Tradition is a word with various meanings, definitions and contents, and is usually used to refer to some kind of continuity between past and present through a set of values, meanings and practices passed on from generation to generation (Netton 2006). However, historians and anthropologists have shown that traditions are not pure artefacts from the past, as they are also imagined or ‘invented’ to meet the demands and challenges of the present, and to provide an orientation towards a hoped-for or planned future (Anderson 1991; Bryant and Knight 2019; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Koselleck 2004). Tradition is also an expression of collective memory, defining a group or a community through the idea of a shared past that continues to inform the present and is made tangible through its embodied and material forms, such as lieux de mémoire and rituals (Halbwachs 1992, 2008; Nora 1984)

Inspired by Michel Foucault's notion of dispositif (apparatus) as a complex system of discourses, practices and social relations that enacts and institutionalises power (Foucault 1990), Talal Asad (1986: 14) defined tradition as a set of ‘discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history.’ Tradition, here, is not understood as a crystallised collection of beliefs and practices, but rather as the process by which normative models, albeit referring to a historical or mythological past, are reconfigured and actualised in each historical and cultural context. Any given Islamic discursive tradition is produced and reinvented across time and space, but it always ‘includes and relates itself to the founding texts of the Quran and the Hadith’ (ibid.: 14).

Asad's notion of tradition escapes the supposed opposition between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ that has been a common trend in scholarly production on Islam, including among some anthropologists (e.g. Gellner 1993). The concept of Islam as a discursive tradition not only challenges essentialising understandings of Islam, but also points to the relevance of reason and argument, both of which are central to the idea of ‘modernity’, in Muslims’ definition of ‘apt performance’ (Asad 1986: 14) and the right ways to address issues and solve problems of the contemporary world.

Anthropological research has played an important role in shedding light on the diversity of interpretations of Islamic normative doctrine and practices among people who define themselves as Muslims (Gilsenan 1982). Moreover, ethnographies have become more sensitive to issues of how religious identities and practices are intertwined with power, gender, class, ethnicity and nation, producing complex discourses and practices that shape social imaginaries and actions (Abu-Lughod 1998; Schielke 2009; Dupret et al. 2013). There has also been a greater interest in religious subjectivities and identities, the processes that produce them and their impact on the social trajectory and cultural expectations of the agents (Mahmood 2005; Pinto 2006, 2016).

This is not to say that the Islamic tradition should be taken as a totalising concept that explains how Muslims live their religion, or as an all-encompassing way of life that would determine Muslims’ everyday lives (Schielke 2010). In this vein, some of the articles in this special issue unpack how Islam interacts with other systems of values and beliefs, as well as cultural traditions and historical and political processes, and yet show how it functions as a powerful reference in people's everyday decisions and choices. Sometimes the tensions and contradictions between a specific Islamic tradition and its social and cultural context can lead to profound transformations in which its connections to the larger religious system of Islam disappear. Paulo G. Pinto's ethnographic research on the Druze community in Minas Gerais, Brazil, demonstrates how the Islamic tradition has been appropriated and transformed in such a way that the construction of the Druze identity has become disconnected from a Muslim identity among members of this community. In some cases, these tensions and contradictions can lead to a complete rupture of the individuals with their Islamic tradition and their conversion to other religious systems. Ana Maria Gomes Raietparvar's ethnography shows how Christian missionaries work to convert Iranians by depicting Islam as a negative focus for contrast and comparison with Christianity, which they portray as a totalising tradition offering solutions to individual and social problems.

The articles in this special issue explore different ways in which tradition is imagined, articulated and produced in different religious contexts, with Islam serving as a focus for reference or contrast. Taking an ethnographic approach, they cover a wide range of practices and interpretations of the doctrinal and normative framework of the Islamic tradition, from Sufism to Druzism, including a discursive construction of Islam as an antithesis to Christianity by Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal missionaries. These ethnographies also cover a vast area, from Morocco to Turkey to Brazil. They challenge essentialising and simplistic representations of Islam by envisioning ways of being that are more nuanced and grounded in people's everyday practices and lived realities, and their implications for how people experience social life.

Bruno Bartel's article, ‘The Power of Musical Aesthetics: Ritual and Emotion in Contemporary Moroccan Sufism’, discusses the role of aesthetics in the production of knowledge in the Hamdouchiya Sufi order (tāriqa) in Morocco. The emotional states evoked by music in Sufi ritual performances are a means by which the Sufis Bartel studied come closer to the ‘divine reality’ (haqiqa). Sensual experience frames and is framed by a set of principles through reflexive practices that transform the acquired knowledge into a ‘blueprint’ for organising everyday practices and actions. Bartel demonstrates how the spiritual and the intellectual are linked through the emotions produced by the sensory aspects of Sufi musical performances, blurring the boundaries between aesthetics and ethics, the immanence of the body and the transcendence of sensory experience. However, the appropriation and construction of Sufi musical expressions as cultural products to be consumed in Sufi music festivals in Morocco or Europe has been at the centre of debates about notions of authenticity, sacredness and tradition in the Sufi communities involved. The process of commoditisation of Sufi musical performances, which is promoted by the Moroccan government, has challenged the distinctions between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ in the negotiation of tradition among the Hamdouchiya groups studied by Bartel.

