Search Results (9)

This article provides the first academic analysis of the popular Pakistani Islamic scholar and Urdu-speaking preacher Maulana Tariq Jamil. Drawing on years of ethnographic study of the Tablighi Jama’at, the revivalist movement to which Jamil belongs, as well as content analysis of dozens of his recorded lectures, the article presents a detailed biography of the Maulana in five stages. These comprise: (a) his upbringing and early life (1953–1972); (b) his conversion to the Tablighi Jama’at and studies at the Raiwind international headquarters (1972–1980); (c) his meteoric rise to fame and ascendancy up the movement’s leadership ranks (1980–1997); (d) his development into a national celebrity (1997–2016); and (e) major causes of controversy and criticism (2014–present). Tracing his narrative register within the historical archetypes of the quṣṣāṣ (storytellers) and wuʿʿāẓ (popular preachers), the paper identifies core tenets of the Maulana’s revivalist discourse, key milestones in his life—such as the high-profile conversion to the Tablighi Jama’at of Pakistani popstar Junaid Jamshed—and subtle changes in his approach over the years. The article deploys the classical sociological framework of structure-agency to explore how Maulana Tariq Jamil’s increasing exercise of agency in preaching Islam has unsettled structural expectations within traditionalist ʿulamāʾ (religious scholar) circles as well as the Tablighi leadership. It situates his emergence within a broader trend of Islamic media-based personalities who embrace contemporary technological tools to reach new audiences and respond to the challenges of postcolonial modernity. Full article

Modernity is a global condition of an ongoing socio-cultural, economic, and political transformation of human experience, with tradition or religion having no significant role to play. It is the gradual decline of the role of religion in modernity through the implementation of the principles of secularism which has, according to Islamic revivalists, plunged the world into crisis or jahiliyya (unGodliness). Revivalists and sociologists such as Anthony Giddens (1991) call it the “crisis of modernity”. In response, many Islamic revivalist movements have emerged to address this condition. The Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979 gave a boost to many existing Islamic revivalist movements and inspired many to appear anew. The phenomenon of contemporary Islamic revivalism is a religious transformative response to the crisis of modernity—i.e., the inability of secularism and the process of secularization to fulfill the promise of delivering a model of perfect global order. Contemporary Islamic revivalism is not anti-modernity but against secularism and is thus an attempt to steer modernity out of its crisis through a comprehensive and robust process of Islamization—the widespread introduction of Islamic rituals, practices, socio-cultural and economic processes, and institutional developments to the pattern of modern everyday living—and transforming modernity from dar al-harb (abode of war) to dar al-Islam (abode of peace). The paper argues that contemporary Islamic revivalism is a complex heterogeneous global phenomenon seeking to steer modernity out of its prevailing crisis through finding in Islam the universal blueprint of life. It further argues that Islamic revivalism is not anti-modernity but is a religious based reaction against the negative consequences of modernity, particularly against secularism, and carving out a space for itself in modernity. Full article

Deviating from the predominantly women-focused investigations on Islamic clothing in anthropology, religion and consumer studies, this research places men’s Islamic clothing under the spotlight to understand how the notion of the extended self is evidenced in a religious context. Using a multi-sited ethnographic and in-depth interview approach to study the context of middle-class Pakistani male participants of the traditional revivalist movement the Tablighi Jamaat, this study finds that possessions such as clothing serve as a conduit to participants’ sense of extended self. In this case, the extended self is associated with the Muslim nation, its Prophet and his work. This investigation furthers the concept of the extended self by implicating the consumption of religiously identified clothing as an entity that becomes associated with the self. Moreover, this study concludes that possessions and the extended self are imbricated into one’s religious career path. Full article

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted society in myriad ways, but how the pandemic has changed traditional forms of religion has been relatively understudied. Addressing this caveat, in this paper, I try to understand how adherents of an Islamic revivalist movement, the Tablighi Jamaat, turn to WhatsApp for meaning-making at the onset of the pandemic in Pakistan. The adherents are unable to sustain the use of the digital space due to incompatibility between the logic of the movement and the online platform. Without structural authority and organization, communication is chaotic and, at times, combative. The mixing of pure and impure ideas is also detrimental to communal cohesiveness. This study provides a counterexample to previous claims of symbiosis between online and offline religion and their inevitable merger. Full article

