Download or read book Sufi Women of South Asia written by Tahera Aftab and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sufi Women of South Asia. Veiled Friends of God, Tahera Aftab, drawing upon various sources, offers the first unique and comprehensive account of South Asian Sufi women, from the eleventh to the twentieth century.
Download or read book Modern Sufis and the State written by Katherine Pratt Ewing and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sufism is typically thought of as the mystical side of Islam. In recent years, it has been held up as a supposedly peaceful alternative to the spread of forms of Islam associated with violence, an embodiment of democratic ideals of tolerance and pluralism. Are Sufis in fact as otherworldy and apolitical as this stereotype suggests? Modern Sufis and the State brings together a range of scholars, including anthropologists, historians, and religious-studies specialists, to challenge common assumptions that are made about Sufism today. Focusing on India and Pakistan within a broader global context, this book provides locally grounded accounts of how Sufis in South Asia have engaged in politics from the colonial period to the present. Contributors foreground the effects and unintended consequences of efforts to link Sufism with the spread of democracy and consider what roles scholars and governments have played in the making of twenty-first-century Sufism. They critique the belief that Salafism and Sufism are antithetical, offering nuanced analyses of the diversity, multivalence, and local embeddedness of Sufi political engagements and self-representations in Pakistan and India. Essays question the portrayal of Sufi shrines as sites of toleration, peace, and harmony, exploring cases of tension and conflict. A wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection, Modern Sufis and the State is a timely call to think critically about the role of public discourse in shaping perceptions of Sufism.
Download or read book Islam Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia written by Deepra Dandekar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the study of ideas, practices and institutions in South Asian Islam, commonly identified as ‘Sufism’, and how they relate to politics in South Asia. While the importance of Sufism for the lives of South Asian Muslims has been repeatedly asserted, the specific role played by Sufism in contestations over social and political belonging in South Asia has not yet been fully analysed. Looking at examples from five countries in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan), the book begins with a detailed introduction to political concerns over ‘belonging’ in relation to questions concerning Sufism and Islam in South Asia. This is followed with sections on Producing and Identifying Sufism; Everyday and Public Forms of Belonging; Sufi Belonging, Local and National; and Intellectual History and Narratives of Belonging. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines, the book explores the connection of Islam, Sufism and the Politics of Belonging in South Asia. It is an important contribution to South Asian Studies, Islamic Studies and South Asian Religion.
Download or read book Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women written by Tahera Aftab and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an annotated source for the study of the public and private lives of South Asian Muslim women.
Download or read book Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis written by N. Hanif and published by Sarup & Sons. This book was released on 2000 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India written by Kelly Pemberton and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insightful field research into the complexity of women's roles in a subset of Islamic culture. Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India combines historical data with years of ethnographic fieldwork to investigate women's participation in the culture of Sufi shrines in India and the manner in which this participation both complicates and sustains traditional conceptions of Islamic womanhood. Kelly Pemberton grounds her firsthand research into India's Sufi shrines and saints by setting her observations against the historical backdrop of colonial-era discourses by British civil servants, Orientalist scholars, and Muslim reformists and the assumptive portrayals of women's activities in the milieu of Sufi orders and shrines inherent in these accounts. These early narratives, Pemberton holds, are driven by social, economic, intellectual, and political undercurrents of self-interest that shaped Western understanding of Indian Muslims and, in particular, of women's participation in the institutions of Sufism. Pemberton's research offers a corrective by assessing the contemporary circumstances under which a woman may be recognized as a spiritual authority or guide—despite official denial of such status—and by examining the discrepancies between the commonly held belief that women cannot perform in the public setting of shrines and her own observations of women doing precisely that. She demonstrates that the existence of multiple models of master and disciple relationships have opened avenues for women to be recognized as spiritual authorities in their own right. Specifically Pemberton explores the work of performance, recitation, and ritual mediation carried out by women connected with Sufi orders through kinship and spiritual ties, and she maps shifting ideas about women's involvement in public ritual events in a variety of contexts, circumstances, and genres of performance. She also highlights the private petitioning of saints, the Prophet, and God performed by poor women of low social standing in Bihar Sharif. These women are often perceived as being exceptionally close to God yet are compelled to operate outside the public sphere of major shrines. Throughout this groundbreaking study, Pemberton sets observed practices of lived religious experiences against the boundaries established by prescriptive behavioral models of Islam to illustrate how the varied reasons given for why women cannot become spiritual masters conflict with the need in Sufi circles for them to do exactly that. Thus this work also invites further inquiry into the ambiguities to be found in Islam's foundational framework for belief and practice.
