How do we understand differences and disputes among various branches of Islam? This book places intimacies, rather than radical incompatibilities, at the centre of its in-depth ethnographic account of mass-publicized theological polemics among Sunni Muslims in the south Indian state of Kerala. What unites Muslims of different Sunni groups also divides them and incites polemics—Islam as a shared system of knowledge and practices, bonds of kinship and other social relations, and the common condition of being a beleaguered religious minority in a Hindu majoritarian democracy.