Rebuilding Community

Abstract

Abstract Over the course of the twentieth century, Shia Ismaili Muslim communities were repeatedly displaced. How, in the aftermath of these displacements, did they remake their communities? Khoja-Moolji highlights women’s critical role in this rebuilding process and breaks new ground by writing women into modern Ismaili history. Rebuilding Community tells the story of Shia Ismaili Muslim women who recreated religious community (jamat) in the wake of disruption. Drawing on oral histories, fieldwork, and memory texts, the author illuminates the placemaking activities through which Ismaili women reproduce bonds of spiritual kinship: from cooking for congregants on khushali days and looking after sick coreligionists to engaging in memory work through miracle stories and cookbooks. The author situates these activities within the framework of ethical norms that more broadly define and sustain the Ismaili sociality. Jamat—and religious community more generally—is not a given but an ethical relation that is maintained daily and intergenerationally through everyday acts of care. By emphasizing women’s care work in producing relationality and repairing trauma, Khoja-Moolji disrupts the conventional articulation of displaced people as dependent subjects.