This post examines the Islamic movement that most explicitly patterns itself on early Islamic history –Salafism – and the way in which its distinctive social practices are fundamentally indebted to modern questions and challenges of visibility and social performance.

In the introduction to the symposium “The Roots and Ruptures of Contemporary Islamic Piety,” Aaron Rock-Singer elucidates the questions within contemporary Islamic studies that stand between the completeness of historical narratives and the ruptures of Muslim intellectual, social, and cultural life.