American Journal of Islam and Society Vol 42 No 3-4.indb 6 Reconfiguring Political Islam: A Discursive Tradition Approach A B B A S J O N G Abstract This article reconceptualizes Political Islam through the analytic lens of discursive tradition, restructured within the framework of social configurations. Departing from essentialist, universal- ist, nominalist, and reductionist readings, the study foregrounds the epistemological contingencies and internal pluralities that characterize Political Islam as a historically situated and discur- sively constructed phenomenon. Rather than treating political Islam as a fixed ideological project or a transhistorical expres- sion of Islamic governance, the article theorizes it as a dynamic and contested field in which diverse actors articulate Islamic categories within distinct configurations shaped by contextual Abbas Jong is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Berlin Graduate School Mus- lim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Humboldt University of Berlin. Jong, Abbas. 2025. “Reconfiguring Political Islam: A Discursive Tradition Approach.” American Journal of Islam and Society 42, nos. 3-4: 6–41 • doi: 10.35632/ajis.v42i3-4.3609 Copyright © 2025 International Institute of Islamic Thought JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  7 transformations, historical ruptures, institutional dislocations, regimes of reasoning, and so on. Drawing on Talal Asad’s notion of discursive tradition, the analysis reconstructs its scope through the concept of social configurations, which enables a multilayered reading of Political Islam across three analytical levels: conditions of possibility, categorical and discursive for- mation, and social objectification. This theoretical reconstruction clarifies how Islamist discourses emerge not from doctrinal con- tinuity alone, but through strategic negotiations over core issues such as temporality, authority, power, and legitimacy. Through comparative and context-sensitive examination of various Islamist traditions—from reformist to revolutionary, nationalist to transnational, moderate to militant—the article shows how Political Islam operates through a grammar of differentiation and reconfiguration within the broader Islamic tradition. The result- ing framework not only situates Political Islam within shifting social terrains, but also offers an epistemological intervention into its interpretation as a plural, indeterminate, and generative discursive tradition. Keywords: Political Islam, Islamism, Discursive Tradition, Islamic Tradition, Talal Asad Introduction Over the course of several decades, a range of terms including Political Islam, Islamism, fundamentalism, Jihadism, moderate Islam, Salafism, Wahhabism, and others have been employed to elucidate the increasing presence of Islam within the public sphere, particularly in the realm of politics. These conceptual frameworks and categories have been adopted by various scholars, each utilizing distinct approaches and pursuing different objectives to make sense of a wide array of phenomena. These phenomena encompass currents, discourses, movements, traditions, governments, parties, identities, actions, communities, dispositions, practices, ideologies, and all social entities that have sought to advance 8  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 diverse collective and political agendas, each grounded in distinct inter- pretations of the imagined Islamic tradition (Arjomand, 1995; Asad, 2011; Ayoob, 2004; Ayoob & Lussier, 2020; Ayubi, 1991; Bayat, 2013; Denoeux, 2002; Esposito, 1997; Esposito & Shahin, 2013; Hashemi, 2021; Hirschkind, 2013; Kepel, 2002; Lewis, 2003; Mahmood, 1994; Mandaville, 2014; March, 2015; Martin & Barzegar, 2009; Moaddel, 2002; Roy, 1994, 2006; Salvatore, 1999; Tibi, 2012; Voll & Sonn, 2009; Volpi, 2011b; Zubaida, 2000). Within the broader context of Political Islam, a wide range of actors find their place, from the reformist ideas espoused by Seyyed Jamal al-Din al-Afghani to the revolutionary ideology propagated by Ayatollah Khomeini, and the radical jihadism associated with figures such as Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, this category includes movements from terrorist groups from Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and the Taliban to Islamist movement and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ennahda Party, Jamaat-e-Islami, Hezbollah, etc., as well as the establishment of Islamic states in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and other regions, collectively falling under the umbrella of Political Islam and Islamism. These diverse and sometimes contradictory uses and implications have made political Islam a contended and problematic issue (Asad, 2003; Hashemi, 2021; Hurd, 2008; Ismail, 2003; Jong & Ali, 2023; March, 2015; Schwedler, 2011; Varisco, 2009). In the contemporary cosmopolitanized world, where mul- tiplicity, interconnectivity, fluidity, and transnationalism have imposed a form of constant transformation and indeterminacy on social phe- nomena, the situation has become even more critical. The concepts of Islam and Islamism, within practical politics and various contexts, is constructed and reconstructed within different configurations and for diverse purposes alongside other categories by various groups. This pro- cess has effectively erased any fixed and given meaning or significance for these concepts. Consequently, utilizing this conceptual framework necessitates a variety of theoretical and conceptual considerations along- side taking historical conditions into account. “Islamism,” also referred to here as “Political Islam”—though some scholars (Cesari, 2021; Emmerson, 2010; Ismail, 2003; Voll & Sonn, 2009) argue for a distinction, as it is largely based on a presupposed, a priori, and essentialized understanding of politics, power and Islam, whereby JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  9 “Political Islam” is seen as primarily oriented toward power, state and political authority, while “Islamism” is viewed as a broader tendency encompassing various dimensions of social and individual life. However, by suspending this essentialist conception of politics and approaching Islam as a discursive tradition, we can instead identify multiple, internally diverse discursive traditions within Islam—including both Islamism and Political Islam—whose internal pluralities are shaped in relation to the particular aims and trajectories of each discourse, thereby deferring and destabilizing any universal or essentialist definition of either “Islam” or “politics,” as both the nature of Islam, politics, and their relationship are contingently constituted within and through these historically situated discursive traditions—is primarily understood as a multifaceted socio-po- litical and ideological movement that advocates for the comprehensive application of Islamic principles and norms in shaping individual lives and society, including the political and legal realms, as many scholars have articulated (Ayoob, 2004; Denoeux, 2002; March, 2015; Volpi, 2011a). Many scholars in the field of Islamic political studies have considered Political Islam in various frameworks, ranging from a social-political movement and a revolutionary current to an ideology, a way of life, an Islamic identity, religiosity, discourse, doctrine, governance, religious fundamentalism and conservatism, an alternative modernity and so forth (Eickelman & Piscatori, 1996; Esposito, 1997; Ismail, 2004; Mahmood, 2005; Roy, 2003; Tibi, 2005; Voll & Sonn, 2009; Zubaida, 2004). Political Islam also encompasses a diverse spectrum of beliefs and practices, ranging from moderate, peaceful activism to more radical and potentially violent approaches, all aimed at establishing an Islamic state or society governed by Shariah law or through extensive references to Islamic tradition and granting a higher authority to their imagined of Islam in the public sphere (Fuller, 2003; Roy, 1994). For many groups of Islamists, Islamism is characterized by its emphasis on the central role of Islam in guiding not only personal behavior but also the broader social and political structures, and it often involves cultural differentia- tion from the West and a reconnection with pre-colonial Islamic values (Lewis, 1976, 1993). Adherents of Islamism may actively assert and pro- mote Islamic beliefs, prescriptions, laws, and policies, thereby shaping 10  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 and influencing political and social activities within Muslim-majority or minority contexts. Even in countries with a Muslim majority, where Islam—in its broad and pluralistic sense—constitutes an essential part of the individual and collective lives of Muslims, Islamists strive to impose and implement their envisioned version of Islam at both the public and political levels. They rely on their specific and exclusive interpretations and emphasize certain aspects of Islamic tradition to achieve this goal. Furthermore, from an ontological perspective, many studies also view Political Islam as an epiphenomenon distinct and divergent from the secular and impartial public sphere, perceiving it as a regression to pre-modern forms of