Editorial

This issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences features two 
important articles: Sarah Marusek’s ethnographic study of a grassroots Is-
lamic movement in Lebanon reconfiguring (even resisting) secularism and 
neoliberalism, and Madiha Tahseen and Charissa S.L. Cheah’s empirical 
study of the formation of American Muslim adolescents. Also featured is 
an extended interview with the renowned anthropologist, Talal Asad.

Marusek’s study of the interaction of an Islamic movement within 
secular, liberal, and neoliberal structures and practices is innovative and 
thought-provoking. It shows how certain Shi‘ite clerics and leaders are able 
to adapt but also simultaneously resist neoliberalism while providing ser-
vices to the poor, in particular the downtrodden Shi‘a population of Leb-
anon. The intellectual posture of these movements, she highlights, seeks 
to separate the rationalistic procedures and procedures of modernity from 
what they insist are still religious values. But straddling “forces of materi-
alism and spirituality,” Marusek argues, “need not inevitably yield a gospel 
of wealth. Indeed, these forces may even coalesce into a decolonial project.” 
The Lebanese “Shi‘i movements,” she concludes, “are each critically engag-
ing with secular liberalism and neoliberal capitalism on their own terms, in 
profoundly interesting, complex, and contradictory ways.” This is an illumi-
nating study which alludes to the contradictions and limits of embedding 
religious values and rationality in neoliberal and secular structures and 
practices, which themselves are inevitably instilling their own values and 
rationality as they must in order to be fully efficient on their own terms. The 
struggle, the author suggests, is ongoing and worthwhile.

Tahseen and Cheah’s study investigates the relationship between men-
tal and social health of the American Muslim youth and their identity. This 
carefully constructed empirical study confirms the assessment long felt by 
American Muslim leaders and thinkers: that the healthiest and most ad-



vi The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 35:1

justed youth are those that are stronger in their religious identity while also 
being well-adjusted and at home in American society.

My conversation with Talal Asad took place in the heady days of the 
Arab uprisings, before their fate was sealed by the regional autocrats. It is 
reproduced here with minor changes. Many of its concerns are not specific 
to the political upheaval and optimism of the time, but are long-standing 
academic concerns that the events of those years certainly threw into sharp 
relief. Most people seem to now have forgotten that the Arab uprisings 
were first and foremost about the painful injustices and inequalities inflict-
ed by the neoliberal policies of world powers that have played havoc with 
the region since at least the 1980s. From neoliberalism and capitalism, the 
conversation moves to issues of Islamic political tradition, rebellion, and 
governance, to biographical vignettes from both of our lives, ending finally 
with the question of Islamic tradition as a way to combat the contemporary 
nihilism of the material as well as intellectual trends of our times.

Ovamir Anjum, Editor, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
Imam Khattab Chair of Islamic Studies

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Affiliated Faculty, Department of History

University of Toledo, Toledo, OH