1. How does Asad evaluate the Muslim "indifference" and the Christian
"desire to learn about the other" that some Western scholars have noted
when drawing comparisons in Western Christian and Middle Eastern Islamic
histories?  How valid are such comparisons when they do not take into
account Christianity residing outside of Europe and Islam residing
outside of the Middle East?

2. Similarly, what are some of the key problems one faces in comparing
or paralleling Islamic histories with European Christian history?  To
what extent has the "history" of Islam been defined by the Middle East
just as the "history" of Christianity has been linked to Europe?  Is
this background of Christian desire for knowledge of other religions (or
other peoples) similar to, today, the West's quest of knowing and
reaching out through globalization?

3. How do such comparisons help in recognizing what the anthropology of
Islam is?  For example, Asad, in using Gellner's quote (page 3),
explores it on a comparative level with Christianity and Judaism.
Starrett uses the quote (on the fourth page, 282) without comparison.
Do both methods help us answer the fundamental question of "What is the
anthropology of Islam?"

4. Why is it so easy for scholars to "represent types of Islam as being
correlated with types of social structure, on the implicit analogy with
(ideological) superstructure and (social) base" (Asad 7) and how does
this avoid some other important issues?

5. What is problematic about the dividing of Islam into two segments
which are opened up to such titles as "Orthodox" and "Pure" and "True",
linked to urban areas, and "Unorthodox" and "Deviant" from, which it the
product of rural and tribal groups?  Do these labels have to be created
when one is looking to find or define Islam as a completely singular
"tradition"?

6. How much of Islam, as Asad argues, is a tradition and not "a
distinctive social structure nor a heterogeneous collection of beliefs"
(Asad 14, commented in Starrett 287)?  How do we link together past,
present, and future, applying it to "living societies" (Starrett, 287)?
 
7. Starrett, questioning orthodoxy as "an important focus of study in
recent anthropology" (289) comments that the present communication age
has been able to educate large amounts of people on religious knowledge,
thus allowing them to assert religious authority.  This new knowledge
may lead may lead many groups to question and express "widespread
dissatisfaction with incumbent power structures, both political and
religious" (Starrett 289-290).  Does this change or add to Asad's idea
that "Orthodoxy is crucial to all Islamic traditions...[it] is not a
mere body of opinion but a distinctive relationship--a relationship of
power..." (Asad 15, continuing on 16)?

8. To Asad, Islamic traditions are not homogenous (16), that it is the
"development and control of communication techniques that are part of
modern industrial societies" (16) that instigates widespread
homogeneity.  Would this in any way prevent, or slow an inevitable,
globalization of Islam?

9. To what extent can we credit the return to "traditional" Islamic
dress to the effects of globalization?

10. What is the difference between "Islam" and "islam" in Starrett?

11. How has the study of Islamic majority nations been hindered by the
idea that all cultural, political, etc. motivations are directly
resulting from Islam?  Or conversely, how has it been hindered by trying
to remove Islam from its political, cultural, and historical settings?