Islam In South Asia Research Articles

Death and Celebration among Muslim Women: A Case Study from Pakistan

After September 11 2001 questions about the nature and society of Islam were asked all over the world. Unfortunately in the rush to provide answers inadequate and even distorted explanations were provided. Muslim groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan with their brutal ways came to symbolise Islam. The need to understand society through a diachronic and in-depth study was thus even more urgent. The following work is an attempt to explain how Muslims organise their lives through an examination of rituals conducted by women. This particularistic account has far-reaching ramifications for the study of Muslim society.This article seeks to contribute to the general debate on Islamic societies. In particular it contributes to the ethnographic discussion on the Pukhtun. First, it seeks to establish the distinctive sociality of Pukhtun wealthy women or Bibiane in terms of their participation, within and beyond the household, in gham-khadi festivities, joining them with hundreds of individuals from different families and social backgrounds. Second, the article makes a case for documenting the lives of this grouping of elite South Asian women, contesting their conventional representation as idle by illustrating their commitment to various forms of work within familial and social contexts. Third, it describes the segregated zones of gham-khadi as a space of female agency. Reconstructing the terms of this agency helps us to revise previous anthropological accounts of Pukhtun society, which project Pukhtunwali in predominantly masculine terms, while depicting gham-khadi as an entirely feminine category. Bibiane's gham-khadi performances allow a reflection upon Pukhtunwali and wider Pukhtun society as currently undergoing transformation. Fourth, as a contribution to Frontier ethnography, the arguments in this article lay especial emphasis on gham-khadi as a transregional phenomenon, given the relocation of most Pukhtun families to the cosmopolitan capital Islamabad. Since gham-khadi is held at families' ancestral homes (kille-koroona), new variations and interpretations of conventional practices penetrate to the village context of Swat and Mardan. Ceremonies are especially subject to negotiation as relatively young convent-educated married Bibiane take issue with their ‘customs’ (rewaj) from a scriptural Islamic perspective. These contradictions are being increasingly articulated by the female graduates of an Islamabad-based reformist religious school, Al-Huda. Al-Huda, part of a broader regional and arguably national movement of purist Islamization, attempts to apply Quranic and hadith prophetic teaching to everyday life. This reform involves educated elite and middle-class women. These women actively impart Islamic ways of living to family members across metropolitan–rural boundaries. The school's lectures (dars, classes) provide a basis for questioning ‘customary’ or Pukhtun life-cycle practices, authorizing some Bibiane to amend visiting patterns in conformity to the Quran. The manipulation of life-cycle commemorations by elite and middle-class women as a vehicle of change, Islamization and a particular mode of modernity furthermore becomes significant in the light of recent socio-political Islamic movements in post-Taliban Frontier Province. More broadly, the article contributes to various sociological and anthropological topics, notably the nature and expression of elite cultures and issues of sociality, funerals and marriage, custom and religion, space and gender, morality and reason, and social role and personhood within the contexts of Middle-Eastern and South Asian Islam.

In the heat of the moment: South Asian responses to the events of 11 September 2001

This review article looks at three books, published in 2002, which provide from different perspectives a response by South Asian Muslims to the new interest in Islam evoked by the events of 9/11. Written from different vantage points, they represent an intellectual effort to come to grips with the notion of an ‘Islamic’ identity – debating notions of jihad, and its connections with Islamic faith, with the notion of an Islamic umma or nation, and where Muslim societies are headed to in the 21st century. It is not only the emergence of the Taliban movement in the North‐western portion of South Asia that has brought the focus on South Asian Islam. As M.J. Akbar has observed, South Asia forms the demographic heartland of Islam. The books reviewed do not fall into the category of the myriad publications that have become a kind of apology for Islam, but represent an effort at understanding the connections between geo‐political concerns and intellectual academic approaches to the subject of Islam.

