Abstract
Contemporary accounts tend to analyze Islamist actors in Pakistan from either a State-centered or militancy and regional security perspective, leading to an under-appreciation of the cultural dynamics that accord them space within social fabrics. This chapter studies the interplay between religious actors and businessmen associated with Pakistan’s burgeoning bazaar (retail-wholesale) sector. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a large wholesale bazaar located in the city of Lahore, this research draws attention toward mutually constitutive bazaar-mosque relations within the marketplace that build shared conceptions of Muslim identity, public piety, and virtue, while simultaneously reifying class-based distinctions across different strata. By focusing on the microsociological foundations of religious practice and politics, this chapter helps rectify static accounts of Islamist politics in Pakistan and sheds light on the distinct social and cultural trajectories of urbanization and neoliberal economic change.
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Notes
- 1.
However, Smith (2003) warns against an exclusive focus on the bazaar’s relationship with the clergy, as internal differentiation meant that it also mobilized with a range of other actors during the revolution.
- 2.
These two organizations are rivals within the religious field, and their doctrinal affiliations (Deobandi vs. Barelvi) map on to the reformist split within Sunni Islam in the subcontinent that emerged and hardened over the last two centuries (Philippon 2014).
- 3.
For more on Islamic revivalism and piety movements among Muslim women, see Mahmood (2005).
- 4.
The role of mosque and madrassah networks in perpetuating Islamist radicalism and militancy is also the subject of considerable academic and policy concern. Extant research shows that while a direct relationship to militancy is true in only a minority of cases (Christine Fair 2007), many religious sites are strong enablers of exclusionary and illiberal tendencies that lead to, among other things, the victimization of minority groups (Javed 2018).
- 5.
“Mustafa Market” is a pseudonym for one of Shah Alam’s constituent markets, designated to protect key identifiers of my informants.
- 6.
They also admitted that they soon realized that I wasn’t from the government, since no public servant would be bothered enough to visit more than a couple of times.
- 7.
Unlike in some cultural formations, academics are a low-status group in Pakistan, and the predominant perception is that a failure to succeed in other occupational forms pushes one toward teaching and research as a vocation.
- 8.
These factions were grounded in business and fraternal ties, rather than caste- or kinship-based differentiation, and it was not uncommon for traders to switch allegiances from time to time.
- 9.
These conversations would take place in public spaces, like a park on Circular Road, or a tea-stall in Mustafa Market, as most workers also lived in the surrounding neighborhood.
- 10.
Interview, 3 August 2015.
- 11.
Interview, 7 September 2015.
- 12.
This practice of donating money to religious organizations seen in Mustafa Market is in line with trends across the country. While survey data for other provinces is hard to come by, the Pakistan Centre of Philanthropy’s (PCP) research for Punjab shows that 38% of all monetary charitable contributions—an estimated Rs. 21 billion per annum—is channeled into “Islamic organizations and mosque and madrassah construction committees” (Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy 2012, 22).
- 13.
Interview 15 October 2015.
- 14.
Interview, 29 September 2015.
- 15.
Interview 11 October 2015.
- 16.
This was particularly true for older businessmen, who themselves were first- or second-generation urban migrants. A few younger traders, including those who joined their fathers and uncles in business, were somewhat more amenable to puritanical and orthodox interpretations, which they encountered in schools and universities. However, they constituted a much smaller segment of the bazaar, and Barelvi beliefs were still firmly entrenched with the majority of traders.
- 17.
The Faizan-e-Sunnat is a two-volume, 2200-page book by Barelvi scholar and Dawat-i-Islami founder, Muhammad Ilyas Qadri. It contains detailed instructions on how to live a life that approximates that of the Prophet and how to earn favor from Allah on the basis of everyday good deeds.
- 18.
In contrast, government officials and politicians were referred to as badmaash (villainous) and khaoo (corrupt), among other, stronger expletives.
- 19.
Akhtar (2011, 222) also points out the frequent positing of a framework of ihsaan (favor) by subordinate groups in their dealings with employers and patrons in the urban economy.
- 20.
There were five held during my fieldwork year out of which I was able to attend three. The most extravagant one was on 4 January 2015 (12th Rabi-ul-Awal, commonly known as Eid Milad-un-Nabi or the Prophet’s day of birth), and it received significant coverage on a local Lahore-based television channel as well as in the press.
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Javed, U. (2022). Following the Prophet’s Sunnah: Class, Piety, and Power in a Pakistani Bazaar. In: Radhakrishnan, S., Vijayakumar, G. (eds) Sociology of South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97030-7_12
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