Islam and the Invention of Religion: A Study of Medieval Muslim Discourses on Dīn

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, the validity of the category of religion has been increasingly subjected to severe criticism across several academic disciplines. The thrust of this critical position – despite the nuances and sophistication of the various arguments advanced in support of it – rests, in the main, on one central claim: that the notion of religion did not exist in non-Western and premodern civilizations and is therefore a unique invention of the modern West. It is my contention, however, that in fixating on the Western construction of the category of religion and the theoretical problems associated with it, scholars have neglected to consider whether a similar concept might have existed prior to the modern West, and if so, what this might mean for our understanding of religion as a historical phenomenon. As a remedy to this trend, this article will engage in a comprehensive conceptual historical analysis of the Arabic term dīn (and its related terminology) in order to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, premodern Muslims did indeed possess a concept akin to the modern sense of “religion” long before the rise of the modern West, and that, furthermore, they were the first historical community to sustain and develop a rich and robust analytical discourse around the idea of religion, which consequently played a major role in various social, political, and intellectual endeavors in Islamic history. My investigation will reveal that premodern Muslims continuously redefined and repurposed the concept of religion (based on a readily available conceptual vocabulary produced within the Late Antique Near East) in the process of offering particular sociological accounts of the origins and nature of religion, addressing political concerns like the unravelling of power, classifying the “Other,” and more.