Islamic political order, a manifestation of funda- mental economic and political interests, an outcome stemming from various social, political, economic, and cultural crises, an unprecedented intrusion of non-modern and irrational religious phenomena into the secular public sphere, or even as an invalid, fantastical, colonialist, and unreal category (Hirschkind, 2013; Hurd, 2008). However, the multiplic- ity and indeterminacy of the phenomena encompassed by these academic categories not only fail to enhance understanding but also distort and neglect the actual and objective realities. Therefore, in order to com- prehensively investigate the intricate relationship between Islam and politics, it is crucial to explore more flexible, epistemologically complex, and efficient approaches that can accommodate the diverse array of phe- nomena and trends present in this domain. In addressing these mainly theoretical and epistemological predica- ments in conceptualizing phenomena categorized under Political Islam and Islamism, various theoretical and non-theoretical solutions have been proposed. One promising solution that offers significant poten- tial for a more precise conceptualization of the complexities associated with phenomena categorized under Political Islam is to consider Political Islam as a discursive tradition. The idea of a discursive tradition was introduced by Talal Asad (2009) in his conceptual formulation of Islam as an object of anthropological inquiry amidst the dominant readings and definitions of Islam. A discursive tradition, as defined by Talal Asad, is a complex and evolving set of discourses that guide religious practice and JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  11 interpretation. It is characterized by its historical continuity, adaptability, plurality, and the interrelation of power and authority with tradition and discourse. This framework allows for a nuanced understanding of Islam that transcends rigid essentialist and nominalist definitions, acknowl- edging the dynamic interplay of historical, social, and cultural factors in shaping religious traditions (Asad, 2003, 2009, 2011, 2015). This formulation, by juxtaposing the concept of tradition in the MacIntyrean sense with discourse and power in the Foucauldian sense and history in the Benjaminian sense, attempts to position Islam within and suspend the two central antinomies in Islamic studies in general and the anthropology of Islam in particular. These antinomies include essentialist and nominalist definitions of Islam, as well as the dichot- omy between lived Islam (low Islam) and theological Islam reliant on tradition (high Islam). Asad seeks to argue in favor of a third state rela- tive to these dichotomies by highlighting Islam as a discursive tradition and to move beyond them (Anjum, 2007; Asad, 2003, 2009). Given the conceptual capacity and appeal of this notion in Islamic and religious studies, this idea has been adopted by various scholars as their primary analytical unit. Among these scholars, some have utilized this idea in the study of Political Islam to address the aforementioned challenges (see: Hirschkind, 2013; Hurd, 2008; Ismail, 2003, 2004; Jong & Ebrahimzadeh, 2024; Mahmood, 2005). However, it should be noted that Talal Asad did not engage deeply and precisely in formulating this concept, and the lack of precise theoret- ical, epistemological, historical, and empirical foundations has resulted in further ambiguities, both epistemological and empirical, in making sense of various related objects. In studies related to Political Islam, the appli- cation of the idea of a discursive tradition has been employed merely for historicization or to make Political Islam more concrete, multifaceted, and complex (Hirschkind, 2013; Ismail, 2003, 2004; Mahmood, 2005), or solely to critique the general approaches of radical essentialism or con- structionism in Political Islam (Hurd, 2008). In these studies, the notion of Political Islam as a discursive tradition has neither been explained nor referenced in terms of its epistemological foundations, implications, or methodological application in understanding phenomena categorized 12  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 under Political Islam. Instead, the discursive tradition in these studies has only provided some general clarifications in the examination of Political Islam. However, any precise reference to and use of this idea necessitates a thorough understanding of its epistemological foundations and theo- retical and discursive implications for its application in more concrete analyses. The central claim of this research is that examining the episte- mological foundations of the idea of the discursive tradition, promoting it, and reinterpreting it based on the post-foundational epistemological premises of social configurations (Jong, 2023) will clarify, and expand the capacity of this concept. This, in turn, will more precisely and realistically address the aforementioned challenges related to the conceptualization of Political Islam. To this end, the article will review the epistemologi- cal foundations of the idea of the discursive tradition in defining Islam, particularly the antinomies of universalism/singularism, essentialism/ nominalism and tradition/experience. It will then re-contextualize and revisit these foundations based on the premises and promises of social configurations. The study will also explore the implications of this exam- ination and reinterpretation for inquires in Political Islam and more specifically in political Islamist thought. It will be shown that, this effort allows for a comprehensive and flex- ible understanding of Islamist discourses and movements by revealing that they are constructed within an intricate network of relationships and a matrix of categories, ideas, tendencies, and variables that emerge within specific temporal and spatial contexts. The argument put forth emphasizes that the consideration of Political Islam as a discursive tra- dition necessitates viewing the subject of inquiry in a relational manner, in relation to other phenomena, discourses, and currents. Moreover, it entails acknowledging that these phenomena are not predetermined, or static based on rigid categories, religious principles, or dominant ortho- doxy, but rather shaped as configurations within a historical constellation under specific conditions of possibility. These configurations encompass a network of interrelated categories and diverse internal and external relations. Ultimately, it will be demonstrated that one of the most signif- icant implications of considering Political Islam as a discursive tradition JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  13 is the ability to situate and understand it as a configuration within the broader Islamic discursive tradition—alongside other strands such as Salafis, Sufis, reformists/modernists, traditionalists, and the ulama. Political Islam and the Discursive Tradition, Some Epistemological Considerations The definition and nature of the object of inquiry in religious stud- ies—namely, religion—in Islamic studies—namely, Islam—or in studies of Political Islam—namely, Political Islam or Islamism—represent a fundamental issue with significant ontological and epistemological implications for these fields. Talal Asad (2009), amidst prevailing defi- nitions and debates surrounding the essence of Islam, proposes a novel definition of Islam as an object of anthropological inquiry. This defini- tion, articulated in Asad’s (2009) article “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” leverages the concept of a discursive tradition and offers exten- sive potential for rethinking Islam as a distinct object of study. Asad’s approach directly engages with definitions framed around the antino- mies of tradition versus experience and essentialism versus nominalism (and constructionism), while also addressing the predicament of histor- icism versus non-historicism indirectly (Anjum, 2007; Asad, 2009; Jong & Ali, 2023). The following sections will preliminarily introduce and reinterpret these antinomies through the broader epistemological frame- work of universalism versus singularism. Addressing and transcending this antinomy promises to tackle a central epistemological challenge in Islamic studies, especially regarding Political Islam (Jong, 2023; Jong & Ali, 2023). The controversies surrounding the conceptualization of Islam, in both its ontological and epistemological dimensions, are crucial for understanding and addressing issues related to Political Islam. The fundamental question that arises in the conceptualization of Islam, specifically in relation to Political Islam or Islamism, is whether Islam is a universal and trans-historical category that can be derived from sacred texts, rituals, teachings, and its broader historical context, allowing for a general definition, characteristics, or laws and traditions. Alternatively, is Islam merely a temporally constructed and contextually 14  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 transformed phenomenon by Muslims in specific times and places, under distinct historical and sociological conditions? Are we encountering a universal, official, theological, and