition of religion formulated in the 1800s, which asserts the complete separation of religion and politics, has continuously been negotiated at every level of western society.65 Riesebrodt’s distinction between religious practice and religious traditions also solves the problem of differentiation between religion and culture presented by Shakir and Eliot, corresponding respectively, in the Islamic Studies context, to that which is Islamic and that which is Islamicate, to use Hodgson’s term. Mawdudi’s statement that religion is not dīn was clearly influenced by in- dividualist definitions of religion, such as that of William James, as well as modernist liberal definitions of religion typified by the sociologists of knowl- edge Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. In addition, it was based on secu- larization theory’s predictions of religion’s total retreat from the public sphere and the eventual demise of its influence on society, which would come to regard religion “as a separate sphere, distinct from politics and economics.”66 Although Hamidullah’s definition of dīn does not mention religion’s role in politics, his lecture series was dedicated to the concept of the state. Moreover, many of his other works, including his doctoral dissertation, show that he considered reli- gion to play an integral role in governance.67 Shakir presents a four-part division of dīn: i‘tiqādāt wa ‘ibādāt (creedal beliefs and acts of worship), adāb wa akhlāq (virtues and ethics), shar‘ (the body of laws), and istinbāṭ (epistemology), thereby showing strong parallels with the Witherspoon Institute’s four characteristics of religion and religious freedom: (1) the unseen order; (2) life’s harmonious adjustment to the unseen order; (3) community action and political and legal expression; and (4) under- standing the unseen order through reason, revelation, or some combination of the two. Finally, Draz subsumes all four characteristics under religious doctrine as one aspect of religion, the other aspect being religiosity, which corresponds 18 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 18 to religiousness and which Riesebrodt excludes from his sociological definition of religion. Moving past terminological differences and focusing on the content of the terms used, one can find four elements used to equally define dīn and religion: epistemology (istinbāṭ, the intellectual grasping of the unseen order), faith and worship (‘aqīdah wa ‘ibādah, interventionist practices), law (shar‘, behavior- regulating practices, as well as legal and political expression), and ethics (adab, akhlāq, taṣawwuf, and the harmonization of life with the unseen order). The order is not necessarily one of importance, for it is partially patterned after the classical manner for Islamic religious knowledge: language and logical reasoning come first and are followed, respectively, by basic creed and ritual worship, law (ḥalāl wa ḥarām), and the virtues (fadā’il). Of the Witherspoon Institute’s four major dimensions of religious freedom, the freedom of intel- lectual and spiritual inquiry and the freedom of practical reason are represented by (1) and (2), and the freedoms of human sociality and of political and legal expression are represented by (3) and (4). The last two, law and ethics, would fall under Riesebrodt’s category of behavior-regulating practices. Shakir’s removal of ritual worship and ethics from traditional fiqh (typi- cally translated as Islamic law) provides a possible solution to Fazlur Rahman’s (1919-88) critique of traditional Muslim scholarship for not developing distinct legal and ethical systems. It can also function as a starting point for developing the ethical and legal system in Islam sought for by Rahman.68 Points 2, 3, and 4 also conform in some ways to a type of categorization attributed to early Ha- dith scholars who divided the Sunnah into three parts: sunan (manner of wor- ship), ḥalāl wa ḥarām, and fadāʾil.69 Law, defined as those aspects of religious teaching that are directly related to issues involving the illicitness of and pun- ishment for specific crimes (e.g., murder, theft, and fraudulent business prac- tices) and that, I suspect, would be protected under the religious freedom of political and legal expression, would be of a far more limited scope than the entire range of personal, social, private, and public behaviors not necessarily enforced by any governing authority. These would fall under the heading of “ethics” or “virtues.” Conclusion From at least as early as William James and his individualized understanding of religion to Peter Berger and the social theorists of the mid-twentieth century mentioned by Habermas, Muslim intellectuals encountered definitions of reli- gion that presented it as something entirely personal and with little to no impact Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 19 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 19 on social life, something that would slowly disappear from even the personal realm. Muslim critiques of the equation of dīn and religion, like those of Maw- dudi, were developed within the prevailing context of western scholarship of that period’s understanding of secularity, conceptualization of the public sphere, and prediction of the inevitable demise of religious belief and practice. This discourse of “Islam as opposed to religion” has now come to influence a num- ber of Islamophobic political actors in the United States. In arguing that Islam is not a religion but a way of life that encompasses politics, they wish to give the impression that the religious freedom of Chris- tians is under threat. Under the pretext of protecting religious freedom, their actual goal is to curtail religious freedom, particularly for Muslims. More re- cently, this type of argumentation has come to dominate the rhetoric of leading Republican presidential candidates.70 When these figures call for closing mosques or banning Muslims from running for president, they feed into the Islamophobic hysteria that finds its bases in such contradictory premises an- alyzed above. Therefore, according to them, Islam should not be accorded the same rights and freedoms as a true religion, such as Christianity, which is also a way of life that should inform public policies, including laws pertaining to marriage, birth control, and other issues. I have shown that the most basic definitions of religion, including those of the Christian right to which these American political actors belong, describe religion as a way of life that informs the believer’s social and political life. The argument can be laid forth as follows: If Islam is a dīn and that term is defined by leading modern scholars of Islam as being identical to that of reli- gion as used by leading western scholars, including those with ties to hard- right conservative groups, then those same groups must consider Islam a religion. Islam as a way of life is a religion, just as much as Christianity and all other religions are considered ways of life. Countless people from all cultures, regardless of socio-economic or ethnic background or level of education, have asked such basic questions as: “How can I avoid pain and misfortune?” “How do I avert crises and attain safety and happiness?” “What happens after we die?” Religions answer that these matters are under the control of superhuman powers that can be contacted, and these answers inform the understanding, worldview, and moral perspec- tive of the person convinced by them. While there may have been a relatively brief moment in human history during which religion’s role in the public sphere was seriously in question, the future will in all probability show a greater role for religion in the social and political arenas. In addition, religious discourse will continue to shape and be shaped by the social order. 20 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 20 Even within that moment in history when intellectuals thought that reli- gion was on its way out of the public sphere, Anglicanism remained the state religion of England and such leading Civil Rights activists as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were also religious leaders. This period of the mid- twentieth century, seen as the height of secularism, saw the birth of Liberation Theology in Latin America and the adding of “under God” to the American pledge of Allegiance. Today in the United States, Christian philosophers like Cornel West are counted among the leaders of anti-racism and anti-Islamo- phobia activism.71 The U.S. Department of State now has an Office of Reli- gious and Global Affairs along with the Office of International Religious Freedom, USAID’s Faith-Based and Community Organizations, and the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.72 All of this challenges the various reductionist, essentialist, naïve, and anachronistic theories that continue to exclude religion as a useful category of historical analysis. Endnotes 1. Alex Lazar, “Jody Hice: ‘Most People Think Islam Is a Religion, It’s Not,’” The Huffington Post, June 25, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/23/ jody-hice-islam_n_5523166.html. 2. Jody Hice, It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America (Bloomington: West Bow Press, 2012), 151. 