Islam as a generic category is a modern, reductive translation of heterogeneous historical formations.

Evidence

In many significant ways, the concept “Islam” as a generic category in effect represents a modern translation (often crude and reductive) of the various formations that worked together throughout time and space to produce the conditions of possibility for diverse ways of life that had their common denominator reside in a varied subscription to Islamic conceptions of ethics, morality, mysticism, law, theology, philosophy, and economy, or, at times, in as partial a conception as that of religious works (what were generally identified as ‘ibadat). — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 952

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘Islam’ as an analytic category actually refers to — a modern abstraction over diverse lived traditions, not a singular essence.
• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism critique of the West’s reductive construction of ‘the Orient’ as a singular category.