American Journal of Islam and Society Vol 42 No 3-4.indb


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Editorial Note

This issue of the American Journal of Islam and Society comprises four 
research articles, which engage themes of development and change 
within the Islamic tradition alongside questions of Muslim identity. 
We begin with Abbas Jong’s work, “Reconfiguring Political Islam: A 
Discursive Tradition Approach.” In this article, Jong offers a thorough, 
deeply theoretical engagement with the concept of discursive tradition, 
which he restructures via the concept of social configuration. As a result, 
political Islam emerges neither as a discrete ideological project nor a 
transhistorical expression of Islamic governance. Instead, it is theorized 
as a dynamic and contested field embedded within shifting social ter-
rains. It is in these changing environments, Jong argues, that Islamist 
actors engage in their diverse efforts of discursive labor to resignify 
certain Islamic concepts within shifting institutional and ideological 
parameters to produce a field of multiplicity and dynamic contradiction. 
As a result, Jong is able to offer a framework for thinking about politi-
cal Islam and analyzing particular thinkers, movements, and moments 
in arguably far richer and more fruitful terms than has typically been 
offered to date.

We then turn to a study by Malik Mufti, “The Catholic Experience 
in America from Orestes Brownson to the Bozells: A Precedent for 
Muslims?” Malik’s point of departure is to consider the history of 
American Catholicism and its adaptation to the “American creed,” a 
part of an American liberal culture “that is both formally tolerant and 
ideologically compelling” to immigrants and their religious traditions. 
As scholars such as Harold Bloom and Alan Wolfe have argued, this 
American creed, characterized by the individualistic and anti-author-
itarian features of the Protestant Reformation, ultimately transforms 



EdItOrIAL NOtE    3

all other faiths into variants of itself. After reviewing the works of key 
Catholic intellectuals such as the nineteenth-century convert Orestes 
Brownson as well as demographic and public opinion data, the author 
considers the extent to which Catholicism has maintained its identity in 
the American context. He then considers what the implications might 
be for American Muslims.

As our third research article for this issue, we then have Hamdija 
Begovic’s “From Ummatic Muslims to State-centered Bosniacs: The Case 
of the Muslims of Bosnia.” Here, Begovic considers the evolution of the 
national identity of Bosnian Muslims throughout the 20th century from 
what he calls an “Ummatic-centric focus” that uses the label “Muslims,” 
toward a secularized identity demonstrated through their adoption of 
the ethnonym “Bosniacs.” Typically, this shift was framed as necessary 
for the preservation of Bosnian Muslims in religious, cultural, and even 
biological terms. Begovic’s study engages the pre-existing narrative of 
the Bosniac national renaissance, known as the Preporod, to provide a 
historical overview of how Bosnian Muslims transitioned from being 
part of the Ummah to identifying as Bosniacs tied to a nation-state, with 
an analytical reflection on the implications of this transformation.

The fourth and final research article in this issue is Bilkis Bharucha’s 
article, “Islam, Science, and the Environment: An Application of Ibrahim 
Kalin’s “Three Views of Science in the Islamic World,” which offers a crit-
ical application of Kalin’s framework to contemporary debates on Islam 
and environmental ethics. By examining ethical, epistemic, and meta-
physical critiques of science, Bharucha considers how each approach 
has been mobilized in Muslim environmental thought, highlighting both 
their contributions and their limitations. The study’s significance lies in 
showing how Kalin’s model provides a productive lens for navigating 
the otherwise fragmented discourse on Islam and science, while also 
revealing the risks of drawing upon religious concepts for policy or 
ideological ends. This contribution enriches the broader conversation 
about how Islamic intellectual traditions engage with urgent ecological 
challenges. Alongside a number of insightful book reviews, the forum 
in this issue returns to discussions of the the Balkan context, with an 
insightful study by Enes Karić on the first Serbian translation of the 



4    AMErICAN JOUrNAL OF ISLAM ANd SOCIEt Y 42:3-4

Qur’an by Mićo Ljubibratić, bringing to light a subject little-known to 
an English-language readership.

David H. Warren
Lecturer of Middle East Studies and Arabic
Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

Assistant Editor, American Journal of Islam and Society

doi: 10.35632/ajis.v42i3-4.3894