standardized Islam that coexists with some historical and local representations (as proposed by Orientalists, politicians, theologians and some other scholars), or is Islam funda- mentally comprised of singular entities and concrete phenomena, only implemented contingently and empirically, subject to specific conditions, and possessing limited universality and determinacy? This situation can be extrapolated to the realm of Political Islam. Fundamentally, there exists a query as to whether Political Islam is a universal phenomenon rooted in overarching Islamic teachings, history and its relations to politics, thereby possessing inherent legitimacy, and subsequently, allowing for the examination of various representations of this universal Political Islam. Conversely, is Political Islam a contingent and diverse phenomenon arising from specific historical circumstances? Can Political Islam be considered as an episodic or singular manifestation emerging within particular contexts due to distinctive interpretations of Islamic teachings or reliance on specific references to the Islamic tradition? Framed in epistemological terms, does Political Islam repre- sent a universal category encompassing timeless attributes, capable of encompassing diverse phenomena under general characteristics about the relations between Islam and politics? Or does it essentially function as an incomplete and singular category, accommodating limited phenom- ena contingent upon particular assumptions, conditions and relations between different forms of Islamicity and politics? (Jong & Ali, 2023) Conversely, and as another means of approaching this issue, Talal Asad’s formulation of the concept of discursive tradition brings atten- tion to the debate over how to define Islam itself (Anjum, 2007; Asad, 2009, 2015; Iqbal, 2017). Essentialist approaches seek to establish Islam as a universal, given, completed and transhistorical category, derived primarily from sacred texts, traditions, rituals, teachings, and its broader historical context. On the other hand, constructivist perspectives view Islam as a temporally constructed and contextually transformed phe- nomenon, molded by specific historical and sociological conditions. In this dispute, Islam or Political Islam is considered an empty term or name JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  15 for phenomena that, at an empirical level, exhibit only minimal similar- ities necessary to construct a singular, distinct phenomenon identified as Islam or Islamism. The central issue here is who or what carries the label or name of Islam and who participates in constructing the reality that is referred to as Islam. And fundamentally, what realities does the name Islam signify? However, these approaches tend to oversimplify the complexity and diversity inherent within Islam as a lived tradition and fail to account for the transformative claims and diverse interpretations and references made by contemporary Muslims (Asad, 2009). The problem of tradition and experience, embodied in the idea of discursive tradition, further complicates the discourse surrounding the definition of Islam (Anjum, 2007; Asad, 2009; Iqbal, 2017). Traditional, mainly theological and static understandings of tradition often empha- size a replication of the past, leading to static and fixed conceptions. However, the experiences of Muslims in modern times challenge these rigid notions of tradition. Should Islam and Political Islam be understood in relation to pre-existing theological traditions, jurisprudential schools, or the narrow circles of scholars, religious interpreters, and Islamists? Or is Islam merely the lived experience of Muslims in various societies and times, based on their diverse references, understandings, and uses of elements deemed Islamic, alongside other elements—without regard to their theological logic? Here, should we speak of Islams—especially at the level of lived experience—based on contexts, actors, and various interpretations of what is considered Islamic? Or is Islam, particularly in terms of sacred texts, teachings, and its general history, a single source or reality with multiple representations or historical developments? In dealing with these antinomies, Talal Asad introduces the con- cept of “discursive tradition” to understand Islam beyond essentialist, constructionist and nominalist approaches as well as the dichotomy of experience and tradition (Anjum, 2007; Asad, 2009). This approach inte- grates elements of tradition, as conceptualized by Alasdair MacIntyre, with the Foucauldian idea of discourse and the idea of history by Walter Benjamin (Iqbal, 2017). For him, a discursive tradition encompasses a set of discourses that instruct practitioners on the correct form and purpose of particular practices within specific historical and material 16  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 contexts. According to Asad, an Islamic discursive tradition is “a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present” (Asad, 2009: 20). This definition highlights the dynamic nature of tradition, emphasizing that it is not merely a replication of past practices but involves an ongoing process of interpretation and reinterpretation. In this framework, tradition is actively engaged with the present and future, allowing for a continuous evolution of practices and beliefs. In general, Asad views discursive processes and power relations as central to shaping the nature and identity of religion, particularly in contrast to categories such as the secular, the nation, the state, and other related constructs, across different historical periods and spatial contexts (Asad, 2003). However, in his essay “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” he argues that Islam constitutes a uniquely discursive tradition, setting it apart from other religions (Asad, 2009). In Asad’s conceptu- alization, the discursive tradition is underpinned by the interrelation of tradition, discourse, and history, each contributing to a complex, evolving framework that resists static and essentialist interpretations. Tradition, rooted in MacIntyre’s notion of a historically extended and socially embodied argument, reflects a continuity that is not merely pre- served but actively interpreted and reinterpreted within the ever-shifting contexts of social and political life. This continuous re-engagement ensures that tradition remains a living discourse, responsive to the demands of the present while being anchored in the past (MacIntyre, 1988). According to Asad, Muslims refer to and engage with Islamic tra- dition—including sacred texts and prophetic traditions—through various modes of reasoning, interpretation, and argumentation within different discursive, temporal, and spatial contexts. This dynamic process of refer- ence and interpretation is particularly prominent in Islam’s engagement with diverse public issues. Discourse, drawing on Foucault’s insights, is the medium through which the power dynamics within a tradition are articulated and contested. It is within these discursive practices that the authority of religious texts and practices is both constructed and chal- lenged, shaped by the socio-political forces at play. Asad’s emphasis on discourse highlights the critical role of power relations in the formation JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  17 and transformation of tradition, revealing how religious practices and beliefs are not simply inherited but are subject to ongoing negotiation and adaptation. (Enayat, 2017). In Asad’s anthropological reframing of Islamic tradition, history is not apprehended as a linear continuum but as a constellation of dis- continuous moments, deeply informed by Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History (2003). Asad (2009) draws implicitly from Benjamin’s notion of messianic time and the interruptive force of his- torical materialism, in which the past is not a sequential inheritance but a site of critical intervention—blasted out of the continuum of his- tory. This conception allows Asad to theorize tradition as a temporally fractured, power-laden field, where the past is neither inert nor nos- talgically restored but reactivated through selective retrieval, rupture, and re-signification in the present. The Islamic discursive tradition, in this light, is not a continuous lineage of doctrines but a strategic and contingent engagement with the past, shaped by crises, interruptions, and recontextualizations. What Asad articulates is a form of historical reasoning where the authority of tradition is not premised on stability but on its capacity to be reconfigured in response to shifting political, epistemological, and institutional conditions. Thus, tradition is a per- formative site, not simply of transmission, but of contestation—where theological and political categories are re-encoded through historically situated discursive practices. This Benjaminian sensibility embedded in Asad’s thinking repositions Islamic tradition not as preservation but as revolutionary citation, where moments of the past are seized in order to rethink the present and project alternative futures—making tradition itself a field of temporal and ideological struggle (Asad, 