Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T14:17:25.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women, Politics and Islamism in Northern Pakistan1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

MAGNUS MARSDEN
MAGNUS MARSDEN*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the responses of women living in a small town in the Chitral region of northern Pakistan to the Islamizing policies of the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal, a coalition of Islamist parties elected to provincial government in the North West Frontier Province in October 2002. Its focus is on women in the region who vocally and publicly criticize Chitral's politically active madrasa-educated ‘men of piety’. Documenting the ways in which these women and the region's ‘men of piety’ debate with one another on matters concerning personal morality, comportment and self-presentation illuminates dimensions of small-town Muslim life that are rarely considered important in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. In particular, by exploring these complex and multi-dimensional debates, I seek to emphasize the inherently unfinished nature of Chitralis’ responses to ongoing Islamizing processes, a growing and pervasive sense of disenchantment amongst many of the region's Muslims with the authenticity of public expressions of personal piety, and, in this context, the continuing emergence of new ways of being Muslim, modes of self-presentation and categories of Islamic public opinion forming figures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2-3: Islam in South Asia , March 2008 , pp. 405 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abu-Lughoud, L. 1990. The romance of resistance: Tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women. American Ethnologist 17 (1), 41–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Lughoud, L. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ahmad, I. 2004. Introduction: Understanding Islam. In Ahmad, I. and Reifeld, H. (eds.), Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation and Conflict. Delhi: Social Science Press, pp. xi–xxv.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Amineh 2004. The World Is Established Through The Work of Existence: The Performance of Gham-Khadi Among Pukhtun Bibiane in Northern Pakistan. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ahmed, A. 1983. Religion and Politics in Muslim Society: Order and Conflict in Pakistan. London: Routledge and Kegan PaulGoogle Scholar
Awn, P. 1998. Indian Islam: The Shah Bano Affair. In Hassan, M. (ed.) Islam, Communities and the Nation: Muslim Identities in South Asia and Beyond. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 63–78.Google Scholar
Banerjee, M. 2000. The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Bashir, E. 1996. The Areal Position of Khowar: South Asian and Other Affinities. In Bashi, E. and Israruddin, , (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference. Karachi: Oxford University Press, pp. 167–179.Google Scholar
Barth, F. 1965. Political Leadership Among the Swat Pathans. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, S. 1996. Reconstructing self and society: Javanese Muslim women and ‘the veil’. American Ethnologist 23 (4)673–697.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Munck, V. 2005. Sakhina: a study of female masculinity in a Sri Lankan Muslim community. South Asia Research 25 (2): 141–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deeb, L. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi'I Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eickelman, D. and Anderson, J.. 1999. Redefining Muslim Publics. In Eickelman, D. and Anderson, J. (eds), New Muslim Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indian University Press, pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
Gaffney, P. 1994. The Prophet's Pulpit: Islamic Preaching in Contemporary Egypt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschkind, C. 2001. The Ethics of listening: Cassette sermon audition in contemporary Cairo. American Ethnologist 28 (3): 623–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haeri, S. 2002. No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Hegeland, M. 1998a. Flagellation and fundamentalism: (trans)forming meaning, identity, and gender through Pakistani's women's rituals of mourning. American Ethnologist 25: 240–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegeland, M. 1998b. The power paradox in muslim women's Majales: North-West Pakistani mourning rituals as sites of contestation over religious politics, ethnicity and gender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society vol 23, no. 2: 392–428.Google Scholar
Jeffery, P., Jeffery, R. and Jeffrey, C. 2004. Islamisation, gentrification and domestication: an “islamic course for girls” and rural Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh. Modern Asian Studies 38 (1): 1–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindholm, C. 1982. Generosity and Jealousy: The Swat Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan. Columbia: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mahmood, S. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mahmood, S. 2001. Rehearsed spontaneity and the conventionality of ritual: disciplines of salat. American Ethnologist 28 (4):827–853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malik, J. 1996. Colonialization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Marsden, M. 2005. Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Northern Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, B. 1990. Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar. A Partial Translation with Commentary. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minnault, G. 1998a. Secluded Scholars: Women's Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India. New Delhi: OxfordGoogle Scholar
Minnault, G. 1998b. Women, legal reform and Muslim identity. In Hassan, M.. (ed.) Islam, Communities and the Nation: Muslim Identities in South Asia and Beyond. New Delhi: Manohar, pp.139–158.Google Scholar
Mir-Hosseini, Z. 2000a. Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran. London: I.B. Tauris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mir-Hosseini, Z. 2000b. Marriage on Trial: a Study of Islamic Family Law. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
O'Brien, D. J. T. 1895. Grammar and Vocabulary of the Khowar Dialect (Chitrali), with Introductory Sketch of the Country and People. Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press.Google Scholar
Osanloo, A. 2006. Islamico-civil ‘rights talk’: women, subjectivity and law in Iranian family court. American Ethnologist 33 (2): 191–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parkes, P. 1996b. Indigenous Polo and the Politics of Regional Identity. In MacClancy, J.. (ed.), Sport, Identity and Ethnicity. Oxford: Berg, pp. 43–67.Google Scholar
Peletz, Michael. 2002. Islamic Modern: Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, G. S. 1899. Chitral: the Story of a Minor Siege. Methuen: London.Google Scholar
Simpson, E. Forthcoming. The changing perspectives of three men on the question of saint worship over a ten year period in western India. Modern Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Soares, B. 2005. Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian African Town. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Soares, B. and Otayek, R.. Forthcoming (2007). Introduction: Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa. In Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, Soares, B. and Otayek, R. (eds.). London: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staley, J. 1982. Words for my Brother: Travels between the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Torab, A. 1997. Piety as gendered agency: A study of Jalaseh ritual discourse in an urban neighbourhood in Iran. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2: 235–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vatuk, S. UPMS. 2005 Changing patterns of Muslim women's activism on issues of religious and legal reform in contemporary India. Paper Presented at a Conference on “Islamic reform in South Asia” at the London School of African and Oriental Studies, May 26–28th 2005.Google Scholar