Islam and Pious Sociality

The Ethics of Hierarchy in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan

in Social Analysis
Author: Arsalan Khan 1
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  • 1 Union College akk5m@virginia.edu
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2016.600406
Keywords:
dawat; egalitarian individualism; ethics; hierarchy; Islamism; Pakistan; pious sociality; Tablighi Jamaat
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Abstract

Pakistani Tablighis, practitioners of a transnational Islamic piety movement, the Tablighi Jamaat, insist that only their own form of face-to-face preaching (dawat) is capable of spreading Islamic virtue. Tablighis dismiss the efforts to spread Islam by a diverse array of Islamist actors, including political parties, corporations, NGOs, and popular televangelists. This highlights a central cleavage within the Islamic revival in Pakistan. While Islamists have adopted a modernist conception of religion associated with egalitarian individualism, Tablighis understand dawat to be a religious practice that entails an ethics of hierarchy in which one becomes virtuous by submitting to the authority of pious others. In dawat, Tablighis create a hierarchically structured world of pious sociality against the threat of egalitarian individualism in liberal and Islamist varieties.

Contributor Notes

Arsalan Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. His research examines the intersection of ritual, gender, and ethics in the Islamic revival in Pakistan and addresses the broader relationship between Islam, secularism, and modernity.

Social Analysis

The International Journal of Anthropology

Cover Social Analysis
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
96–113
Keywords:
dawat; egalitarian individualism; ethics; hierarchy; Islamism; Pakistan; pious sociality; Tablighi Jamaat
Print Publication Date:
01 Dec 2016
Online Publication Date:
01 Dec 2016
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2016

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