Introduction: Studying Evidence and Religion in Post-Truth Times

How do we know what we know, do not know, or ought to know? Evidence is an expansive concept. It not only is central to academic inquiries, but also accompanies various knowledge practices in law, finance, bureaucracy, medicine, religion, and even literature. While expansive, evidence is relative to the contexts in which it exists. It presumes a community sharing a set of concepts, practices, and sensibilities, or it sometimes helps conjure one. At a time when more and more social scientists and humanists present themselves as interdisciplinarians and find interdisciplinary platforms such as the one provided by this journal engaging and stimulating, the way in which a scholar collects evidence and converts that evidence into an argument is still a strong indicator of that scholar's disciplinary background. Indeed, being attuned to a specific way of thinking about method and evidence is at the center of disciplinary training—being disciplined. This is perhaps why when academics write about evidence, they tend to reflect on their own practice.¹

This special section's focus is less on disciplinary self-evaluations than the kinds of evidence that operate in knowledge traditions that do not fully share the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of the Western secular academy.² The three contributors, Ana Vinea, Junaid Quadri, and myself, approach evidence as an object of inquiry in Islamic legal, therapeutic, and scientific contexts.³ The contributors are not interested in delineating the Islamic notion of evidence; instead, each article deals with multiple discourses related to evidence: Which concepts and practices can be used? When and where? How do reason and revelation, or the seen and the unseen, inform an understanding of evidentiality? Are Muslims, as knowing subjects, expected to inhabit the world or relate to themselves and others in specific ways? If so, how do such demands organize relations among reason, senses, and ethics? And, what happens when Islamic concepts of evidence come together with new concepts from modern science, medicine, or law? Do they converge, clash, or simply replace each other? How do Muslims learn to think with a new framework of evidence, as well as unlearn an older one? Asking such questions, the three contributors not only provide contextually grounded accounts of evidence in Muslim communities, but also show that the study of evidence can generate broader insights into knowledge, authority, and power.

Before I introduce each article, let me say a few words about the term regime of evidence. Loosely related to Michel Foucault's notion of "regime of truth"⁴ and Bruno Latour's notion of "regime of veridiction,"⁵ the contributors use this term to highlight the convergence of the institutions and practices of knowledge with the structures and relations of power in ways that determine the form and object of evidential inquiry. With this term, we are interested in capturing not only the mechanisms and politics of knowledge production, but also the conjoining of various knowledge practices around a certain inquiry (e.g., evidence-seeking, evidence-giving, evidence-refuting, evidence-checking). This decentralized view helps us approach evidence as part of mundane concerns—not simply lofty philosophical ideals.

Presenting insights into how the relations among fact, trust, expertise, and truth are constructed, the term regime of evidence may have relevance beyond the study of Islam or religion. In fact, many people are concerned about the predicament of the concept of truth these days. Oxford Dictionaries recognized post-truth as the word of the year in 2016, following its prevalence in media before and after the US presidential election. Marking the prefix post- as a reference to truth's losing relevance to public speech, Oxford Dictionaries provided this definition: "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."⁶ As rhetoricians were quick to point out, the concern for the prominence of logos against the temptation of ethos or pathos is not new.⁷ But, is post-truth only about the lack of sound logic that can help Americans connect objective facts to truth? Or, is it also about...