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Appendix: The Trouble ofThinking: An Interview with Tala! Asad

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... In a fine explication of Asad's work on the relation between habitus and agency, Scott comments that for Asad agency cannot be thought of outside of habitus (Scott 2006). It is the space of sedimented and embodied practices and cultivation of particular sensory abilities. ...
... Asad remarks, "I wanted to see religion (Islam in particular) as more processual and not as the fixed ideology of a particular class…not as a kind of distortion or external justification for power." 69 Asad points out that the etymological origin of "doctrine" is related to teaching-"orthodox doctrine therefore denotes the correct process of teaching, as well as the correct statement of what is to be learned." Yet who determines what is "Islamic" and what is "correct"? ...
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