Images of imprisonment appear throughout the Psalter, where the psalmist turns to God as refuge in order to exit the pit of despair. Similar to the life of Omar Ibn Said, and the opera which tells his story, images of shelter and succor help the psalmist escape the abyss of embattlement, imprisonment, or depression, and nurture the attitudes of care, trust, and hope that crest in Psalm 146 and the Hallelujah psalms.
Formulating a rigorously historicist approach to contemporary cultures of Islam can build on Asad’ pivotal concept in The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam: not the “discursive tradition,” but the discursivity of tradition. Already implicit in its reiterative tradition, the modernity of Islam consists in the reconfigured powers of discursivity beyond discourse.