The Place of Saint Veneration in Islam(<Special Issue>Islam and Religious Studies)

Abstract

Among ordinary Muslims in pre-modern times, saint veneration, which includes making wishes to God through saints' mediation, visiting saint tombs, and celebrating saints' anniversaries, was very popular in their daily life. Some intellectuals, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, have considered that saint veneration is an imported element and therefore non-Islamic beliefs and practices. However, it is clearly an integral part of the reality of Islam, which compromises the diversity of daily life with the unity of the world ruled by God. While the concern of Muslim intellectuals tends to concentrate on the logical and literal form of understanding the world, saints, with their visibility working as symbols, mediate invisible blessings or power of God to the people and make it possible to feel His greatness as real. In modern times, which is very unique in the point that most of the members of the society are literate, such kind of veneration has less appeal than before. A contemporary anthropology then should pay attention to the new forms of popular Islam including the consumption of religious commodities, images created by new media, the industry of religious tourism, and so forth, in addition to saint veneration.