Conversely, my study of Islam in Gayo society involved learning about how rice
is grown, how the major rice-growing regions were allocated among villages, how healing
takes place, the origins of political parties, and the short history of a poetic genre
written in Arabic script—all because they were part of local practices that people explained
by referring to Islam. Indeed, I focused on Islam only as a third research project;
I was brought to it because the topics I came to study—social structure and oral literature—
were interwoven with Islamic ideas about society and history. Even when we
work in new kinds of sites, we retain these features in our work. When by 2000, the civil
war raging in Aceh had made fieldwork no longer possible, I began working on Islam,
law, and politics in France. I began to sit in religious schools along with Muslim students,
interview French political actors, and analyze newspaper stories and law review
articles. I no longer worked in a village or even in a single neighborhood. Now I am
doing similar work on Islam in England