2009; Enayat, 2017; Benjamin, 2003). Discursive traditions accommodate a plurality of voices and interpretations, recognizing that religious practices and beliefs are context-dependent and subject to historical and social influences . The theological and religious aspects of Islam are deeply intertwined with the practical experiences and actions of Muslims. This interconnected- ness highlights the role of lived experiences in shaping and reshaping religious traditions. While discursive traditions emphasize continuity 18  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 with the past, they also incorporate critique and transformation. This dual focus ensures that traditions remain relevant and responsive to new conditions and challenges. In this context, this predominantly interpre- tive idea of Islam—as a discursive tradition—seeks to address and go beyond essentialism and nominalism, or historicism and non-historicism, as well as Islam as lived experience versus tradition, by highlighting the multiplicity of discursive articulations within Islamic traditions across different temporal and spatial contexts. These articulations are con- structed by various actors within different power relations. Asad aims to suspend these issues by emphasizing that the Islamic phenomenon is constructed within a particular discursive tradition and specific tempo- ral and spatial contexts, shaped by interactions among discursive and interpretive forces, relations, and discursive practices (Jong & Ali, 2023). In his various works, Asad attempts to elucidate this logic of articulating discursive traditions with illustrative examples. His examples include the revival of the tradition of naṣīḥah (advice) in contemporary Saudi Arabia for forming consultative and critical councils by ulama (Asad, 2003), the construction of the tradition of al-amr bi-al-maʿrūf wa-al- nahy ʿan al-munkar (enjoining the right/honorable and forbidding the wrong/dishonorable) in contemporary Egypt as a form of political cri- tique (Asad, 2015), and various references to texts or Islamic figures in Arab nationalism or Islamism in the contemporary Muslim world (Asad, 2003). All of these examples serve as instances of Islam configured as a discursive tradition. In his article, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” Asad (2009) concludes his discussion with definitions and general considerations about discursive tradition without delving into the specific implications of this idea for the aforementioned epistemological contradictions and antinomies. It remains unclear and analytically underdeveloped how the concept of discursive tradition can practically resolve the tensions between essentialism and nominalism, or between historicism and non-historicism. Many key concepts such as the notion of time and space, the concept of practice, the role of dispositions, contexts, text, the problem of foundation, the structure-agency issue, contingency, regimes of interpretive, scale, etc., which are crucial in articulating discursive JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  19 traditions, are not thoroughly examined. This leads to epistemological ambiguity in the idea—an idea fundamentally constructed on episte- mological debates—and its specific methodological implications. The concept holds some intellectual and theoretical potential for examining Islamic thought, but its practical applications are limited. This limitation is apparent in the overly general, imprecise, and non-operational use of the concept of discursive tradition in Political Islam studies, where scholars typically reference it in a broad, non-specific manner, often as a general enlightening and insightful idea. The notable exception is the work of Saba Mahmood (2005), who genuinely understands and appro- priately applies the concept. Moreover, scholars like Samuli Schielke (2007) and Hadi Enayat (2017) argue that Asad’s focus on continuity over transformation is another point of contention. His work, while indebted to Foucault’s genealogy of discursive formations, tends to emphasize coherence and continuity within Islamic traditions. This focus can obscure the inherently dynamic and often contradictory nature of historical developments within these traditions, thus failing to fully capture the transformative aspects of Islamic practices and beliefs. Furthermore, the concept of discursive tradition can lead to the erasure of significant transformations and the invention of artificial breaks within Islamic history. This can result in an oversimplified and ahistorical portrayal of Islamic traditions. Additional critiques highlight how Asad’s framework might inadequately address the interplay between Islamic traditions, modernity, and modern power structures. The colonial and post-colonial contexts have significantly shaped Islamic discourses, and any comprehensive analysis must account for these power relations and their influence on the construction of Islamic traditions. The extreme complexity of contemporary societies and the emer- gence of hybrid and indeterminate identities and collective entities further challenge Asad’s framework. Muslims in diaspora communi- ties navigate multiple cultural and religious influences, shaping their understanding and practice of Islam in ways that traditional discur- sive frameworks might not fully encompass. Within the framework of Asad, discursive traditions with high orthodoxy are more amenable to 20  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 examination, while other configurations with lower degrees of ortho- doxy are almost disregarded (Anjum, 2007). This underscores the need for a more nuanced approach that can account for the fluidity and hybridity of contemporary Islamic identities. Moreover, while Asad’s concept high- lights the importance of authoritative discourses, it may underplay the agency of individual practitioners. The lived experiences and personal interpretations of Muslims are crucial for understanding how traditions are dynamically maintained and transformed. These individual practices and interpretations offer rich insights into the ongoing negotiation and redefinition of Islamic traditions (Jong & Ali, 2023). To address the epis- temological limitations inherent in both the category of Political Islam and Talal Asad’s conception of discursive tradition, this article proposes a reconstruction of the latter through the analytic framework of “social configuration.” Political Islam as Discursive Tradition and the Idea of Social Configuration Unlike classical sociological units such as action, society, social fact, field, civilization and so on—which presume internal coherence, ontological unity, and normative closure—social configurations are post-founda- tional, historically contingent, and relational formations. They emerge not from essential and completed foundations, but from processes of partial grounding, which are always provisional, contested, and situated within shifting networks of social practices. A social configuration is composed of diverse and potentially incongruent elements—discourses, actors, symbolic orders, materialized practices—whose interaction forms a temporally-bound and spatially-situated assemblage. These formations are neither fully open nor deterministically structured; instead, they are defined by indeterminacy, internal tensions, and the boundary work that actors engage in to delineate “inside” from “outside.” Social configura- tions are not universal, singular, or foundational, but rather constantly (re)negotiated through the dynamic interplay of contextual constraints, strategic alignments, and epistemic constructions. Their intelligibility depends on the relational positioning of categories and practices, and JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  21 their coherence is always partial—sustained through practices of cul- tural compromise, categories and discursive ordering, social closure and differentiation. Thus, when discursive tradition is reconceived as a social configuration, it no longer appears as a discursively articulated formation, whose boundaries are porous, whose internal logic is open to rupture, and whose continuity is sustained through active reconfigu- ration in response to political, theological, and historical contingencies (Jong, 2023, 2024, 2025). These social configurations can be analyzed on three levels. The first level involves the conditions of possibility of their emergence, encompass- ing their contingency and historicity based on the partial determination of their foundations. At this level, the conditions of possibility of the emergence of these configurations, i.e., the identification of founda- tions within a constellation of historical and non-historical relationships shaped through the positions, interactions, practices, and dispositions of specific actors at a particular moment, are examined. These configu- rations in Islamist political thought can be constructed or reconstructed on foundations such as liberation, anti-colonialism, the establishment of an Islamic society (ummah), freedom, justice, the implementation of Shariah, and more, in specific temporal and spatial contexts and under particular conditions of possibility. The second level