Evolving sense of visualizing the divine in popular Islam in Pakistan: An ethnographic case study

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe contemporary visual culture of the Islamic societies of Pakistan in general, and the Milad festival (birthday celebrations of the Prophet Muhammad) in particular, reflects another genre of visuality in which the images that represents the name ‘Muhammad’, as per Arab-Persian/Urdu script, through textures, on a variety of surfaces, resulted out of certain biological, ecological, botanical and other natural phenomena, often popularly deemed miracles. This paper is an ethnographic case study of such an event that provokes certain questions such as: how a miracle becomes itself and its meanings are made and by whom? And how and why the ‘modern sense of visualizing the divine’ is created through miracles? It establishes this evolving sense with special reference to the emergent new cult images of the relics or symbolic representation of the Prophet, in conformity with the Islamic stricture on the figurative representation of human being.