 Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such.By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed".His long-term research concerns the transformation of religious law ("sharia") in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt with special reference to arguments about what constitutes secular and progressive reform.