attempts to explain the process of construction and the characteristics of these configurations. A dual process of identity and difference is at work here. Configurations are fundamentally constructed around specific categories, their order, the unique relationships among them, their discursive expression, and their external relations. At this stage, the grammar of these configurations, at the moment of their actualization, will be precisely identified through identification of their key categories and expressions through parameters such as Islamist time and space, interpretations of the present, interpreta- tions of history, the imagined community, orthodoxy, desired conditions and objectives, regimes of reference to sacred texts, regimes of reasoning and argumentation, and more. Just as a justificatory regime is formed around these categories and their ordering, a parallel regime of othering and differentiation also emerges in the construction of the “others” of these configurations. In Islamism, both regimes are legitimized through 22  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 different systems of reference and reasoning in relation to the Islamic tra- dition and sacred texts. The third level analyzes the construction of social realities and the tangible consequences related to these configurations, including the creation of various collective identities, social groupings and closure, collective actions, and social realities (Jong, 2024). At this level, the external and socialized aspects of these configurations will also be identified and analyzed based on the formation of various regimes of othering, methods and means of struggle, and the framing of their deter- mination within movements, parties, states, and so on. In this post-foundational approach (Jong, 2023, 2025), different actors (here, Islamists) with varied backgrounds but specific goals engage in interactions. These interactions generate an order of categories rooted in pre-existing traditions, social structures, and shaped by given con- ditions, as well as their perceptions and expectations. Consequently, elements from different traditions with diverse objectives are recon- structed within a configuration based on incomplete foundations (from religious to political, national, cultural, economic, etc.) at a particular moment. These foundations, which serve as the basis for the formation of configurations, are themselves shaped under specific conditions of possibility, yet they exist in a state of becoming and transformation. As such, they are neither permanent nor completed. Consequently, the configurations they give rise to are also not fixed or complete. On the other hand, this construction manifests through specific categories, their categorical order, and their discursive expression, forming the basis for social closures and social realities at another level. Thus, these config- urations are contingent, and their characteristics—whether universal or singular, their historicity, orthodoxy or heterodoxy, transformation, rationality, regularity, authority, durability and objectivity—are all con- tingent upon a particular configuration within specific conditions of possibility. These conditions are continuously (re)constructed temporar- ily. Therefore, the starting and ending point of analysis is entirely limited to the configurations and the identification of the various relationships and characteristics pertinent to that configuration. By considering the discursive tradition within the framework of social configurations, Islam, from an epistemological perspective, is JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  23 situated at the level of the particular, positioned between the singular— representing the lived and historical Islam—and the universal, which encompasses universal Islam or the trans-historical Islamic tradition. The particular represents a unique amalgamation of universality and histori- cal singularity. Epistemologically, the particular signifies the intersection of the universal and the singular within a specific historical moment, giving rise to diverse discursive traditions with singular characteristics that possess distinct regularity, universality, consistency, and stability particular to each discursive tradition or configuration. Furthermore, this discursive tradition is in a perpetual state of transformation and evolution. This transformation is itself the result of the unfinished nature of the foundations of these discursive traditions, which are in a state of constant grounding. This means that an Islamic discursive tradition may ground around a political foundation such as liberation, or around a political-economic foundation such as distributive or consumer jus- tice. However, the meaning of these concepts may quickly shift, or the foundation itself may, under changing contextual conditions, be recon- figured and take on a non-political character. Therefore, it is not possible to conceive of a permanent or finalized foundation for Political Islam, nor to attribute to it a fixed, stable, or universal essence. These features may apply to a specific range of Islamist configurations within partic- ular historical periods. Thus, their generality is limited to this defined scope—derived through comparative studies and the identification of family resemblances among them. This is precisely what is meant by particularity: something that occupies a space between universality and singularity. Thus, the Islamic discursive tradition is comprehended as a historically evolving assemblage of discourses, embedded within the practices and institutions of Muslim societies and communities, intri- cately interwoven with the material existence of its adherents. In this understanding of the Islamic discursive tradition, discourses are situated within the traditions embedded within power relations and the levels and types of orthodoxy related to that power regime. These have a temporal and spatial dimension and exist within a specific con- figuration. This means that religious power or authority is not solely related to religious texts and traditions. Instead, the power structures 24  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 significantly influence the way these texts are engaged with, interpreted, the rationality and mode of argumentation and reference, and even the interpreter within a specific configuration. Consequently, the Islamist discursive tradition is characterized by a distinctive rationality, founda- tional principles, different levels of orthodoxy, specific conceptions of time and space, regimes of reference to the Islamic tradition, modes of reasoning and argumentation, and so on, all intricately interwoven with textual sources, historical trajectories, power relations, and institutional frameworks (Jong, 2023; Jong & Ali, 2023). Accordingly, understanding Islam as a discursive tradition within this framework provides a powerful conceptual lens through which to interrogate the multiplicity and complexity of Political Islam. Rather than treating Political Islam as a fixed ideology or a monolithic expression of Islamic politics, this approach foregrounds its heterogeneous and con- text-dependent nature as a field of competing discourses, interpretations, and practices articulated under specific historical, social, and cultural conditions. This framing disrupts essentialist or nominalist accounts that seek to locate a transhistorical and invariant essence linking Islam to politics, the state, or the public sphere. Within this configurational and discursive horizon, the longstanding opposition between universalism and singularism—whether Political Islam is the manifestation of a time- less Islamic core or a set of historically contingent articulations—appears less as a dichotomy to be resolved than as a terrain to be problema- tized. Universalist approaches posit a normative and continuous relation between Islamic revelation and political order, often assuming coher- ence across space and time; singularist views, by contrast, stress the discontinuities, ruptures, and contextual variations that characterize the emergence of Islamist formations. Yet, within the discursive tra- dition framework, these polarities are not mutually exclusive but are dialectically entangled: Political Islam operates precisely through the tension between Islamic universality and its plural actualizations at the particular level. It draws from a shared semantic archive of symbols, con- cepts, and texts, while simultaneously being refracted through diverse historical mediations and sociopolitical imperatives. Thus, Political Islam is better understood not through fixed typologies or taxonomic JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  25 definitions, but as a field of discursive production where categories such as Shariah, ummah, jihād, or ḥākimiyyah acquire meaning through situ- ated interpretation, strategic deployment, and institutional embedding. Discursive traditions do not merely preserve doctrinal content; they actively shape the conditions under which meaning is generated, con- tested, and stabilized. This approach enables scholars to attend to the plurality, indeterminacy, and internal complexity of political Islamic discourses while