Ahmad, Imtiaz, and Helmut Reifeld (eds.): Lived Islam in South Asia

Ahmad, Imtiaz, and Helmut Reifeld (eds.): Lived Islam in South Asia

Review Essay: Modernity and Religious Change in South Asian Islam

Over the course of the past several decades, Francis Robinson has done much to illuminate facets of the history and culture of the traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars, the ulama, of South Asia. “For far too long,” he writes, “[the] ulama have been treated as cardboard figures, caricatures of Muslim men of God…. [C]olonial administrators, and subsequently scholars, have rarely known enough to treat them as more than such; Western-educated Muslims, who have discovered new forms of authority, have often been concerned both to mock and to distance themselves from the mediators of religious authority; and the followers of ulama have been concerned to impose upon them an image of an ideal teacher and scholar at the cost of concealing aspects of their character, personality, and behaviour” (TheUlama of Farangi Mahall [hereafter FM], p. 148). The cost of letting the caricatures persist is high. In many instances, an understanding of the Muslim public sphere and of religious thought in modern Islam remains at best incomplete without serious attention to the ulama. And important facets of religious change likewise remain elusive unless the evolving discourses and the institutions of the ulama are brought within our purview. When more observers of Muslim societies come to recognise the ways in which the ulama are integral to the history of modern and not just of medieval Islam, it would be in some measure due to the influence of Robinson's writings. Among other things, Robinson's work is significant for its insistence that we consider how religious ideas, norms, and traditions shape politics instead of treating them as little more than symbols employed by the political elite for purposes of mass political mobilisation. At the same time, he has explored how religious identities and institutions have themselves evolved in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. And with the history and culture of the ulama as his primary point of reference, he has brought to light new perspectives on Islam in South Asia, as well as on the historical interaction between South Asia and the Muslim world at large.

South Asian Islam in Britain

South Asian Islam in Britain

The laine controversy and the study of hinduism

In 2003 Oxford University Press released a book by James W. Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, just as the monsoon's storms were arriving in the subcontinent.1 The book offered a fascinating inquiry into the historiography surrounding the Mar?th? monarch ?ivaj? (1627-80), who is best known throughout India, and in the Western academy, as a Hindu king who heroically challenged the archetypically villainous Indian Muslim ruler, Awrangzib (1658-1707). In Shivaji Laine brilliantly detailed how Marathi historians, biographers, and hagiographers have spun SivSji's legacy into a Hindu one and set it against a constructed Muslim enemy. Furthermore, Laine showed that in ?iv?jfs own time, and largely under his control, Sivaj? himself nurtured the persona of a kingly Hindu Ksatriya (warrior) through his coronation ceremony in 1674 at Raigad, in Maharashtra2 and through the creation of a regal genealogy by the Maharashtrian Br?hma?, resident in Benares, G?g? Bhatt. A study of narratives and stories, Laine's book was not intended to intercede in the history of Sivaji but rather comment on the rich parade of pronouncements and political uses that have circulated around the great Mar?th? king's legacy for three centuries. Indeed, the author makes plain in the text that his audience is made up of "those who study religion and religious identity" and who seek a "thicker description of South Asian Islam" and a "richer portrait of medieval Hinduism" (Laine 2003a: 15). In addition, Laine hoped to "rescue" ?ivaj?'s biography "from the grasp of those who see India as a Hindu nation at war with its Muslim neighbors" (2003a: 6). This rescue was to be accomplished by providing a nuanced account of how Siv?ji became a representative of "Hinduism" in multiple ways, thus providing a counterpoint to a homogenized Hindu Right historiography that takes Sivaj? as an exemplar of militant Hinduism. In this way, Laine's work joined a chorus of scholarly voices arguing multiple perspec

Migrant Sufis and sacred space in South Asian Islam

(2003). Migrant Sufis and sacred space in South Asian Islam. Contemporary South Asia: Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 493-509.

