عنوان

Producing Islam - An ethnography of Muslim Beliefs, Islamist Politics, and Academic Secularity, at a Pakistani Sufi Madrasa

Number

TL48112

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Producing Islam - An ethnography of Muslim Beliefs, Islamist Politics, and Academic Secularity, at a Pakistani Sufi Madrasa

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Bilal Ahsan Malik

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Fong, Vanessa

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Harvard University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

271

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-50002-8

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ed.D.

Body granting the degree

Harvard University

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

This dissertation draws on more than twelve months of participant-observation at Darul Ulum Muhammadiyya Ghausia at Bhera, Pakistan, a prominent Islamic seminary or madrasa, affiliated with the Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamaat sect (commonly known as the 'Barelwi maslak in South Asia). Based on this ethnography, the dissertation conducts a series of inquiries into the production of Islam at the personal, political, and discursive levels. At the personal level, it looks at the cultural reproduction of seminary students' beliefs, mapping the role of prayer-practices in the process of belief-formation. At the political level, it analyzes students' desire to Islamize Pakistan. It argues that students' Islamist desires are produced when a particular pious subjectivity (a subjectivity that demands acknowledging Islam as the supreme ethical foundation for life) articulates with a particular social imaginary (an imaginary in which personal piety is experienced as intimately linked with the nation's piety). At the discursive level, the dissertation looks at the academic study of Pakistani seminaries, showing how this literature is aligned with the political project of secularization. It further argues that this literature exhibits the operation of emergent logics of secularization, predicated not just on the privatization, decline, or functional differentiation of 'religion,' but also on the localization of non-secular forms of Islam. Overall, this dissertation contributes to Anthropology, Islamic Studies, and Political Science by underscoring the importance of complementing discursive, text-based, and descriptive accounts of Muslim societies with explanatory accounts that are attentive to Muslim subjectivities. The dissertation pursues this line of analysis, closely attending to the experiential dimensions of quotidian practices like five-daily prayers (namaz, salat), supplicatory prayers (dua), Sufi shrine-visitations (hazeri), social etiquettes ( adab), and other disciplines of pious self-formation. In so doing, it demonstrates how closely mapping our interlocutors' subjectivity - the conditions of its production, the texture of its experience, and the complexity of its impact- can yield novel insights into enduring questions about Muslim piety and politics.

Cultural anthropology; Islamic Studies; Religious education

Subject Term

Social sciences;Education;Aaqeeda, Aqida, Iman, Eman, Maslak (Islamic Beliefs);Barelwi, Barelvi, Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamaat;Islamic Education, Madrassah;Islamism, Islamization, Islamic Politics;Salat, Namaz, Dua, Hazeri, Adab (Muslim Rituals);Secularization, Secularism;Subjectivity, Subject-Formation

Zeumer, Mathias Erwin

Fong, Vanessa

Harvard University

Call Number

1655004278; 3662092

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y