Even solitary Islamic prayer depends on socially learned, communal practices.

Evidence

Another way of putting this is to say that no religious duty can be entirely abstracted from social relations. Thus although one may perform the sala¯t by oneself, one has to learn their correct performance from others. Besides, Friday prayers, ‘Id prayers, and so on cannot be performed alone. And of course the concept and practice of nasi¯ha—of the duty of “promoting what is right and discouraging what is wrong”—presupposes social relations in the making. Thus it is precisely how “religious” duties are embedded in social relations (learning and teaching correct religious practices, giving moral advice to fellow Muslims, and so on) and what specific duties are entailed by social relations that need to be analyzed in fiqh. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1173

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concrete demonstration that Asad’s ‘religious’ is not an interior, private sphere separable from social life — undermining the secular-private/religious boundary Cooper also interrogates.