The Muslim Difference : Defining the Line Between Believers and Unbelievers From Early Islam to the Present

How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? This book explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to “Be different!” It details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet’s admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life. Tracing this Islamic discourse from its origins in Arabia to Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus, colonial Egypt, and beyond, this sweeping intellectual and social history offers a panoramic view of Muslim identity, revealing unexpected intersections between religion and other markers of difference across ethnicity, gender, and status. Against conventional wisdom, the book contends that Muslim efforts to stand out from the crowd were not spectacular and oppositional, but carefully calibrated into small differences, which drew on a cultural ecosystem of symbols that paradoxically connected them to the cosmopolitan societies around them. It becomes evident that contemporary debates in the West over visible expressions of Islam, from headscarves and beards to minarets and mosques, are just the latest iterations in a long history of how small differences have defined Muslim interreligious encounters. A sweeping history of Muslim identity from its origins in late antiquity to the present How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? Youshaa Patel explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to “be different!” He details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet's admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life. Tracing this Islamic discourse from its origins in Arabia to Mamluk and Ottoman Damascus, colonial Egypt, and beyond, this sweeping intellectual and social history offers a panoramic view of Muslim identity, revealing unexpected intersections between religion and other markers of difference across ethnicity, gender, and status. Patel illustrates that contemporary debates in the West over visible expressions of Islam, from headscarves and beards to minarets and mosques, are just the latest iterations in a long history of how small differences have defined Muslim interreligious encounters. Contents 7 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 13 Note on Style 17 Introduction: “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them,” 19 1 Turning Away from Christians and Jews? 44 2 From Narrative to Normative 68 3 Empire of Small Differences 84 4 The Symbolic Power of Muslim Difference 110 5 Ibn Taymiyya and the Innovation of Imitation 135 6 “A person belongs with the one he loves,” 162 7 Escaping the Devil’s Lair: Ghazzī between Spirit and Law 169 8 Can Muslims Wear European Hats? 201 Epilogue: Seeing the Other in the Light of God 226 Notes 249 Bibliography 301 Index 335