on scriptural essentialism and ritual variation: Muslim sacrifice in Sumatra and Morocco

Abstract

This article examines the contrasting ways in which Muslims in Sumatra and those in Morocco observe the Feast of Sacrifice, and it advances an argument against recent essentialist studies of Islam. Whereas Moroccans publicly reaffirm patriarchy through the ritual, many Gayo men and women in highland Sumatra interpret it in terms of transactions and bilateral family ties. But within each society there are alternative interpretations of the ritual: in Morocco domestic and interstitial rites assert gender complementarity; in Sumatra religious modernists underscore the proper attitude of the sacrifier and deny the possibility of transaction. In each society the multiple ritual forms engage in an internal dialogue, each shaping the other, and are thus “double‐voiced” in Bakhtin's sense. [ritual, sacrifice, gender, Islam, religion, Indonesia, Gayo, Sumatra, Morocco]

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