In our ethnography among traditionalist Sunni Muslims of Kerala, South India, we observe the emergence of new intellectual critiques of Islamic reformism and a revival of ‘traditional’ Islamic articulations. A new class of traditionalist Sunni ulama, claiming to be ‘turbaned professionals’, plays an instrumental role in providing epistemic sanctioning to ‘traditional’ Islamic piety while simultaneously grounding it within the discourses and processes of neoliberal developmentalism. Such assertions of traditionalist Sunni Muslim identity challenge the conventional understanding of Islamic reformism as a hallmark of the progressive understanding of faith and traditionalism as its ‘anti-modern’ other. The article argues that this discursive shift of Sunni Islamic traditionalism in Kerala since the 1980s from defensive to more assertive forms has to be located in the context of wider socio-economic change within the community facilitated by structural as well as cultural forces of globalization. We point out that this process traverses the local, national, and global scales of identification, and results in intense negotiations between local identifications and ‘true Islamicate global imaginations’. These negotiations bring in new discourses around the question of ‘authentic’ Islamic practices and sensibilities among the traditionalist Sunni Muslims, forcing us to locate the question of their identity formation beyond the boundaries of communities and the nation states that ensconce them.

中文翻译：

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全球化世界中的伊斯兰传统主义：印度南部喀拉拉邦的逊尼派穆斯林身份

在我们对印度南部喀拉拉邦传统主义逊尼派穆斯林的民族志中，我们观察到对伊斯兰改良主义的新知识分子批判的出现和“传统”伊斯兰表述的复兴。一种新的传统主义逊尼派乌拉玛自称是“戴头巾的专业人士”，在为“传统”伊斯兰虔诚提供认知上的认可方面发挥了重要作用，同时将其置于新自由主义发展主义的话语和进程中。这种传统主义逊尼派穆斯林身份的断言挑战了传统的对伊斯兰改良主义的理解，它是对信仰和传统主义作为其“反现代”他者的渐进理解的标志。文章认为，自 1980 年代以来，喀拉拉邦逊尼派伊斯兰传统主义从防御性形式向更自信形式的这种话语转变必须置于由全球化的结构和文化力量推动的社区内更广泛的社会经济变革的背景下。我们指出，这个过程跨越了地方、国家和全球范围的识别，并导致当地认同和“真正的伊斯兰全球想象”之间的激烈谈判。这些谈判带来了围绕传统逊尼派穆斯林中“真正的”伊斯兰实践和情感问题的新论述，迫使我们将他们的身份形成问题定位在社区和安置他们的民族国家之外。