Salafiyya reformers’ work should be read through moral landscape shifts, not supposed failures

Evidence

This conclusion seems to me to have particular implications for an analysis of the modernist movement in Islam. It prompts one to ask of the salafiyya reformers not why they failed to produce a sufficiently impressive Islamic theology or legal theory, nor why they became willing ideologists for the state (both being tendentious and question-begging formulations), but how the reordering of social life (a new moral landscape) presented certain priorities to Islamic discursive tradition—a reordering that included a new significance being given to the family, a new distinction being drawn between law and morality, and new subjects being formed. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1086

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: reframing the standard ‘why did Islamic modernism fail’ historiography as a question about changing moral landscapes rather than theological inadequacy.