Amira Bennison
Transcendentalism, the categorization of religion, and the conversion of rulers in Early Modern Asia
In the Islamic world, the concept of 'religion' (din) was quite different prior to the creation of separate secular and religious spheres in the 19th to 20th centuries. Although it appeared to infuse all spheres of activity, it did not necessarily dictate social or political actions but rather provided an explanatory framework for them. This was intimately linked to the Muslim experience of revelation conjoined to empire. This paper will explore the pre-modern Muslim notion of 'religion' and then contrast it with the more conflictual modern framework which emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries as some reformers strove to make Islam 'modern' and others sought to relegate it to the private realm and secularise the public and political spheres.