The role of state apparatuses and discursive mechanisms in shaping public understandings of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ is specifically addressed by Sohayla El Fakahany. In ‘Charlatans and Fraudsters: Spiritual Healing and the Discourse of Piety and Order in Egypt’, El Fakahany explores the discourses and practices that shape the landscape of spiritual healing in contemporary Egypt. More than a dichotomy between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, the Egyptian state distinguishes between ‘pure’ or ‘good’ tradition, which it associates with the official interpretation of Islam, and ‘dirty’ or ‘bad’ tradition, which the state deems backward and sinful, as is the case with the traditional healing practices El Fakahany examines.

El Fakahany highlights how the Egyptian state's efforts to categorise healing practices as ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’, and therefore ‘dangerous’ or ‘pure’, are linked to economic motivations, as well as the desire to control the authoritative interpretation of Islam and create the idea of a cultural hegemony in the country. In order to circumvent the state's criminalisation of spiritual healing practices, practitioners seek to legitimise their practices by formalising their businesses under a ‘modern’ and fashionable category, thereby concealing what would be considered illicit by the state. In this way, healers enter the economy of services and taxes regulated by the state. Trendy healing modalities, such as yoga or mindfulness, which are commonly associated with a Westernised lifestyle, are mobilised by practitioners as a way of concealing less ‘cosmopolitan’ healing practices and escaping social and state control.

Therefore, although they fall outside the religious framework established by the Egyptian state and followed by much of society, trendy Westernised healing practices that are perceived as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘modern’ point to symbolic capital as a resource for accessing legitimate spiritual healing practices in Egyptian society. El Fakahany's research contributes to a better understanding of the ways in which the making of ‘traditions’ – and the sometimes correlated making of ‘modernities’ – are linked to class and social status.

Also working in Egypt but focusing on a space of production and transmission of Islamic knowledge, Alia Shaddad explores the everyday practices that are carried out by women in a Dār (Islamic studies institute) through the concept of ‘homing’. ‘There is No Place Like al-Dār: Everyday Entanglements in a Cairene Islamic Studies Institute’ is what the author calls ‘a sort of creative autoethnography’. It shows how subjective experiences come together to transform the space of the Dār into a ‘home’ through affective entanglements and their potential for forging alliances and building a sense of community. As a ‘home’, the Dār studied by Shaddad is a place where control and discipline intermingle with care and affect.

‘Mehir (Dower), Gifts of Gold, and Intimate Economies of Marriage in Istanbul’ reveals the interplay of marriage, gender and religion in contemporary Istanbul. In this analysis of women's interpretations and practices of Mehir (dower) and gift-giving in weddings, Burcu Kalpaklıoğlu shows that the ways in which women understand the relationship between economic transactions and intimate marital relations are shaped by their own engagements with Islam, definitions of marriage and love, and interpretations of gender equality and difference. Although women navigate multiple registers of morality and the ambivalences of the intimate sphere with unease, sometimes shifting their position towards Mehir, they negotiate their decisions and choices through the notion of moral ‘propriety’. Wedding gifts, on the other hand, being unrelated to religion, do not raise the same moral issues as the Mehir. Therefore, they are widely used as a mechanism for monetary transactions in marriage, playing the role of the Mehir, but not without moral tensions.

In ‘Islam as the Problem, Christianity as the Solution: Rupture and Continuity as Missionary Method for the Conversion of Iranians’, Ana Maria Gomes Raietparvar analyses Christian missionary practices in their efforts to convert Iranians to Christianity. Their methods are based on a logic of rupture and discontinuity with Islam, while at the same time forging a continuity with Iranian national identity in which the Persian Empire and the pre-Islamic era in Iran are mobilised as central markers of the Iranian identity. This transnational Christian missionary network works through face-to-face and digital means to convert Muslims, particularly Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora. The missionary discourses and narratives portray Islam as a religion of violence and oppression in contrast to Christianity, which is presented as a solution of love and peace for disaffected Iranians.

In the following article, ‘Becoming an Abla: Homemaking and the Shaping of an Ethical Self among Women in a Turkish Muslim Community in Brazil’, Liza Dumovich analyses the performance of religious rituals and homemaking practices among Turkish Muslim women in Brazil. She explores these women's everyday practices of producing an ideal Muslim self and the making of a home in the hicret (migration) by focusing on the domestic space of their shared apartments. Dumovich's analysis shows that the resulting subjects are self-confident, intellectually skilled individuals who are capable of living in any place as long as it is made through the reproduction of a specific Turkish Muslim space through the enactment of what they call hizmet (religious service), a set of religious practices that connect them to their religious leader and the Islamic tradition as they interpret it.

In the final article, ‘Migrant Souls: Reincarnation, Religious Authority and the Transformations of Druze Identity in Minas Gerais, Brazil’, Paulo G. Pinto describes the formation of the Druze community in Minas Gerais, Brazil, composed of Lebanese immigrants and their descendants. His analysis reveals that despite the community's efforts to maintain and affirm the Druze identity and its Islamic character among its members, some have distanced themselves from their Druze identity, while others have recreated their religious identity through a complete transformation of tradition. This transformation took place through the incorporation of elements of Catholicism and Spiritism, which characterise the religious landscape in Brazil, and the disconnection from Islam. Interestingly, this profound transformation of the Druze tradition has allowed the Druze to continue to exist as a distinct religious community.