A genealogy of islamic religious leadership in post-ottoman states
A Genealogy of Islamic Religious Leadership in Post-Ottoman States (GIRLPOS)

This project will produce the first history of the 'Grand Mufti' as a modern model of Islamic religious leadership. This title emerged in several Arab states in the process of post-Ottoman nation-building, and represents a common trend toward the articulation of ‘religion’ as a social category distinct from the implicitly ‘non-religious’. Ottoman muftis had been legal scholars serving the courts and society at large, and muftis have been studied ever since through a classical lens of scholarly knowledge production. Yet the creation of new offices of ‘Grand Mufti’ in successor states has radically reformulated their function. For the first time in Islamic history, Middle Eastern states have generated centralised religious hierarchies in which a Grand Mufti administers a professionalised ‘clergy’ and a nationwide network of mosques, schools, cemeteries and other properties defined as religious. My contribution will be a genealogy of this contemporary model of Islamic religious leadership, using it as a lens through which to analyse changing discourses around ‘religion’ in modern Islam.