In The Promise of Piety, Arsalan Khan examines how the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic revivalist movement, navigates the intersection of religious practice, modernity, and governance in Pakistan. At its core, the book asks: how does the Tablighi Jamaat aim to reform society, and how do its structure and practice of hierarchy, care, and responsibility create a moral order? It also explores how the Jamaat's practices interact with secular governance and state-driven Islamization in Pakistan. Through ethnographic research, Khan examines how Tablighis, members of the predominantly male-led organization, promote piety through face-to-face preaching (dawat) and collective rituals, reshaping private and public spheres.
The book's central contribution lies in its conceptualization of religion not merely as an ascriptive identity or a set of private moral beliefs but as a relational and inherently public practice. Khan's careful ethnography shows how members of the Tablighi Jamaat aim to create a community based on mirroring the Prophetic model, emphasizing how faith and moral order are cultivated and strengthened through public action. Khan advances the conversation in religious studies by focusing on “hierarchical piety”—a framework that challenges social fragmentation by using rituals and personal responsibility rather than activism.
Khan's book is compelling for the nuanced way it challenges the private–public divide, a theme central to studies of religion and secularism. Grounding his analysis in Karachi—a city shaped by bursts of violence and sectarian conflict, as highlighted in the opening anecdote—the author explores the everyday challenges faced by Tablighis as they attempt to embody their religious ideals while negotiating tensions between home, mosque, and public life. Khan offers rich insight into how members attempt to align the private sphere of the household with the moral order they seek to establish in public. This alignment, however, is fraught, since the strongest opposition to Tablighis’ attempted embodiment of religious ideals can often emerge from their own kin. In addition, personal relationships often spill into the public sphere through dawat, further enmeshing the two spheres. Tablighis also leverage these personal connections to create a moral community, challenging the assumption that religion can be confined to the private domain. Yet, it raises a tension: is dawat primarily a tool for proselytization, or given the difficulties inherent in drawing people into the movement, is it a tool for personal spiritual transformation? This tension is at the heart of the theme of transcendence, which operates bidirectionally. The Jamaat offers both spiritual refinement (through the practice of din or religion), and the possibility of bringing divine presence into the material world (or dunya), which then might not be at odds with each other, at least to the degree to which Khan argues.
The book also invites a reconsideration of conventional views of patriarchy within religious practice. While it is clear that the Tablighi Jamaat operates within a patriarchal framework—assigning authority to male elders and limiting women's roles—Khan highlights how men are encouraged to embody traditionally feminine qualities, such as khidmat (service), humility, and care. These traits, typically associated with women, are reframed as essential components of spiritual leadership. However, this raises important questions: does the promotion of these qualities among men lead to a revaluation of both men's and women's labor within the household? And if dawat functions as a tool for self-transformation, how meaningful is this transformation if it remains limited to preaching tours, without affecting everyday family dynamics?
The book invites a deeper engagement with gender by reflecting on the tensions between men's religious obligations and their family responsibilities. Tablighis sometimes face ridicule for neglecting worldly duties, such as employment, to engage in unpaid proselytization. Khan notes that their absence from home creates challenges for their wives, mothers, and daughters, who must manage without their presence, exacerbating gendered burdens. The movement offers women a very limited role within these patriarchal constraints: their support is essential in sustaining the men's participation in dawat. This household dynamic remains largely unexplored in the book, presenting an opportunity for future research.
Khan's work provides political scientists with valuable insights by showing that religious authority—like political authority—relies not merely on formal structures but on relational dynamics. Just as Tablighis derive moral authority from humility and interpersonal connections, politicians and party activists build trust and influence through service and personal relationships with constituents. This relational logic mirrors political behavior in the wider South Asian context, where politicians remain influential even after electoral defeat, engaging in everyday acts of intercession and service. Khan's framework encourages political scientists to consider how social structures shape relational forms of authority, complementing and expanding upon instrumental links between voters and politicians.
In conclusion, rather than framing authority solely through rigid institutions, The Promise of Piety pushes us to reconsider the intersections between religion, politics, and patriarchy. Khan emphasizes that religion is relational, a framework useful not just for understanding the Tablighi Jamaat but also for analyzing broader forms of political authority and legitimacy. This study sheds light on how relationships and humility can foster influence, challenging traditional public–private distinctions and pointing to new avenues for understanding how social, political, and religious movements and actors can shape political life.
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