Focusing on the Maijbhandari movement in Chittagong, south-eastern Bangladesh, which claims the status of the only Sufi order originated in Bengal and which has gained immense popularity in recent years, this book provides a comprehensive picture of an important aspect of contemporary Bengali Islam in the South Asian context. Expertise in South Asian languages and literatures is combined with ethnographic field work and theoretical formulations from a range of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, Islamic studies and religious studies. Analysing the Maijbhandaris tradition of Bengali spiritual songs, one of the largest popular song traditions in Bengal, the book presents an in-depth study of Bengali Sufi theology, hagiography and Maijbhandari esoteric songs, as well as a discussion of what Bengali Islam is. It is a useful contribution to South Asia Studies, as well as Islamic Studies.

Focusing on the Maijbhandari movement in Chittagong, south-eastern Bangladesh, which claims the status of the only Sufi order originated in Bengal and which has gained immense popularity in recent years, this book provides a comprehensive picture of an important aspect of contemporary Bengali Islam in the South Asian context. Expertise in South Asian languages and literatures is combined with ethnographic field work and theoretical formulations from a range of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, Islamic studies and religious studies. Analysing the Maijbhandaris tradition of Bengali spiritual songs, one of the largest popular song traditions in Bengal, the book presents an in-depth study of Bengali Sufi theology, hagiography and Maijbhandari esoteric songs, as well as a discussion of what Bengali Islam is. It is a useful contribution to South Asia Studies, as well as Islamic Studies.

The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South Asia The first modern state to be founded in the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation. Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state.

Islamic sermon gatherings are a central form of public piety and public expression in contemporary Bangladesh. Held since the 19th century, waz mahfils became so popular that it is today possible to participate in them on a daily basis in many regions of the country. Despite their significance in the rise of popular politics, the sermons are often disregarded as Islamist propaganda and very little research is dedicated to them. This book provides unprecedented access into these sermon gatherings. Based on fieldwork and interviews, Max Stille analyses an archive of several dozens of sermons. He shows how popular preaching shapes roles and rules of what can be said, imagined, and felt. Waz mahfils are a participatory practice of the labouring classes in which religious, political and poetic consensus overlap. In them, Islamic tenets and morals are part of dramatic narrations, vocal art and affective communication, ranging from immersion and upheaval to laughter about political jokes and parody. Suggesting new ways to interpret musical and performative poetics of Islamic speech, this book calls for expanding conceptions of civic participation and public discourse, and rethinking the role of the senses and religious aesthetics in Islam.

The most broadly accepted explanation of Sufism is the etymological derivation of the term from the Arabic for “wool,” ṣūf, associating practitioners with a preference for poor, rough clothing. This explanation clearly identifies Sufism with ascetical practice and the importance of manifesting spiritual poverty through material poverty. In fact, some of the earliest “Western” descriptions of individuals now widely associated with the larger phenomenon of Sufism identified them with the Arabic term faqīr, mendicant, or its most common Persian equivalent, darwīsh. Sufism, as presented here embraces a host of features including the ritual, institutional, psychological, hermeneutical, artistic, literary, ethical, and epistemological. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Sufism contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, major historical figures and movements, practices, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Sufism.

It has been argued that the mystical Sufi form of Islam is the most sensitive to other cultures, being accommodative to other traditions and generally tolerant to peoples of other faiths. It readily becomes integrated into local cultures and they are similarly often infused into Sufism. Examples of this reciprocity are commonly reflected in Sufi poetry, music, hagiographic genres, memoires, and in the ritualistic practices of Sufi traditions. This volume shows how this often-side-lined tradition functions in the societies in which it is found, and demonstrates how it relates to mainstream Islam. The focus of this book ranges from reflecting Sufi themes in the Qur’anic calligraphy to movies, from ideals to everyday practices, from legends to actual history, from gender segregation to gender transgression, and from legalism to spiritualism. Consequently, the international panel of contributors to this volume are trained in a range of disciplines that include religious studies, history, comparative literature, anthropology, and ethnography. Covering Southeast Asia to West Africa as well as South Asia and the West, they address both historical and contemporary issues, shedding light on Sufism’s adaptability. This book sets aside conventional methods of understanding Islam, such as theological, juridical, and philosophical, in favour of analysing its cultural impact. As such, it will be of great interest to all scholars of Islamic Studies, the Sociology of Religion, Religion and Media, as well as Religious Studies and Area Studies more generally.

This book examines the history of, and the contestations on, Islam and the nature of religious change in 20th century Pakistan, focusing in particular on movements of Islamic reform and revival. This book is the first to bring the different facets of Islam, particularly Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented traditions, together within the confines of a single study ranging from the colonial to post-colonial era. Using a rich corpus of Urdu and Arabic material including biographical accounts, Sufi discourses (malfuzat), letter collections, polemics and unexplored archival sources, the author investigates how Islamic reformism and shrine-oriented religiosity interacted with one another in the post-colonial state of Pakistan. Focusing on the district of Mianwali in Pakistani northwestern Punjab, the book demonstrates how reformist ideas could only effectively find space to permeate after accommodating Sufi thoughts and practices; the text-based religious identity coalesced with overlapped traditional religious rituals and practices. The book proceeds to show how reformist Islam became the principal determinant of Islamic identity in the post-colonial state of Pakistan and how one of its defining effects was the hardening of religious boundaries. Challenging the approach of viewing the contestation between reformist and shrine-oriented Islam through the lens of binaries modern/traditional and moderate/extremist, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian religion and Islam in modern South Asia.