Download or read book Sufi Martyrs of Love written by C. Ernst and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sufism is a religion which emphasizes direct knowledge of the divine within each person, and meditation, music, song, and dance are seen as crucial spiritual strides toward attaining unity with God. Sufi paths of mysticism and devotion, motivated by Islamic ideals, are still chosen by men and women in countries from Morocco to China, and there are nearly one hundred orders around the world, eighty of which are present and thriving in the United States. The Chishti Sufi order has been the most widespread and popular of all Sufi traditions since the twelfth-century. Sufi Martyrs of Love offers a critical perspective on Western attitudes towards Islam and Sufism, clarifying its contemporary importance, both in the West and in traditional Sufi homelands. Finally, it provides access to the voices of Sufi authorities, through the translation of texts being offered in English for the first time.
Download or read book The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual written by Shemeem Burney Abbas and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The female voice plays a more central role in Sufi ritual, especially in the singing of devotional poetry, than in almost any other area of Muslim culture. Female singers perform sufiana-kalam, or mystical poetry, at Sufi shrines and in concerts, folk festivals, and domestic life, while male singers assume the female voice when singing the myths of heroines in qawwali and sufiana-kalam. Yet, despite the centrality of the female voice in Sufi practice throughout South Asia and the Middle East, it has received little scholarly attention and is largely unknown in the West. This book presents the first in-depth study of the female voice in Sufi practice in the subcontinent of Pakistan and India. Shemeem Burney Abbas investigates the rituals at the Sufi shrines and looks at women's participation in them, as well as male performers' use of the female voice. The strengths of the book are her use of interviews with both prominent and grassroots female and male musicians and her transliteration of audio- and videotaped performances. Through them, she draws vital connections between oral culture and the written Sufi poetry that the musicians sing for their audiences. This research clarifies why the female voice is so important in Sufi practice and underscores the many contributions of women to Sufism and its rituals.
Download or read book Hagiology of Sufi Saints and the Spread of Islam in South Asia written by Muhammad Ismail and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biographical Dictionary of Sufism in South Asia written by Mohammad Ishaq Khan and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Manifestations of a Sufi Woman in Central Asia written by Ḥāfiẓ Baṣīr and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib is the devotional work written to expound upon the teachings of Aghā-yi Buzurg, a female religious master active in the early 16th century in the vicinity of Bukhara.
Download or read book Islam in South Asia in Practice written by Barbara D. Metcalf and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-08 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of Princeton Readings in Religions brings together the work of more than thirty scholars of Islam and Muslim societies in South Asia to create a rich anthology of primary texts that contributes to a new appreciation of the lived religious and cultural experiences of the world's largest population of Muslims. The thirty-four selections--translated from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Hindavi, Dakhani, and other languages--highlight a wide variety of genres, many rarely found in standard accounts of Islamic practice, from oral narratives to elite guidance manuals, from devotional songs to secular judicial decisions arbitrating Islamic law, and from political posters to a discussion among college women affiliated with an "Islamist" organization. Drawn from premodern texts, modern pamphlets, government and organizational archives, new media, and contemporary fieldwork, the selections reflect the rich diversity of Islamic belief and practice in South Asia. Each reading is introduced with a brief contextual note from its scholar-translator, and Barbara Metcalf introduces the whole volume with a substantial historical overview.
Download or read book Islam in South Asia written by Amit Dey and published by Parul Prakashani Private Limited. This book was released on 2016 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly, insightful and, at the same time, written in an exceptionally lucid style, this book challenges certain stereotypes relating to Islam, Sufism, folk songs and inter community relations in the South Asian context. By consulting Persian, Urdu, Bengali and English sources, this book suggests that Sufism is more heterogeneous and complex than what is commonly taken to be.
