Circulation of Ideas and Traveling Theories: The Transregional and Multidisciplinary Study of Islam

This contribution examines how the work of Martin van Bruinessen as a multidisciplinary academic (physicist-turned-anthropologist with an appreciation for text scholarship) with on-the-ground experience in two distinct geographical regions (the mountain and island worlds of the Kurds and maritime Southeast Asia respectively) has inspired and stimulated my own approach to the study of Islam and the Muslim world in terms of conceiving religious traditions as the products of extensive and intensive cultural and intellectual exchanges across time and space, as well as producers of civilizational legacies beyond the confines of doctrine and dogma. Rather than introducing a new substantive topic, in this essay I will meditate and reflect on the links and connections I have made in my own studies of the Arabic-speaking, maritime Southeast Asian and diasporic parts of the Muslim world. While specializing in contemporary intellectual history, the influence of Martin van Bruinessen’s investigations into the history of Sufism and of writing culture in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago also increased my sensitivity and appreciation for both the diachronic and synchronic study of Islam across geographical zones. In order to hold together these different strands of scholarly inquiry and by way of theoretical framing, I also return to my earlier engagement with the notions of the circulation of ideas and traveling theory.