3. Chris Branch, “State Rep. John Bennett Stands by Anti-Islam Comments: ‘Islam Is Not Even A Religion,’” The Huffington Post, September 22, 2014, http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/22/oklahoma-john-bennett-islam_ n_5863084.html. 4. Nick Natalicchio, “Robertson: ‘Islam Is Not a Religion. It Is a Worldwide Po- litical Movement Meant [sic] on Domination,” Media Matters for America, June 12, 2007, http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/06/12/robertson-islam-is-not- a-religion-it-is-a-world/139073. 5. Martin Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), xii. 6. Ibid., xi. 7. Ibid., 75. 8. Ibid., 71. 9. Ibid., 74. 10. Ibid., 76. See Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. See, for example, Ali ibn Muhhammad Mawardi et al., The Discipline of Reli- gious and Worldly Matters (Morocco: ISESCO, 1995). Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 21 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 21 14. Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation, 86. 15. Ibid., 91. 16. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 41; from Mary Douglas, “Judgments on James Frazer,” Daedalus 107, no. 4, Generations (fall 1978), 161. 17. Casanova, Public Religions, 42. 18. Jurgen Habermas, “A “post-secular” Society – What Does That Mean?” Reset DOC, September 16, 2008, http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000000926. 19. Timothy Samuel Shah, Matthew J. Franck, and Thomas F. Farr, Religious Free- dom, Why Now?: Defending an Embattled Human Right: The Witherspoon In- stitute Task Force on International Religious Freedom (Princeton: Witherspoon Institute, 2012), 11. 20. Ibid., 12. 21. Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation, 76, 83. 22. Shah, Franck, and Farr, Religious Freedom, 17. 23. Ibid., vi. 24. Ali Shariʻati, Religion vs Religion (Albuquerque: Abjad, 1993). 25. Ismail R. Faruqi, “Review of “Islam: A Challenge to Religion,’ by Ghulam Ahmad Parwez,” Ismail Faruqi Online, May 2, 2009, http://www.ismailfaruqi. com/articles/review-of-islam-a-challenge-to-religion-by-ghulam-ahmad-parwez. See Q. 109:6. 26. Abu Al-Aʻla al-Mawdudi, Al-Mustalahāt al-Arbaʻah fī al-Qurʼān: Al-Ilāh, al- Rabb, al-ʻIbādah, al-Dīn (Cairo: Dar al-Turath al-ʻArabi, 1975), 117. 27. Ibid., 120. 28. All translations of the Qur’an are from Marmaduke William Pickthall, The Glo- rious Qur’an (New Delhi: Goodword Books, 2002). 29. Mawdudi, Al-Mustalahāt al-Arbaʻah, 128. 30. Muhammad Abdullah Draz, Al-Dīn: Buḥūth Mumahhidah li Dirāsāt Tārīkh al- Adyān (Cairo: Matbaʻat Al-Saʻadah, 1969 [1952]). 31. Muhammad Abdullah Draz, The Moral World of the Qur’an, trans. Rebecca Masterton (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 32. Muhammad Abdullah Draz, Dirāsāt Islāmīyah fī al-ʻAllāqāt al-Ijtimāʻīyah wa al-Dawlīyah (Kuwait: Dar al-Qalam, 1974) and personal communication with Abd al-Rahman al-Zunaydi and members of the Faculty of Sharia, Department of Culture at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh. 33. Draz, Al-Dīn, 31; the author of the Encyclopedia of Islam entry, whom Draz does not mention by name, was the American Orientalist Duncan Black Mac- Donald (1863-1943). 34. Magdi Wahba, “An Anger Observed,” Journal of Arabic Literature 20, no. 2 (1989), 189. 35. Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Islam, Modernity, Violence, and Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 36. Mahmud Muhammad Shakir, Abāṭīl wa Asmār (Cairo: Matbaʻat al-Madani, 1972). 22 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 22 37. Mahmud Muhammad Shakir, Risālah fī al-Ṭarīq ilā Thaqāfatinā (Cairo: Mak- tabat al-Khanji bi al-Qahirah, 2006). 38. Shakir, Abāṭīl, 8-9. See Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Es- says on Art and Literature, trans. