Rethinking efficacy: People’s perception of ritual healing and trance religious practices at shrines in Pakistan

Abstract

Ritual healing is one of the core topics in anthropology and is also important in psychology. The key aim of this study is to investigate and explore the understanding of religious perspectives of ritual healing and trance practices in Muslim shrines in Pakistan. Several studies have been conducted to highlight the shrines in Muslim countries to demonstrate the Sufi tradition in Islam, where the followers seek healing and use the Sufi saints as intermediaries for the fulfillment of their desires. In Pakistan, the shrine of Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar provides a vital cultural, religious, psychological, and social resource where people get involved in religious rituals and trances. A sample of 70 devotees was randomly interviewed with the help of qualitative research methods such as semi-structured and in-depth interviewed, key informants included observation were used for data collection. The major focus of this study is on the religious rituals of healing and the overall assumption that people engage in this practice according to their socio-cultural needs, and followers of the shrine in the living community seek healing rituals to address their social ailments as well as physical and emotional problems. They engage in different types of rituals, including trances, with different objectives. The research goal is to discover the chief motive of devotees who visit the shrine for the rituals and religious practices. These findings of this study propose that shrine ritual healing is powerful not so much because of the specific practice of exorcist rituals, but because the practice is associated with sacred activities and religious rituals performed by thousands of people throughout the years.