The resurgence of religion worldwide proved that secularization is not a de facto reality of modernity and the initial chaos that came along with the birth of postmodernity evolved into uniquely developing combinations that recognized cosmopolitan, multicultural, and hybrid (i.e., fluid and hyphenated) identities. Universal values became more instrumental than ever to connect members of hyper diverse societies while ethnocentric, nativist and exclusivist patriotism expired (and only recently starting to attract far right and white supremacist groups alone). Most Islamic revivalist movements emerging from this context have had minimal interactions with non-Muslims and influence on mainstream societies. Being in search of a solution to respond to the overwhelming effects of the West on Muslim societies, these revivalist movements could not change (and maybe contributed to) the binary positioning of Islam and the West. On the contrary, the Hizmet movement, inspired by Muhammed Fethullah Gülen and his predecessor Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, appeared in the global arena as an Islamic revivalist movement whose discourse resonated with the commonly shared universal values of every culture, ethnicity, and religion. The Hizmet movement did not position itself as an antithesis to Westernization, secularism, and modernity; the movement adopted a universalist and all-inclusive attitude, which re-introduced to the world that Islam is universal religion with the capacity to accommodate people of diversity and meet the needs of every age. This paper explores the Hizmet movement’s historical, theological, and social roots as a transnational Islamic revivalist movement. It analyzes the movement’s outreach across multicultural societies and its capability to adapt to a changing world through its educational and interfaith and intercultural activities across the globe. While unpacking thirty years of the Hizmet movement’s activities and the contribution to the literature, the paper also addresses some of the criticisms that have emerged regarding the movement and its activities, particularly in the wake of the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey. It should be noted that much criticism toward the movement emerged in recent years, and the movement did not face much backlash in its early years of development. With this in mind, this paper explores the development of the Hizmet movement and how much of its initiatives rapidly left a positive mark on diverse societies around the world. The paper is thus structured chronologically, tracing the birth, growth, stagnation, and transition (or according to some collapse) of the movement. The paper, by extension, too, positions the Hizmet movement within the phenomenon of contemporary Islamic revivalism as this movement is born out of similar conditions as are other Islamic revivalist movements but taking a slightly different direction, which is that it challenges the prevailing binary ‘us and them’ discourses produced mostly in ethno-centric political discourses. Full article

South Asia (Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan) has produced some of the greatest Islamic thinkers, such as Shah Wali Allah (sometimes also spelled Waliullah; 1702–1763) who is considered one of the originators of pan-Islamism, Rahmatullah Kairanwi (1818–1892), Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), Syed Abul A’la Mawdudi (also spelled Maududi; 1903–1979), and Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi (1914–1999), who have all played a pivotal role in shaping political Islam and have all had global impact. Islamism is intertwined with Muslim antisemitism. Some of the greatest Islamist movements have their bases in South Asia, such as Tablīghi Jamā’at—the largest Sunni Muslim revivalist (daw’a) movement in the world—and Jamā’at-i-Islāmi—a prototype of political Islam in South Asia. The region is home to some of the most important institutions of Islamic theological studies: Darul Ulūm Deoband, the alleged source of ideological inspiration to the Taliban, and Nadwātu’l-’Ulamā and Firangi Mahal, whose curricula are followed by seminaries across the world attended by South Asian Muslims in their diaspora. Some of the most popular Muslim televangelists have come from South Asia, such as Israr Ahmed (1932–2010) and Zakir Naik (b. 1965). This paper gives an introductory overview of antisemitism in the Muslim intellectual discourse in South Asia. Full article

This paper looks into the 200-year history of a particular Christian dress form in Finland, namely the körtti dress. Emerging from a declining peasant dress style, this supposedly unchanging and fossilised signifier of a revivalist Protestant movement has in fact gone through numerous transformations influenced by both socio-political and religious trends as well as fashion-driven and materially-ordained factors. From the analysis emerge four key factors that influence how dress strategies are formulated and enacted within a religious movement: (1) how vulnerable or institutionalised the movement is; (2) how it is viewed by those external to it; (3) how the members of the movement want themselves to preserve or change the movement and its public image; (4) and how external fashion processes infiltrate the tastes and sensibilities of the members. It is concluded that elements considered ‘traditional’, ‘modern’, ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ may all be present at the same time in a dress phenomenon, indicating that fashion’s association with modern secularity is not as clear-cut as is sometimes thought. Full article

Is authoritarianism intrinsic to Islam? Is Islam incompatible with democracy? These questions are frequently debated in the context of the study of the relationship between the Western and Islamic civilization. The debate has gained momentum since the last decade of the twentieth century, especially after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent transition of socialist states in Eastern Europe and other authoritarian states in Asia and Latin America to democracy. The publication of The Clash of Civilizations by American scholar Samuel Huntington, in which he presented a controversial argument about a cultural divide and clash between the Islamic world and the West, pushed the debate even further. Apart from Muslim intellectuals, Western academics have spent a significant amount of time on these questions, with a multitude of articles and volumes examining the compatibility of Islam and democracy. In this paper, we will examine Islam’s relationship with democracy from normative and philosophical viewpoints, examining how the established values and principles of Islam as reflected in the Qur’anic and prophetic traditions correspond to Western democratic norms and practices. In order to obtain a profound understanding of this subject, we have delved into, through content analysis, the thoughts of several early modernist Islamic scholars who have had tremendous impact on contemporary Islamic revivalist movements throughout the world, and interviewed a number of contemporary Islamic thinkers in Bangladesh. Full article

Fear of the late modern world has been a major factor in the rise of authoritarianand violent religio-political movements. This article draws on Anthony Giddens andCharles Taylor’s conceptualisation of the self in the secular age, and applies this to twomodernist religious trends originating in the East in the later nineteenth century in thecontext of western global expansion. Endeavouring to rise to the challenge ofaccommodating Islam to modernity by adopting the tools of rationality and encouragingindependent inquiry, Islamic Modernism has become increasingly embattled. The Baha’ifaith, a movement that incorporates similar perspectives and also developed out of anIslamic context, proposes a theophanic transformation rather than renewal through reformof Islam. After a period of infusion of a progressive catalytic impulse into the Middle East,the Baha’i faith performed its own recalibration of modernism, enunciating apocalypticdenunciation of the modern world similar to that found in Muslim revivalist trends. Thearticle ends by making some suggestions for continuation of a progressive religiousapproach in late modernity. Full article