Interiors, intentions, and the "spirituality" of Islamic ritual practice

The Arabic term niyya (intention) is prominent in texts of Islamic ritual law. Muslim jurists require niyya in the "heart" during such ritual duties as prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage. Western scholars often treat niyya as a "spiritual" component of Islamic ritual. Muslim jurists, however, consistently treat niyya as a formal, taxonomic matter, a mental focus that makes a given act into the specific named duty required by religious law. Although the effort to thrust niyya into a "spiritual" role is meant to defend Islam from charges of "empty ritualism," it subtly reinforces the characterization of Islam as rigidly legalistic. Much scholarship on niyya belies the scholars' own definition of "proper religion" centered on an inner, individual, nonmaterial dimension of the self. Instead of trying to wash away the formalism of niyya, I argue that scholars ought to recognize that such embodied practices are properly religious rather than spiritually defective.