Pious publicity, moral ambivalence and the making of religious authority in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan

Abstract

ABSTRACT Pakistani Tablighis, practitioners of the transnational Islamic piety movement, the Tablighi Jamaat, believe that Muslims have abandoned ‘religion’ (din) for ‘the world’ (dunya) and this has thrust the world into a state of moral chaos (fitna). The only way to draw Muslims to Islamic practice, they say, is through their own distinct, ritualized form of face-to-face preaching (dawat), which is the sacred means for spreading Islamic virtue because it is modelled on Prophetic example. In this article, I argue that dawat represents what Birgit Meyer has called a ‘sensational form’, an authorized set of practices and techniques for mediating a relationship to transcendental power and creating divine presence. But dawat is structured by an internal tension. On the one hand, dawat requires performing the Prophetic model in order to create a ‘direct’ relationship to God, but, on the other, creating a ‘connection’ between Muslims depends on incorporating new genres and mediums drawn from popular culture and mass media that stretch the boundaries of religion. This moral ambivalence, however, does not just lead to moral failure but instead is addressed through an emphasis on pious companionship (sohbat) and through submission to the authority of pious others. Moral ambivalence, therefore, becomes the generative ground for religious authority. The production and reproduction of religious authority in turn serves as the basis for incorporating novel forms of mediation in order to address diverse and changing social, political and economic contexts while retaining the aura of religious continuity.