Paper short abstract:

We explore how experiences of divine presence in Islam provide new insights on the relationship between immanence and transcendence and help address the question of the “other” in encounters with the unseen opening up new horizons of being and knowing that destabilize secular views of the self.

Paper long abstract:

Based on our respective ethnographies in Russia and Turkey, we explore how experiences of divine presence in Islam provide new insights on the relationship between immanence and transcendence and address the question of the “other” in encounters with the unseen. Recently, the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has suggested to “take seriously” indigenous ontologies as they highlight alternative modes of knowing. At the same time, these modes of knowing continue to be defined as “other”, precluding to some extent the anthropologist’s involvement with them. Even recent calls to explore the unseen and unknown beyond a human horizon remain partially bound to the categories of “beyond”, “elsewhere” and “other”. What if we resist the impulse to categorize experiences of transcendence as “other” and consider that knowledge of the divine is also self-knowledge? The Islamic tradition opens up new horizons of being and knowing, pointing to the human ability to experience what has been called ‘heart-knowledge’. It not only interrogates what we perceive as ‘human’ but also what we understand as the scope of knowledge. For instance, the dimension of “nature” (fitra) in Islam reminds us of a God-human relationship that is not defined in terms of the ineluctable separation between immanence and transcendence. With their practices, our interlocutors aim to these other horizons of being and knowing destabilizing secular views that place the sovereign self at the center. Opening up to these practices brings us to ask what imaginaries of the present, past, and future are unveiled through these different horizons.