recognizing their embeddedness in shifting relations of power, temporality, and community rather than assuming a singular political logic of Islam. It is precisely this emphasis on multiplicity and contingency that allows for a more accurate and conceptually rigorous engagement with Political Islam, not as a deviation from liberal politi- cal norms or an expression of essential religiosity, but as a historically evolving tradition of political reasoning (Asad, 2003, 2011, 2015; Hurd, 2008; Ismail, 2003; Zemmin, 2018; Jong & Ali, 2023). Building on this framework, any coherent analysis of Political Islam as a discursive tradition must begin with an account of its conditions of possibility, that is, the historically contingent and structurally mediated arrangements that render certain Islamic discourses thinkable, sayable, and actionable at specific moments. The concept of social configura- tion foregrounds precisely this analytical starting point: that discursive traditions do not unfold from internal theological logic or doctrinal transmission alone, but emerge from a dynamic field of relational depen- dencies, contextual transformations, institutional reconfigurations, and epistemic ruptures (Jong, 2023, 2025; Jong & Ali, 2024). As indicated earlier, a social configuration is not a stable or bounded entity; rather, it is an indeterminate formation composed of shifting alignments among actors, categories, and regimes of intelligibility. It is within such forma- tions that particular discourses crystallize and are rendered authoritative. Situating Political Islam within this framework enables a more precise account of how the fragmentation of premodern religious authority, the violent disruptions of colonial rule, the rationalizing logics of post- colonial statehood, and other contextual transformations reshape the very grounds upon which new forms of political Islamist configuration, discourse, referring, reasoning and so on become possible (March, 2015; 26  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2014; Zubaida, 2009; Asad, 2003; Volpi, 2011a; Esposito, 1997; Moaddel, 2002; Roy, 1994, 2003, 2006). For example, the Islamist thought of Abul A’la Maududi arises from a configuration marked by the collapse of the Mughal-Islamic political order, British colonial hege- mony, and the secularizing impulse of nationalist modernity in South Asia (Ahmad, 2009; Nasr, 1996). Within this condition of possibility, categories such as Shariah and ḥākimiyyah are resignified—not as juristic doctrines—but as the building blocks of a theopolitical order that contests both colonial sovereignty and postcolonial nationalism. Similarly, the Iranian revolutionary configuration out of which Khomeini’s velāyat-e faqīh emerges is shaped by the theological vacuum produced by the Imam’s occultation, the centralizing reforms of the Pahlavi state, and the mobilizing capacities of Shiʿi ritual networks (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2014; Kurzman, 2004). In this context, the temporal category of ghaiba (absence) is collapsed into political immediacy, and sacred authority is reassembled within the structure of modern state sovereignty. In both cases, Islamist discourse is not merely an ideological project but a con- figurational response to altered structures of intelligibility. Foundational categories such as ummah, jihād, or shūra are not mobilized as stable tokens of Islamic authenticity, but are instead hierarchized, disarticulated, and strategically recomposed in relation to the specific problematics each configuration seeks to address—be it civilizational decline, colonial domination, state repression, top-down secular modernization, a crisis of legitimacy, state inefficacy, or epistemic fragmentation. Political Islam, therefore, must be analyzed not in terms of abstract textual continuity, but through the situated architectures of meaning that emerge within each social configuration—assemblages of discursive, institutional, and affective practices that generate new grammars of Islamic political agency. Once the conditions of possibility have reconfigured the discursive terrain, the second analytic layer of Political Islam as social configuration centers on how specific Islamist formations are constructed through a selective ordering of categories, regimes of meaning, and justificatory practices. Here, Political Islam is not defined by the mere invocation of Islamic concepts, but by the way these concepts are prioritized, JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  27 articulated, and interrelated within a relational architecture of mean- ing. This involves a dynamic process of categorical selection, internal hierarchization, discursive justification, and differentiation—processes through which key signifiers such as jihād, shūra, ḥākimiyyah, ummah, or Shariah are not only activated but imbued with distinct semantic valences. Crucially, these categories are never deployed in isolation. They are embedded within particular discursive grammars and structured by regimes of reference and reasoning that authorize their meaning through intertextual citation of Qurʾān, ḥadīth, classical jurisprudence, and other interpretive traditions. In this framework, what defines an Islamist con- figuration is not the presence of certain concepts per se, but their specific arrangement—the relative priority assigned to categories, the justificatory logics that stabilize their meaning, and the rhetorical and institutional devices that mediate their application. For example, in revolutionary con- figurations such as Maududi’s or Khomeini’s, concepts like ḥākimiyyah and velāyat-e faqīh take precedence as anchoring nodes around which all other categories are ordered, whereas in reformist or participatory Islamist configurations—such as those associated with figures like Rachid Ghannouchi or Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim—the grammar is recalibrated to emphasize ijtihād, ethical normativity, and institutional negotiation (Ahmad, 2009; Nasr, 1996; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2014; Euben & Zaman, 2009). These differences are not merely discursive preferences but expressions of a deeper configurational logic: each tradition organizes its categories around a specific vision of Islamicity, a desired political order, and an interpretation of the present crisis and its historical genealogy. The inter- nal coherence of these traditions is maintained not through theological consistency but through the activation of distinct justificatory regimes that legitimize the configuration’s ordering of values, political goals, and relations to sacred texts. Simultaneously, a logic of differentiation is at work: in constructing themselves, Islamist configurations generate a field of “others”—secularists, liberal reformers, traditionalists, or rival Islamist currents, and so on—against whom their internal ordering gains both contrast and legitimacy. This dual process—of intra-discursive construc- tion and inter-discursive opposition—produces not only the content of Islamist thought but also its boundaries, modes of reasoning, and claims 28  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 to authenticity. It is through this interplay that configurations become intelligible as particular formations—bounded yet dynamic, plural yet rooted, and politically consequential. At the third level of analysis, the social configuration of Political Islam manifests through its objectified effects, that is, its capacity to generate concrete social realities, institutional arrangements, collective identities, and political imaginaries. These outcomes are material artic- ulations of the discursive configurations previously described. Through the performative enactment of prioritized categories such as ummah, Shariah, or jihād, Islamist traditions construct not only internal logics but external structures of authority, community, and contestation. These social articulations unfold across multiple domains: political institutions (Islamist parties and movements), juridical frameworks (Shariah-based reforms or legal pluralism), pedagogical infrastructures (madrasas, daʿwah networks), ethical regimes (moral policing, Islamic economy, or family law reform), among others. