Rethinking anthropology in light of ‘Muslim worlds’: Ephemerality, language and relations in field encounters with transcendence

How do anthropologists approach experiences of transcendence in Muslim communities? In what ways can Muslim ontologies be taken more seriously in anthropological accounts? What potential do our own momentary encounters with transcendence as anthropologists have in addressing anthropological research on Islam and other religious traditions more broadly? With these questions in mind, we inaugurated the 1st European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Muslim Worlds Network workshop “Rethinking anthropology in light of ‘Muslim Worlds’” at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul on 7-8 September 2023. Departing from the long-held anthropological approach in which experiences of transcendence have been studied from the perspective of belief, we invited the workshop participants to reflect instead on the forms of knowledge disclosed by their encounters with transcendence, God, and non-immediately-perceptible realities in the field.