Recognizing Islam

Recent crises in the Middle East have flooded the media with sensationalist and inaccurate portraits of Islam. This revised edition of Gilsenan's classic work shows that Islam covers a multitude of forms and practices which are woven into daily existence in complex and sometimes almost invisible ways. Gilsenan explores a variety of social worlds all claiming Islamic affiliation: the feudal aristocracy of northern Lebanon, the working class Sufi brotherhoods of Egypt, and the new bourgeoisies of Algeria and Morocco.

Michael Gilsenan is the Professor of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University. Previously he was Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He has been a Fellow at the Harvard Middle East Center and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Preface	p. 1
An Anthropologist's Introduction	p. 9
The Men of Learning and Authority	p. 27
The Ideal Type of 'Alim	p. 30
The 'Ulema and the Emerging Nation State	p. 36
Conclusion: Renewal and Fossilization	p. 51
The Community of Suffering and the World Reversed	p. 55
The Essence of Shi'ism	p. 55
Iran in the Nineteenth Century: Dramas and Constitutionalism	p. 57
The Passion Play and Social Stratifications: A Lebanese Village	p. 61
Points of Contrast	p. 71
The Operations of Grace	p. 75
Miracles and an Urban Sufi Order	p. 78
The Blessings of the Poor	p. 88
Grace from Peanuts	p. 92
Miracles and Worldly Power: Lords and Sheikhs in North Lebanon	p. 95
The Presence and Absence of Grace	p. 109
Sheikhs and the Inner Secrets	p. 116
The Sheikh and the Young Men	p. 120
Stages of Crisis and Ultimate Salvation	p. 124
When Sanctity Fails	p. 132
Conclusion	p. 139
Everywhere and Nowhere: Forms of Islam in North Africa	p. 142
An Austere and Militant Islam	p. 151
An Austere and Militant Sufism	p. 157
Forming and Transforming Space	p. 164
Public Spaces: Market and Mosque	p. 173
Changing Space: From Maglis to Salon	p. 180
Space, Power and Tradition	p. 187
The Sacred in the City	p. 192
A Touch of the East	p. 192
The Impact of Colonialism	p. 195
A Sacred Geography	p. 202
The Changing of a Holy Town: Boujad	p. 205
The Ideology of the City	p. 210
The World Turned Inside Out: Forms of Islam in Egypt	p. 215
Trajectories of Contemporary Sufism	p. 229
A Sufism of the Elite	p. 243
Islamic Signs and Interrogations	p. 251
Tradition and the Vision of History	p. 254
Image and Intimacy	p. 264
Afterword: A Way of Walking	p. 269
A Note on Transliteration	p. 274
References	p. 275
Select Bibliography	p. 278
Index	p. 283
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