Book Reviews : AYESHA JALAL, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 630

Book Reviews : AYESHA JALAL, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 630

Beyond Turk and Hindu

Beyond Turk and Hindu grew out of a collection of papers presented at a conferenceon "Islam in South Asia," held at Duke University in April 1995. Ithas 3 sections, 13 chapters, 8 photographs, 3 maps, 2 tables, a glossary, andan index. The book deals with the broad subject of civilizational interfaces inthe South Asian context. It belongs to the category of interfaith relations andis addressed to a general audience interested in the Hindu-Muslim dialectic.The authors do not accept the premise that interreligious differences inSouth Asia are set and irreconcilable. To quote the editor: "We vigorouslycontend that there is a larger point to make, namely, that the constant interplayand overlap between Islamic and Indic worldviews may be at least aspervasive as the Muslim-Hindu conflict ... " This position is a challenge tothose scholars who view India and Pakistan as embodiments of two separatereligious identities.Section One contains three essays on textual analysis to assess the samenessand otherness of identity formation. The authors do not avoid the controversiesthat are bound to emerge from the sometimes disparaging tennsused by Hindus and Muslims to refer to each other, or the animosities thathave emerged from the desecration of mosques and temples:Arabic and Persian use of the term Hindu had a range of meanings thatchanged over time, sometimes denoting an ethnic or geographic referentwithout religious content. Similarly, Indic texts referring to the invadersfrom the northwest used a variety of terms in different contexts, includingyavanas, m/ecchas,farangis, musafmans, and Turks. These terms sometimescarried a strong negative connotation, but they rarely denoted a distinctreligious community conceived in opposition to Hindus. In and ofthemselves, however, such terms tell us little. To understand the usage ofthese terms, one must move beyond the terminology itself- beyond Turkand Hindu - to analyze the framing categories and generic contexts withinwhich these terms are used.The authors illustrate the power of bidirectional cultural forces by offeringthe example of the Punjab's Bulle Shah and Bengal's mystical Satya Pir.Bulle Shah, a contemporary of Shah Waliullah of Delhi, lived in the late ...

International Seminar on Shah Wali-Allah's Thought

Ahinad ibn Abd al-Rahim, better known as Shah Wali-Allab of Delhi( 1703-1762), is perhaps the greatest intellectual figure of Islam in SouthAsia. An international seminar was organized on his thought (as containedin Hujjat-Allah al-Balighah) on February 20-22, 2001 by the Shah WaliAllahDehlavi Research Cell of the Institute of Islamic Studies, AligarhMuslim University, India.Wali-Allah was a prolofic writer in Arabic and Persian and a "syntheticthinker" like Al-Ghazali and ibn-Khaldun. He made his contribution onthe eve of the modem (colonial) period. The British in the Bay of Bengalhad their eyes set on Delhi, the Mughul seat of Muslim power. Deeplyconcerned, Wali-Allah understood his mission to be a two-fold reformationof "the religion and the state." With his favorite slogan "Back to theQur'an", he called for a complete change of the old order and sought to"reopen" the doors of jihad and ijtihad.
 In his resistance to the growing power of the Mrathas and Sikhs, he isbelieved to have set a tradition for the subsequent generations of MuslimIndia. Acclaimed variously by different Islamic groups as a reformer,a purifier, a revivalist and a modernizer, Wali-Allah is considered to be thespiritual and intellectual progenitor to a host of religio-political movementsin South Asia, including the Mujahidin movement, the Deobandmovement, the Aligarh movement and the Pakistan movement. Hisinfluence has also been acknowledged on the subsequent generations ofMuslim thinkers in the Indian subcontinent including Allama MuhammadIqbal and Mawlana Abul Aala Mawdudi.In his magnum opus, Hajjat-Allah al-Balighah (The ConclusiveArgument from God), Wali-Allah has worked out an "integrated scheme"of Shari'ah, or a theoretical basis for interpretation and applicationof Shari'ah against a background provided by his ideas of "humanpurposefulness" and "beneficial interests". He believed that his(pre-modern) age demanded a projection of Shari'ah with reasoned andconvincing "arguments", unraveling the secrets (deeper meanings) ofreligious symbols and injunctions ...

