A second look at invisibility: Al-Ghayb, Islam, ethnography Nils Bubandt 1 & Mikkel Rytter 1 & Christian Suhr 1 Published online: 5 September 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract The Arab concept al-ghayb refers to the hidden, the unseen, the invisible. The term encompasses a range of important phenomena in Islam and in the everyday experiences of Muslims. The dominion of the unseen (alam al-ghayb) includes those parts of reality that cannot be seen simply because they are covered by other visible objects. It also refers to those phenomena that by their nature cannot be perceived (e.g. the face or throne of God, paradise, hell, the past, or the future), as well as those objects that are blocked from view by one’ s perspective (Drieskens 2006; Mittermaier 2011; Suhr 2013). Al-ghayb is important to the notion of barzakh, the intermediary realm between life and death; to the issue of veiling; to visions of deceased saints or dreams about the Prophet Muhammad as well as to the uncontrollable powers of jinn, angels, magic, the evil eye, and omens (Pandolfo 1997; Rothenberg 2004; Khan (Cultural Anthropology , 21(6), 234-264, 2006); El-Zein 2009; Rytter (The Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, 16(1), 46-63, 2010); Edgar 2011; Taneja (HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 3(3), 139–65, 2013); Bubandt 2014a; Suhr (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society , 21(1), 96–112, 2015). The unseen, in other words, is in Islam infused with power and potential, but the lure of the territories of the unseen is also disturbing, troublesome, even dangerous. The seven contributions in this special issue trace invisibility as both wondrous potential and vexed problem in the lives of people in the modern Muslim world. They seek to enrich the study of Islam by discussing what it means to live with al-ghayb, and how this concept is reshaped through people’ s experiences of the invisible in their lives. The contributions demon- strate how al-ghayb constitutes an entrenched, but also highly contested, part of Islamic experience. For the domain of al-ghayb evokes a series of paradoxical tensions. While al-ghayb is a marker of the unseen domains of reality, for the adept it signifies a supremely visible reality. Al-ghayb is also an all-determining locus of power; yet, due to its inaccessibility, it is often also a great source of indeterminacy in the lives of Cont Islam (2019) 13:1–16 DOI 10.1007/s11562-017-0395-5 * Nils Bubandt bubandt@cas.au.dk 1 Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark