Islam and Pious Sociality

The Ethics of Hierarchy in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan

in Social Analysis
Author:
Arsalan Khan Union College akk5m@virginia.edu

Search for other papers by Arsalan Khan in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Restricted access

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.

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Social Analysis

The International Journal of Anthropology

  • Ahmad, Irfan. 2009. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15, no. S1: S145S162.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Alam, Muzaffar. 2004. The Languages of Political Islam: India 1200–1800. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Basu, Helene. 1998. “Hierarchy and Emotion: Love, Joy and Sorrow in a Cult of Black Saints in Gujarat, India.” Pp. 117139 in Werbner and Basu 1998a.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bayat, Asef. 2013a. “Introduction: Post-Islamism at Large.” Pp. 334 in Bayat 2013b.

  • Bayat, Asef, ed. 2013b. Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Dumont, Louis. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Eickelman, Dale F., and James Piscatori. 1996. Muslim Politics. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press.

  • Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2011. “Introduction: What Is a Medium? Theologies, Technologies and Aspirations.” Social Anthropology 19, no. 1: 15.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Engelke, Matthew. 2010. “Religion and the Media Turn: A Review Essay.” American Ethnologist 37, no. 2: 371379.

  • Ewing, Katherine P. 1997. Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Gilsenan, Michael. 1982. Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Middle East. London: Croom Helm.

  • Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Hallaq, Wael B. 2013. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Ho, Engseng. 2006. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Iqtidar, Humeira. 2011a. “Secularism Beyond the State: The ‘State’ and ‘Market’ in Islamist Imagination.” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 3: 535564.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Iqtidar, Humeira. 2011b. Secularizing Islamists? Jama’at-e-Islami and Jama’at-ud-Da’wa in Urban Pakistan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Iqtidar, Humeira. 2013. “Post-Islamist Strands in Pakistan: Islamist Spin-Offs and Their Contradictory Trajectories.” Pp. 257276 in Bayat 2013b.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Jakobson, Roman. 1957. Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Russian Language Project.

  • Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Kurin, Richard. 1981. “Person, Family, and Kin in Two Pakistani Communities.” PhD diss., University of Chicago.

  • Lambek, Michael. 2015. The Ethical Condition: Essays on Action, Person, and Value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Makdisi, George. 1983. “Institutionalized Learning as a Self-Image of Islam.” Pp. 7385 in Islam’s Understanding of Itself, ed. Speros Vryonis, Jr. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Messick, Brinkley. 1993. The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Metcalf, Barbara D. 2003. “Travelers’ Tales in the Tablighi Jamaat.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588, no. 1: 136148.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Metcalf, Barbara D. 2004. Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

  • Meyer, Birgit. 2011. “Mediation and Immediacy: Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies and the Question of the Medium.” Social Anthropology 19, no 1: 2339.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Mitchell, Timothy. 2006. “State, Economy, and the State Effect.” Pp. 169189 in The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, ed. Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta. Blackwell.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Mittermaier, Amira. 2011. Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Munn, Nancy D. 1986. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Robbins, Joel. 2001. “God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society.” American Anthropologist 103, no. 4: 901912.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Roy, Olivier. 2004. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press.

  • Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2009. “Market Islam in Indonesia.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15, no. S1: S183S201.

  • Sanyal, Usha. 1996. Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwî and His Movement, 1870–1920. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Sikand, Yoginder. 2002. Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama‘at (1920–2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study. London: Sangam Books.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Silverstein, Brian. 2011. Islam and Modernity in Turkey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description.” Pp. 1155 in Meaning in Anthropology, ed. Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Werbner, Pnina. 2003. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  • Werbner, Pnina, and Helene Basu, eds. 1998a. Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults. New York: Routledge.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Werbner, Pnina, and Helene Basu. 1998b. “Introduction: The Embodiment of Charisma.” Pp. 330 in Werbner and Basu 1998a.

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 3004 1722 137
Full Text Views 78 5 0
PDF Downloads 62 9 0