Sufi Women of South Asia

Sufi Women of South Asia PDF Author: Tahera Aftab
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004467181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description
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.

Sufi Women of South Asia

Sufi Women of South Asia PDF Author: Tahera Aftab
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004467181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description
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.

Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women

Inscribing South Asian Muslim Women PDF Author: Tahera Aftab
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004158499
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
Offers an annotated source for the study of the public and private lives of South Asian Muslim women.

Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia

Islam, Sufism and Everyday Politics of Belonging in South Asia PDF Author: Deepra Dandekar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317435958
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
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.

Sufi Martyrs of Love

Sufi Martyrs of Love PDF Author: C. Ernst
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137095814
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
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.

Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia

Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia PDF Author: Asiya Alam
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004438491
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Women, Islam and Familial Intimacy in Colonial South Asia offers an account of Muslim feminism in an age of nationalism and reform, and how it shaped debates on family, morality and society.

Manifestations of a Sufi Woman in Central Asia

Manifestations of a Sufi Woman in Central Asia PDF Author: Ḥāfiẓ Baṣīr
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004441352
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
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.

The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual

The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual PDF Author: Shemeem Burney Abbas
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292784503
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
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.

Islam in South Asia in Practice

Islam in South Asia in Practice PDF Author: Barbara D. Metcalf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831385
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
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.

Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India

Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India PDF Author: Kelly Pemberton
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611172322
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
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.

Gender, Sainthood, & Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi'ism

Gender, Sainthood, & Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi'ism PDF Author: Karen G. Ruffle
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834750
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In this study of devotional hagiographical texts and contemporary ritual performances of the Shi'a of Hyderabad, India, Karen Ruffle demonstrates how traditions of sainthood and localized cultural values shape gender roles. Ruffle focuses on the annual mo