Reforming the Self, Unveiling the World: Engaging the Ontological Turn in an Anthropology of Islamic Piety

Based on ethnographic research (2013–2015) among adult courses on Islamic knowledge in Brussels’ mosques and Islamic institutions from a Moroccan background, this paper examines how the acquisition of ‘ilm al-Islam is understood not only as perfecting ‘ibādāt and mu‘āmalāt but also as a rappel d’appartenance à un ordre des choses – a reminder of adherence to an order of things (Ricoeur [1977]. Herméneutique de l’Idée de Révélation. In La Révélation, edited by Daniel Coppieters de Gibson, 15–54. Bruxelles: Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis). The predominantly female students’ engagement with Islamic knowledge recurrently foregrounded what Michael Scott calls ‘root assumptions concerning the essential nature of things’ ([2007]. The Severed Snake. Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands. Durham: Carolina Academic Press). To account for how Islamic knowledge relates to the world and shapes ethical action within it, the paper argues for attending analytically to the world as it is unveiled through pious reform. Thereto, it proposes an ontographic mode of description that enables an integrated onto-ethico-epistemological reading of Islamic piety praxis, illustrated through ethnographic engagements with, for instance, the discernment of divine signs.