Sacred-text authority derives from practical power contexts, not scholarship alone

Evidence

For Asad, an engagement with the founding texts of Is.. lam is not limited to scholarly commentaries alone, but entai ls the practices of ordinary Muslims, such as when an unlettered Muslim invokes the authority of sacred texts to solve a practical problem, or a child argues with a parent about the correct ( or incorrect) nature of an Islamic practice. By emphasizing the practical context through which foundational texts gain their specifi meaning, Asad shifts from an understanding of scripture as a corpus of author.. itatively inscribed scholarly opinions that stand for religious truth, to one in which divine texts are one of the central elements in a discursive fi of rela.. tions of power through which truth is established. Thus the process by which a particular interpretation of a canonical source comes to be authorized depends not only upon one’s knowledge of the scholarly tradition, but also upon the practical context of power relations ( including hierarchies of age, class, gen.. der, and knowledge) under which textual authority is invoked. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 818

Categorization

• XREF: This power-relational account of textual authority complicates secular-liberal frames where scripture stands as fixed doctrine — bridges to the Spivak/Ahmad critique of Western epistemic frames.
• QUESTION: Does this imply interpretive authority is fully reducible to power hierarchies, or does scriptural content retain independent causal force? Worth chasing.