Contributor(s): Professor John Bowen | We discuss 'Studying Islam across times and place: how to compare?' and this time we subject 'Islam' to an analytical discussion. The anthropological approach advocated here focuses on processes by which Muslims refer back to an Islamic tradition, and employ those references to explain and change the social world. Current debates in Aceh (Indonesia) about how to understand sharî`a provide an initial case study; these debates are then shown to be quite similar to some underway in Western Europe.