The comparative study of human societies, cultures, and evolution — across time and across the full range of human diversity.

Anthropology carries a colonial inheritance in its methods, institutions, and assumptions. Questions of representation, intellectual property of cultural knowledge, the ethics of studying communities without redistributing benefit, and the politics of indigeneity are unresolved.

The Sufi tradition's concept of fitra (primordial human nature) and its affirmation of cultural diversity as a sign (ayat) of divine creativity provides a framework for anthropology that is neither relativist nor universalist in the conventional sense. Ibn Battuta's intellectual openness to diverse Muslim cultures models an engaged comparative approach.