Download or read book Sufi Rituals and Practices written by Kashshaf Ghani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is an in-depth study of the lesser-explored history of Sufi practices in South Asia. Covering the formative period of Sufism in this region, the work studies practices like 'sama' (listening to poetry and music) and 'zikr' (remembrance of God) through the careers of the earliest Sufi orders in the region, 'Chishti and Suhrawardi'. The book allows the reader critical insight into 'Sufi exercises', the meaning, structure, and performance of sama, the long debate on the legality of music, dance and poetry as religious practices, tensions between Sufis and the State around the permissibility of sama, zikr as a core Sufi exercise, the practice of sama and zikr across orders, and the importance of etiquette in Sufi communities. The work essentially understands spiritual practices as a critical element in the development of Sufism in South Asia. Moving beyond the limits of the north-south binary, the author also focuses on the Deccan, weaving a seamless narrative that reflects the contributions of generations of important Sufi masters. Shedding light on the private world of Sufi practices, the work, for the first time, introduces English language readers to a full-length translation of a treatise written in defence of listening to music and poetry as an integral spiritual exercise.
Download or read book Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia written by Michel Boivin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Muslim shrine is at the crossroad of many processes involving society and culture. It is the place where a saint – often a Sufi - is buried, and it works as a main social factor, with the power of integrating or rejecting people and groups, and as a mirror reflecting the intricacies of a society. The book discusses the role of popular Islam in structuring individual and collective identities in contemporary South Asia. It identifies similarities and differences between the worship of saints and the pattern of religious attendance to tombs and mausoleums in South Asian Sufism and Shi`ism. Inspired by new advances in the field of ritual and pilgrimage studies, the book demonstrates that religious gatherings are spaces of negotiation and redefinitions of religious identity and of the notion of sainthood. Drawing from a large corpus of vernacular and colonial sources, as well as the register of popular literature and ethnographic observation, the authors describe how religious identities are co-constructed through the management of rituals, and are constantly renegotiated through discourses and religious practices. By enabling students, researchers and academics to critically understand the complexity of religious places within the world of popular and devotional Islam, this geographical re-mapping of Muslim religious gatherings in contemporary South Asia contributes to a new understanding of South Asian and Islamic Studies.
Download or read book South Asian Sufis written by Clinton Bennett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often described as the soul of Islam, Sufism is one of the most interesting yet least known facet of this global religion. Sufism is the softer more inclusive and mystical form of Islam. Although militant Islamists dominate the headlines, the Sufi ideal has captured the imagination of many. Nowhere in the world is the handprint of Sufism more observable than South Asia, which has the largest Muslim population of the world, but also the greatest concentration of Sufis. This book examines active Sufi communities in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh that shed light on the devotion, and deviation, and destiny of Sufism in South Asia. Drawn from extensive work by indigenous and international scholars, this ethnographical study explores the impact of Iran on the development of Sufi thought and practice further east, and also discusses Sufism in diaspora in such contexts as the UK and North America and Iran's influence on South Asian Sufism.
Download or read book Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora written by Claire Chambers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the ‘South Asian Muslim’ have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Here we find the first book-length critical analysis of these representations of Muslims from South Asia and its diaspora in literature, the media, culture and cinema. Contributors contextualize these depictions against the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam, and also against cultural responses to earlier crises on the subcontinent such as Partition (1947), the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhya riots , the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the Kashmir conflict. Offering a comparative approach, the book explores connections between artists’ generic experimentalism and their interpretations of life as Muslims in South Asia and its diaspora, exploring literary and popular fiction, memoir, poetry, news media, and film. The collection highlights the diversity of representations of Muslims and the range of approaches to questions of Muslim religious and cultural identity, as well as secular discourse. Essays by leading scholars in the field highlight the significant role that literature, film, and other cultural products such as music can play in opening up space for complex reflections on Muslim identities and cultures, and how such imaginative cultural forms can enable us to rethink secularism and religion. Surveying a broad range of up-to-date writing and cultural production, this concise and pioneering critical analysis of representations of South Asian Muslims will be of interest to students and academics of a variety of subjects including Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Contemporary Politics, Migration History, Film studies, and Cultural Studies.