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1993). 39. Shakir, Risālah, 71-73. 40. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stan- ford University Press, 2014). 41. Shakir, Risālah, 74. 42. T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949). I am very thankful to Professors Adel S. Gamal of the University of Arizona and Dr. Abd- ullah Abdul Raheem Oseilan, Chairman of the Literary Club of Madina, two students of Mahmud Shakir who have provided me with a great deal of insight into the life and personality of their teacher. 43. Shakir, Abāṭīl, 413. 44. Ibid., 415. 45. Ibid., 417. 46. Ibid., 318. 47. Ibid., 419. 48. Ibid., 430. 49. Ibid., 436. 50. Ibid., 437. 51. Ibid., 440. 52. Ibid., 441. 53. Shakir, Risālah, 75. 54. Ibid., 78. 55. Mahmud Uthman Haddad, Rashid Rida and the Theory of the Caliphate: Me- dieval Themes and Modern Concerns (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Infor- mation Service, 1995); Muhammad Rashid Rida, Al-Khilāfah aw al-Imāmat al-‘Uẓmā (Cairo: Matba‘at al-Manar, 1922), 10; Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Islam, Modernity, Violence, and Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 28. 56. Shakir, Risālah, 79. 57. See Philip Dorroll, “‘The Turkish Understanding of Religion’: Rethinking Tra- dition and Modernity in Contemporary Turkish Islamic Thought,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 4 (December 2014) for a discussion of the history of Turkey’s ilahiyat (divinity) faculties that makes no mention of Muhammad Hamidullah. It does, however, mention his student and colleague Annemarie Schimmel, who remained in continuous contact with him until his death. 58. The following biographical information was gathered through personal com- munication with Sadida Athaullah during February 2015. Delgado: Religions, Lifeways, Same Difference: Defining Dīn 23 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 23 59. Ahmad B. Ghanim al-Asadi, Al-Imām ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Yaḥyā al-Mu‘allimī al-Yamanī: Ḥayātuhu wa Athāruhu (Cairo: Maktabat al-Ridwan, 2006). 60. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, “Belief,” Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, accessed March 15, 2015, http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/ bukhari/002-sbt.php#001.002.048. 61. Muhammad Hamidullah, The Emergence of Islam: Bahawalpur Lectures on the Development of Islamic World-view, Intellectual Tradition and Polity, trans. Afzal Iqbal (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 2004), 156. 62. Ibid., 159-60. 63. Ibid., 176. 64. Yasmine Taeb and Sina Toossi, “Meet the Transatlantic Network of Hate,” ThinkProgress, March 12, 2015, http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/03/12/ 3633135/translatlantic-network-hate. 65. Riesebrodt, The Promise of Salvation, 9. 66. Ibid., 8 and 64-65. Berger has since acknowledged the disproving of his theory. See Peter L. Berger, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999). 67. Muhammad Hamidullah, Majmu‘āt al-Wathā’iq al-Siyāsīyah fī al-‘Ahd Nabawī (Cairo: Matba‘at Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa al-Tarjamah wa al-Nashr, 1941). 68. Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 256. 69. See Akram Diyaʼ Umari, Ibn Hazm Ali ibn Ahmad, and Baqi ibn Makhlad, Baqī ibn Makhlad al-Qurṭubī wa Muqaddimat Musnaduh: ʻAdad mā li Kullī Qāḥid min al-Ṣaḥābah min al-Ḥadīth (Beirut: n.p., 1984). 70. Alan Rappeport, “Donald Trump Says He Would Be Open to Closing U.S. Mosques to Fight ISIS,” The New York Times, October 22, 2015, http://www. nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/22/donald-trump-says-he-would-be- open-to-closing-u-s-mosques-to-fight-isis. 71. See “Reflections on the Problem of Black Suffering: A Conversation with Pro- fessor Sherman Jackson and Professor Cornel West” (Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, Princeton, March 29, 2010), https://www.youtube. com/playlist?list=PLF688C703231CA03F. 72. United States, Department of State, Office of Religion and Global Affairs, Re- ligion and Global Affairs, February 27, 2015, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/pl/ 238144.htm. 24 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:1 ajiss33-1_ajiss 12/30/2015 12:59 PM Page 24