Intra-Muslim Polemics in South India : Intimacies, Mass Publicity, and Secularism

How do we understand differences and disputes among various branches of Islam?

This book places intimacies, rather than radical incompatibilities, at the centre of its in-depth ethnographic account of mass-publicized theological polemics among Sunni Muslims in the south Indian state of Kerala.

What unites Muslims of different Sunni groups also divides them and incites polemics—Islam as a shared system of knowledge and practices, bonds of kinship and other social relations, and the common condition of being a beleaguered religious minority in a Hindu majoritarian democracy.

Diverging from works that have focused on how Islamic practices like ritual prayers facilitate the fashioning of theologically grounded pious selves, the book argues that intra-Muslim polemics marginalize theology and have little to do with cultivating piety.

Instead, polemics constitute inter- and intra-religious socialities, enable Muslims to articulate their connections to India and other imaginaries, and produce Islam as a public religion in a secular nation-state.