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt reconfigured the category of al-amr bi-al-maʿrūf wa-al-nahy ʿan al-munkar from a private moral responsibility into a communal obligation that structured public engagement, electoral politics, and social services—thus giving ethical discourse a political and institu- tional embodiment (Ismail, 2003; Mandaville, 2007; Wickham, 2013). By contrast, some Salafi-inspired actors often deploy a decontextualized literalism that depoliticizes Islamic categories, restricting them to ritual compliance and doctrinal purity while rejecting institutionalized politics altogether (Meijer, 2009; Wiktorowicz, 2006). Meanwhile, groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon mobilize categories like resistance, velāyat, and martyrdom within a theological-military grammar that fuses polit- ical sovereignty with eschatological symbolism—redefining communal identity around the axis of anti-colonial jihād and theological militancy (Hamzeh, 2004; Roy, 2006). More radically, Jihadist formations such as the Taliban and ISIS recon- figure these categories within hyper-politicized and violently exclusivist grammars. The Taliban’s configuration is anchored in an ethno-religious vision of Islamic governance centered on amr wa-nahy, ḥudūd punish- ments, and tribal customary law (ʿurf) as sources of both divine and social JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  29 authority—converging into a form of postcolonial Islamic authoritarian- ism rooted in both Deobandi orthodoxy and Pashtun identity (Rashid, 2000; Giustozzi, 2009). By contrast, ISIS articulated a globally expansive and totalizing configuration built on categories like khilāfah, takfīr, and hijrah—not only declaring a caliphate but legitimizing mass violence and institutionalized slavery as expressions of divine sovereignty and anti-modern rupture. Their ideology fused scriptural literalism with apocalyptic temporality, constructing a theology of purification through blood, and violently excluding not only non-Muslims but Shiʿa, secular Muslims, and even rival Islamists (Gambhir, 2015; Bunzel, 2015; March, 2015). These configurations do not arise from doctrinal innovation per se, but from strategic reordering and resignification of inherited Islamic cat- egories in response to perceived crises of authority, colonial subjugation, and theological fragmentation, among others. As such, they generate new social realities—territorial rule, gender regimes, legal orders, mil- itant networks—through the operationalization of a particular Islamic grammar embedded in historical ruptures and antagonistic relational logics. These effects reveal that Political Islam’s discursive traditions are not merely interpretive spaces but materially consequential forma- tions. They not only inscribe meaning onto texts but inscribe power onto bodies and landscapes—structuring the moral economies, institutional architectures, and communal boundaries of the societies in which they intervene (Jong, 2024; Hurd, 2008). Within the framework of social configuration, the issue of power and authority is not reducible to legal formalism or theological orthodoxy but must be examined as a discursively constructed and strategically mobilized phenomenon. In Islamist configurations, authority is not merely derived from divine texts, but is produced through interpretive acts, institutional alignments, and positional negotiations within com- plex epistemic fields (Schäbler, 2016). The legitimacy of Islamic political authority—whether in the form of the ruler, the jurist, the scholar, the party, or the movement—is contingent upon its capacity to mobilize recognizable regimes of reference and reasoning that situate its claims within a broader archive of Islamicity. That is, who speaks for Islam and with what authority is not resolved by recourse to timeless standards, 30  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 but through discursive practices that construct orthodoxy, authorize inclusion, and delineate heresy. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood grounded its authority in its ability to integrate classical jurisprudence with mass mobilization and social welfare, thus reframing Islamic leadership as a synthesis of scholarly lineage and popular legitimacy (Wickham, 2013). Similarly, Ayatollah Khomeini’s theory of velāyat-e faqīh displaced traditional quietist Shiʿi jurisprudence—a doctrine he himself had followed earlier in his clerical life—by inserting the jurist into the center of political sovereignty, thereby redefining divine rep- resentation through a restructured epistemology of eschatology and immediacy (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2014). By contrast, ISIS rejected both state- based clericalism and democratic legitimacy, instead asserting takfīrī orthodoxy through direct scriptural citation and violence, collapsing textual authority into performative domination (Bunzel, 2015). These examples show that Islamic authority is not a static inheritance but a dynamic outcome of discursive boundary work—where regimes of rea- soning (e.g., ijtihād, qiyās, maṣlaḥah) and regimes of referencing (e.g., Qurʾān, ḥadīth, classical texts, modern fatwas) are activated to validate political claims. Within this logic, traditional sources such as taqlīd (emu- lation) or ijmāʿ (consensus) are not simply repeated, but strategically repositioned to serve emergent political grammars. Authority becomes not the repetition of a past norm, but the reconfiguration of a rela- tionship to the tradition under novel conditions of intelligibility. Thus, what appears as theological continuity often conceals deeper ruptures in the grammar of justification. Islamist discursive traditions selectively activate and silence elements of the Islamic archive—producing new forms of fiqh al-siyāsah (jurisprudence of governance), legitimating new institutional actors (parties, movements, jurist-states), and delegitimat- ing rivals through claims to scriptural purity or political betrayal. The very structure of othering—whether of secularists, traditional ulama, or rival Islamist currents—is itself part of the performative construction of authority, through which configurations distinguish their epistemic center from deviance, error, or compromise (Euben & Zaman, 2009; Hurd, 2008; Denoeux, 2002). Political Islam, then, does not inherit a stable structure of religious authority; it constructs it anew within contingent JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  31 historical, institutional, and semantic fields, by aligning textual refer- ences, interpretive regimes, and political institutions into a coherent—if always contested—configuration of legitimacy. Within the grammar of Political Islam as a discursive tradition sit- uated in social configurations, time and history emerge as core axes of semantic struggle and ideological production (Jong & Ebrahimzadeh, 2024). Islamist discourses do not operate within a secular-linear tempo- rality that charts historical development along a continuum of progress and rupture (Asad, 2003). Rather, they recalibrate temporality through selective genealogies, theological imaginaries, and strategic anachro- nisms that reconfigure the past, interpret the present, and project the future in Islamic terms. The invocation of foundational Islamic epochs— whether the Prophetic Era, the Rightly-Guided Caliphate (khilāfah rāshidah), or the classical jurisprudential centuries—does not signify a return to doctrinal authenticity per se, but functions as a temporal device for authorizing political futures. These moments are not merely com- memorated but are reinscribed into the present through acts of citation, appropriation, and resignification. In Maududi’s vision, for example, the Shariah is reimagined not as a juristic code frozen in time, but as a totalizing theopolitical order capable of displacing colonial legality and modern secularism. Similarly, the concept of ḥākimiyyah (divine sover- eignty) is not merely a theological proposition, but a discursive weapon that collapses sacred temporality into the field of immediate political confrontation (Ahmad, 2009; Nasr, 1996; Euben & Zaman, 2009; Ghamari- Tabrizi, 2014). The Taliban and ISIS provide stark examples of how Islamist temporality can be mobilized to structure both political agency and violence. The Taliban’s claim to restore a puritanical Islamic Emirate is not a nostalgic revival but a selective reconfiguration of historical Islamic order within the ruins of colonial fragmentation and Afghan state collapse (Giustozzi, 2019). ISIS, by contrast, collapses eschatological and historical time through its vision of an impending apocalypse—strategi- cally deploying the imagery of early Islam to frame its Caliphate as both a return and a final rupture (McCants, 2015). Such projects reveal that Islamist time is not chronological but kairological—a series of divinely significant moments whose invocation reorders political agency and 32  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 moral urgency (Asad, 2003; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2008). Furthermore, the very critique of the present—secularism, corruption, Westernization, decline, occupation, imperialism—is often structured as a temporal lament, marking a fall from divine order, while solutions are articulated as redemptive futures, legitimized through scriptural intertextuality and historical analogy. This discursive logic transforms time itself into a polit- ical resource: crises become signs of divine trial, stagnation becomes a call for tajdīd (renewal), and rupture becomes the ground for theological reentry and strategic intervention (Roy, 1994; Euben & Zaman, 2009; Esposito, 1997). The conceptual elasticity of Islamic categories—such as ummah, jihād, shūra, or velāyat—enables their redeployment as temporal signifiers that organize experience and reauthorize political order in the face of dislocation. Thus, Islamist discursive configurations do not simply react to historical events; they produce a reconfigured temporality that links divine sovereignty with worldly strategy, theological pasts with aspirational futures, and sacred narratives with