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Although Weber had planned to write a major systematic work on Islam, as he had on the religions of China, India, and ancient Israel, he never got to it (Tenbruck 1980: 327). What we have instead are inchoate and disparate remarks on Islam sprinkled throughout his opus. Although this piecemeal treatment itself presents an obstacle, some attempts have been made to read Weber's sociology of Islam far more systematically (e.g., Schluchter 1999). A more serious problem in Weber's sociology of Islam is the second-hand nature of his knowledge of the subject. Weber seems to have relied heavily on the research of the Orientalist Carl Becker,¹ and, no doubt, the second-hand nature of his knowledge accounts for some factually incorrect and, in some cases, even outlandish remarks on Islam.² Moreover, Weber (1978 [1914]: 623–27) repeatedly draws upon the tropes of sensualism and tribalism, which were part and parcel of the Orientalism of his day, and further reinforces them by commenting on the warrior ethic of Islam (Turner 1974). On Weber's view, to be a warrior is, in the case of Hinduism, a vocational ethic, but when it comes to Islam (Weber 1978 [1914]: 1191) not even the rudiments of a vocational ethic can be found. These and other problems of Weber's sociology of Islam have received some deservedly critical treatment (see, e.g., Rodinson 1974 [1966]; Turner 1978, 1974; Salvatore 1997; Isin 2002).³

DOI: 10.1057/9780230118997_6

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