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Islamic experience (the ‘‘specific’’) more deeply by finding within their speci- ficity a certain kind of generality. 12
    For Veyne, ‘‘specificity’’ is another way of expressing typicality or the ideal type, a sociological concept that has been a useful tool for investigating com- plex systems of social organization, thought, or belief. However, the problem with typification is that it may lead to oversimplification, and oversimplifica- tion is the handmaiden of the stereotype. Typification can lead to oversimpli- fi ation because the concept of typicality belongs to a structure of general knowledge that obscures the view of the singular and the different. Thus,
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    presenting the voices of only preselected ‘‘typical Muslims’’ or ‘‘representative Muslims’’ in a work such as Voices of Islam would only aggra- vate the tendency of many Muslims and non-Muslims to define Islam in a sin- gle, essentialized way. When done from without, this can lead to a form of stereotyping that may exacerbate, rather than alleviate, the tendency to see Muslims in ways that they do not see themselves. When done from within, it can lead to a dogmatic fundamentalism (whether liberal or conservative does not matter) that excludes the voices of difference from ‘‘real’’ Islam and fosters a totalitarian approach to religion. Such an emphasis on the legiti- macy of representation by Muslims themselves would merely reinforce the ideal of sameness that Arendt decried and enable the overdetermination of the ‘‘typical’’ Muslim from without. For this reason, Voices of Islam seeks to strike a balance between specificity and singularity. Not only the chapters in these volumes but also the backgrounds and personal orientations of their authors express Islam as a lived diversity and as a source of multiple well- springs of knowledge. Through the use of individual voices, this work seeks to save the ‘‘singular’’ from the ‘‘typical’’ by employing the ‘‘specific.’’
    Dipesh Chakrabarty, a major figure in the field of Subaltern Studies, notes: ‘‘Singularity is a matter of viewing. It comes into being as that which resists our attempt to see something as a particular instance of a general idea or cat- egory.’’ 13 For Chakrabarty, the singular is a necessary antidote to the typical because it ‘‘defi the generalizing impulse of the sociological imagina- tion.’’ 14 Because the tendency to overdetermine and objectify Islam is central to the continued lack of understanding of Islam by non-Muslims, it is neces- sary to defy the generalizing impulse by demonstrating that the unity of Islam is not a unity of sameness, but of diversity. Highlighting the singularity of individual Islamic practices and doctrines becomes a means of liberating Islam from the totalizing vision of both religious fundamentalism (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) and secular essentialism. While Islam in theory may be a unity, in both thought and practice this ‘‘unity’’ is in reality a galaxy whose millions of singular stars exist within a universe of multiple perspec- tives. This is not just a sociological fact, but a theological point as well. For centuries, Muslim theologians have asserted that the Transcendent Unity of God is a mystery that defi the normal rules of logic. To human beings, unity usually implies either singularity or sameness, but with respect to God, Unity is beyond number or comparison.
    In historiographical terms, a work that seeks to describe Islam through the voices of individual Muslims is an example of ‘‘minority history.’’ However, by allowing the voices of specificity and singularity to enter into a trialogue that includes each other as well as the reader, Voices of Islam is also an exam- ple of ‘‘subaltern history.’’ For Chakrabarty, subaltern narratives ‘‘are mar- ginalized not because of any conscious intentions but because they represent moments