political contestation (Jong & Ebrahimzadeh, 2024). In this regard, history is not merely a backdrop to Political Islam but a performative archive, whose fragments are continually reassembled to structure the meaning, legitimacy, and direction of political struggle. Thus, in this discursive framework, Political Islam should be under- stood as a tradition constituted by a historically dynamic reservoir of configurations—contingent, relational, and contestable formations that crystallize around unstable yet recurring categories such as Islamicity, historical decline and revival, textual authority, governance, Shariah, gender, othering, the collective imaginary of the ummah, among others. As mentioned, these categories are never absolute; they are activated, ordered, and hierarchized differently depending on specific social and historical predicaments. It is in this process of configuration—and not in any essential feature—that the Islamist discursive tradition gains coher- ence. The case studies and comparative engagement with other Islamic traditions, such as Sufism, Salafism, modernist-reformist thought, tra- ditionalism, and the authority of the ulama, reveals both the points of convergence and the deeply embedded axes of epistemological, theo- logical, and strategic divergence (Denoeux, 2002; Euben & Zaman, 2009; JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  33 Esposito, 1997). These divergences constitute the grammar through which Islamism defines itself. For example, whereas some Sufis artic- ulate Islam through inward spiritual transformation, other Islamists externalize Islamic values into political form and public normativity (Zaman, 2002). Salafis may share Islamists’ invocation of return, but they reject their historicist interpretive regime in favor of a decontex- tualized literalism (Haykel, 2014). Many reformists and modernists, by contrast, center ijtihād and contextual ethics, seeking to reconcile Islamic tradition with modern knowledge formations—whereas many Islamists often reconfigure tradition as a counter-hegemonic project anchored in resistance to secular modernity (Haykel, 2009; Safi, 2003; Rahman, 2008; Salvatore, 1999). Some traditionalists and ulama, for their part, fore- ground the continuity of inherited norms and scholarly lineages, while many Islamists frequently contest, reorient, or attempt to subsume these authorities under new political or ideological arrangements (Zaman, 2002; Eickelman & Piscatori, 1996). These general comparisons, which must be specified through case-by-case analysis, reveal the multiple and often conflicting logics through which Islamic discursive traditions engage core categories—logics that are activated differently within each configuration of Political Islam. These axes of difference reveal that Islamist configurations are shaped not by fixed content but by how categories are ordered, prior- itized, and articulated in relation to other traditions and the shifting historical conditions under which they emerge. Islamists may share with some Sufis a referential attachment to divine authority, yet radically differ in the domain of its application: private spirituality versus col- lective governance (Euben & Zaman, 2009; Wiktorowicz, 2006). With many Salafis, Islamists may echo the rhetoric of authenticity but diverge in epistemic method—favoring historicized, even strategic, interpretive regimes over Salafi literalism and anti-political purism (Lauzière, 2016). When contrasted with modernists and reformists, the divergence deep- ens at the level of conceptual method: Islamists often reject modernity as a normative horizon, while reformists embrace it as a site for rethinking Islam (Wickham, 2004; Voll, 1983, 1991; Zemmin, 2018; Rahman, 2017; Salvatore, 1999). Against some traditionalists and ulama, many Islamists 34  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 frequently assert their own modes of legitimacy—challenging inherited scholarly hierarchies while simultaneously attempting to reconstruct religious authority within new political frames (Mandaville, 2014; Euben, 1999; Wiktorowicz, 2000; Zaman, 2002, 2012). Across all these discursive encounters, the boundaries are porous, and overlap is inevitable, but the activation and hierarchy of categories—such as the role of the state, the centrality of Shariah, interpretive mediation, or the treatment of gender and religious others—differ systematically. These differences define how Islamist configurations construct meaning, authorize action, and position themselves within the broader Islamic field. Thus, Political Islam as a configurational discursive tradition is best conceptualized as a space of shifting, relational configurations—each defined by the particular arrangement of categories, interpretive strat- egies, and socio-political orientations. These configurations are never complete or stable; they are marked by incompleteness, contestation, and strategic adaptation. They do not map neatly onto conventional labels such as “fundamentalist,” “utopian,” or “anti-colonial,” which obscure rather than clarify the discursive specificity of Islamist projects. What defines each configuration is not its surface content, but its internal architecture—the epistemological frameworks it deploys, the regime of reference it constructs, and the manner in which it locates Islam in relation to modernity, the state, secularism, authority and other Islamic traditions. A single movement may shift across multiple configurations without forfeiting its referential coherence—moving from revolution- ary rhetoric to institutional pragmatism, or from moral protest to legal reform—precisely because it draws from the flexible, contested, and gen- erative space of the discursive reservoir. It is only through tracing family resemblances—partial, overlapping, and historically emergent affinities between configurations—that the broader contours of political Islam can be meaningfully apprehended (Ahmed, 2016). Therefore, understand- ing political Islam requires a methodology that is not typological or essentialist but comparative and genealogical, tracing how discursive formations evolve through both internal rearticulation and external dif- ferentiation. In doing so, it becomes possible to analyze Political Islam not as a monolith but as a dynamic and plural tradition—rooted in Islamic JONG: rECONFIGUrING POLItICAL ISLAM: A dISCUrSIVE trAdItION APPrOACH  35 history, yet continually reconstituted in the face of new predicaments, interlocutors, and possibilities. Conclusion Political Islam, when approached through the lens of discursive tradi- tion and social configuration, reveals itself not as a singular ideology or unified movement, but as a plural and historically contingent field of political articulation. It operates across divergent terrains—national, transnational, institutional, insurgent and so on—where Islamic cate- gories are strategically prioritized, resignified, and reassembled within distinct configurations. These configurations are not byproducts of theo- logical fixity or scriptural determinism, but performative responses to particular conditions of possibility—ranging from colonial disruption and postcolonial state formation to epistemic crisis and ideological contes- tation, among others. As such, Political Islam must be understood as a dynamic grammar of Islamic reasoning, through which actors mobilize tradition to construct new political imaginaries, institutional orders, and claims to authority. The diversity of this tradition is evident in the wide spectrum of its enactments. Thinkers such as Ali Shariati foreground Islam as a rev- olutionary and liberatory discourse, embedding concepts like tawḥīd and shahādah within a theology of emancipation and social justice. Conversely, Islamist actors like Osama bin Laden or ISIS reconfigure the same Islamic lexicon—jihād, ḥākimiyyah, khilāfah—into a totalizing apocalyptic vision that collapses religious meaning into violent rup- ture. The Taliban’s authoritarian reconstruction of the Emirate, and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s complex integration of Shiʿi jurisprudence with modern state institutions, likewise illustrate how Political Islam materializes through structurally distinct social configurations, each activating specific archives of tradition to legitimate divergent regimes of power. These cases underscore that the core categories of political Islam—Shariah, ummah, velāyat, jihād and so on—do not possess intrin- sic political meaning, but acquire force and intelligibility only within historically situated discursive formations. 36  AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4 Thus, the essence of Political Islam lies not in its doctrinal core, but in the strategic work of configuration: the selective retrieval of tradi- tion, the ordering of Islamic categories, and the construction of regimes of reference that authorize particular claims to Islamicity. This article has emphasized the need to move beyond essentialist, singularist, or nominalist approaches, and instead foreground the epistemological conditions, genealogical ruptures, and political stakes through which Islamist discourses emerge. 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