Eternal garden: mysticism, history, and politics at a South Asian Sufi center

FOREWORD PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 Sifism PART I : HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ORIENTATION: SUFISM AND ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIA Historiographies of Islam in India Religion and Empire in the Delhi Sultanate 4. The Textual Formation of Oral Teachings in the Early Chishti Order The Interpretation of the Sufi Biographical Tradition in India FROM DELHI TO THE DECCAN Burhan al-Din Gharib's Establishment and Teaching The Indian Envronment and the Question of Conversion POLITICAL RELATIONS OF THE KHULDABAD CHISHTIS Political History of the Khuldabad Shrines Khuladabad as a Sacred Center in the Local Context PART IV: CONCLUSIONS

Shariʿat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Katherine P. Ewing

<i>Shariʿat and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam</i>. Katherine P. Ewing

Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam

Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Iran Between Two Revolutions, By Ervand Abrahamian Mollā Sadrā Sh?rāz?: Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques (Kitāb al‐Mashāir). Translated from the Arabic, with an Introduction and Notes, by Henry Corbin Le livre du licite et de l'illicite (Kitāb al‐halāl wa‐l‐harām, Book XIV of Al‐Gazāl?'s Ihyā Ulūm ad‐D?n). Introduction, translation and notes by Régis Morelon Society, State, and Urbanism: Ibn Khaldun's Sociological Thought. By Fuad Baali Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Edited by Katherine P. Ewing The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad. By Gordon Darnell Newby Muslim Hausa Women in Nigeria: Tradition and Change. by Barbara J. Callaway Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. By Hisham Sharabi The Islamic Impulse. Edited by Barbara Freyer Stowasser Christians and Muslims Together: An Exploration by Presbyterians. Edited by Byron L Ägypten unter Mubarak: Identität und nationales Interesse. by Gudrun Krämer Towards Understanding the Qur)ān. Vol. 1, Sura 1–3. English version of Sayyid Abul A(la Mawdudi's Tafhim al‐Qur(ān, translated and edited by Zafar Ishaq Ansari Middle East Contemporary Survey. Vol. IX. Edited by Itamar Rabinovich and Haim Shaked. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al‐(Arab?'s Metaphysics of Imagination. By William C. Chittick Colonising Egypt. By Timothy Mitchell Past‐Revolutionary Iran. Edited by Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manouchehr Parvin Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice. By M. E. Combs‐Schilling Islam: The Straight Path. By John L. Esposito Islam, Politics, and Social Movements. Edited by Edmund Burke, III, and Ira M. Lapidus Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. By Lila Abu‐Lughod

Conversion to Islam in South Asia

From the earliest times, South Asia* has been a scene of invasion. Itis a long tale of incursion. conquest, settlement, and then assimilation. TheGreeks, Sakas, and Eushanas forced their way in as dominant groups andestablished kingdoms and dynasties, only to be assimilated by what Dr. Spearcalled "the Hindu sponge." The push by Muslims into the sub-continent wasby well-worn routes and to a familiar pattern of conquest and rule, first ofSind and the Punjab, then of the Gangetic Plain, and, finally, of almost thewhole of South Asia.Conquest and settlement were not followed by assimilation, however.Muslims retained a separate identity and their numbers, proportionate andabsolute, grew until today a quarter of all Muslims in the world are to befound in South Asia. In 1975, they formed some 97 percent of the populationof Pakistan, 85 percent of that of Bangladesh, and 13 percent of that ofIndia.But these Muslims come from different roots and origins, they speakdifferent languages, and their understanding and practice of Islam differs accordingto their educational and social background and to their regional andgeographicaJ setting. Many of them are of Arab, Afghan, Mughal and Persiandescent, but the majority of them are descendants of South Asian convertsto Islam.The spread and expansion of Islam and its acceptance by such large groupsof people of a variety of ethnic, historical, and cultural backgrounds andacross a range of diverse geographical areas can scarcely be the outcomeof any simple uniform process. Conversion to Islam is thus a challengingand absorbing subject for research. Yet it has attracted the attention of scholarsonly since the last decade of the nineteenth century.What follows does not claim to be more than a pre! iminary and ratherhurriedly prepared survey of the main theories about conversion to Islampropounded by Asian and Western scholars. The dearth of source materialpresents difficulties as "medieval Islam" produced no missionaries, bishops,baptismal rites, or other indicators of conversion that could be convenientlyrecorded by the Muslim chronicler. Hopefully the subject will be a spurto the detailed review and analysis of sources, modern and medieval, whichthe subject both deserves and requires ...

: Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam . Katherine P. Ewing.

American AnthropologistVolume 91, Issue 2 p. 507-508 Linguistic Anthropology: Shari'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Katherine P. Ewing, ed SYLVIA VATUK, SYLVIA VATUK University of Illinois at ChicagoSearch for more papers by this author SYLVIA VATUK, SYLVIA VATUK University of Illinois at ChicagoSearch for more papers by this author First published: June 1989 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1989.91.2.02a00750AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume91, Issue2June 1989Pages 507-508 RelatedInformation

Sharī 'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam

Sharī 'at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam

Shāh Walī Allāh's Theory of the Subtle Spiritual Centers (Laṭāʾif): A Sufi Model of Personhood and Self-Transformation

Previous articleNext article No AccessShāh Walī Allāh's Theory of the Subtle Spiritual Centers (Laṭāʾif): A Sufi Model of Personhood and Self-TransformationMarcia K. HermansenMarcia K. Hermansen Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 47, Number 1Jan., 1988 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jnes.47.1.3693678 Views: 14Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1988 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Mastura Ab. Wahab Islamic Spiritual and Emotional Intelligence and Its Relationship to Eternal Happiness: A Conceptual Paper, Journal of Religion and Health 61, no.66 (Jan 2022): 4783–4806.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-021-01485-2Michael E. Asbury Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Mysticism in the West: The Case of Azad Rasool and His Heirs, Religions 13, no.88 (Jul 2022): 690.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080690Eyad Abuali Visualizing the soul: Diagrams and the subtle body of light ( jism laṭīf ) in Shams al-Dīn al-Daylamī’s The Mirror of Souls ( Mirʿāt al-arwāḥ ), Critical Research on Religion 9, no.22 (May 2021): 157–174.https://doi.org/10.1177/20503032211015299Muhammad A. Kavesh The flight of the self: Exploring more‐than‐human companionship in rural Pakistan, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 32, no.S1S1 (Feb 2021): 42–57.https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12384Ali Altaf Mian Genres of Desire: The Erotic in Deobandī Islam, History of Religions 59, no.22 (Oct 2019): 108–145.https://doi.org/10.1086/704928M. Sajjad Alam Rizvi Music, emotions and reform in South Asian Islam: perspectives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, South Asian History and Culture 9, no.33 (Jul 2018): 340–363.https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2018.1488368Shoaib Ul-Haq, Farzad Rafi Khan A Sufi View of Human Transformation and Its Organizational Implications, (Jun 2018): 833–865.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66893-2_45Shoaib Ul-Haq, Farzad Rafi Khan A Sufi View of Human Transformation and Its Organizational Implications, (Aug 2017): 1–33.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29587-9_45-1NILE GREEN Breathing in India, c. 1890, Modern Asian Studies 42, no.2-32-3 (Mar 2008): 283–315.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X07003125Marcia Hermansen Said Nursi and Maulana Ilyas: Examples of Pietistic Spirituality among Twentieth-Century Islamic Movements, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 19, no.11 (Sep 2010): 73–88.https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340701770303Robert Rozehnal Experiencing Sufism: The Discipline of Ritual Practice, (Jan 2007): 173–225.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-60572-5_6Marcia K. Hermansen Visions as ‘Good to Think’: A Cognitive Approach to Visionary Experience in Islamic Sufi Thought, Religion 27, no.11 (Jan 1997): 25–43.https://doi.org/10.1006/reli.1996.0040

Moral Conduct and Authority. The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam

Moral Conduct and Authority. The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam

Book reviews : BARBARA D. METCALF ed., Moral Conduct and Authority; The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, 389 pp., £30

Book reviews : BARBARA D. METCALF ed., Moral Conduct and Authority; The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, 389 pp., £30