New ‘social imaginaries’: The Al-Huda phenomenon

Abstract

Pakistani women at home and beyond, whether enthusiastic or not about being coerced or at times cajoled to participate, are becoming part of socio-political, religious and cultural networks that translate the class, status and gender struggles of Pakistan in Pakistani diasporic communities. It is now the religious networks, mediated, articulated, and inspired solely by women, that confirm this continuity process in particular. However, the similarities between home and diaspora may be accompanied by dissonances and differences, sometimes of a subtle kind. The processes through which these women negotiate religious identities, mediate rituals, and articulate social performances are often different from those of men in Pakistan's diaspora communities. However, their choices depict the influence of power, location and gender expectations for members of the Pakistani diaspora.

Notes

¹ Al-Huda is the transnational religious network that Hashmi instituted. The organisation began in the cities of Karachi and Islamabad in Pakistan and now has affiliates in North America, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Australia. Since my ethnographic research was completed, Hashmi has migrated to Canada and runs Al-Huda from there.

² Nilüfer Göle, ‘Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries’, in Public Culture, Vol.14, no.1 (2002), pp.173–90.

⁴ Ibid., p.324.

³ Minoo Moallem,‘Transnationalism, Feminism, and Fundamentalism’, in C. Kaplan, A. Alarcon and M. Moallem (eds), Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999) pp.320–48.

⁵ Durre S. Ahmed, ‘Introduction: The Last Frontier’, in D.S. Ahmed (ed.), Gendering the Spirit: Women, Religion and the Post-Colonial Response (London and New York: Zed Books, 2002), pp.3–34.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Jamat-ud-Dawa is one of the largest and rapidly-growing charity organisations in Pakistan. Though it draws from a cadre of technocrats, scientists and engineers, it is the parent organisation of the terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba. See Marika Vicziany, ‘Understanding the 1993 Mumbai Bombings: Madrassas and the Hierarchy of Terror’, in South Asia, Vol.30, no.1 (April 2007), pp.42–73.

⁸ www.jamatdawah.org/pages.php?action=menu&id=93, accessed 4 Nov. 2006.

¹⁰ Rubina Saigol, Knowledge and Identity: Articulation of Gender in Educational Discourse in Pakistan (Lahore: ASR Publications, 1995), p.86.

⁹ Annanya Bhattacharjee, ‘The Public/Private Mirage: Mapping Homes and Undomesticating Violence Work in the South Asian Immigrant Community’, in M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp.308–29.

¹² Ibid., p.7.

¹¹ Pnina Werbner, Imagined Diasporas among Manchester Muslims (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2002); and Ulf Hannerz, ‘Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture’, in Theory, Culture and Society, Vol.7, nos.2–3 (1990), pp.237–51.

¹³ I have discussed elsewhere the self-righteousness on the part of the Pakistani military that leads to it feeling that it knows best how social and gender relations in Pakistan should be organised. One can analyse how the Pakistani military continues to control women's mobility ranging from the repressive laws passed by the martial law regimes to the ‘instructions’ given from time to time by the military elite. For example the world-view of the Pakistani military affected the choices exercised by Pakistani college students because in the 1980s the Director of Education for Federal Government Colleges received instructions from the General Headquarters (of the Pakistan Army) to make the chadar (shawl) a part of the uniform for female students. As a student in a Federal Government college administered by the Pakistan Army, I had to sign a pledge that makeup/cosmetics are contraband, the chadar would be an integral part of my uniform, and ‘I will resist [sic] from political conversation’. See Aneela Babar, ‘Creation of the Mujahid (Warrior) and the “Good Woman” in Pakistani Society’, in Ilse Lenz, Helma Lutz, Mirjana Morokvasic, Claudia Schoening-Kalender and Helen Schwenken (eds), Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries, Volume II: Gender, Identities and Networks (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2002), pp.39–55.

¹⁵ As quoted in the brochure for the Taleem-ul-Quran Diploma offered by Al-Huda (Islamabad: Al Huda Publications, 2002).

¹⁴ Farhat Hashmi, And You (Alone) We Ask for Help: Invocations for Morning and Evening with Invocations for Protection (Islamabad: Al-Huda Publications, 2002).

¹⁶ Personal interview with Farhat Hashmi, 22 October 2002, Islamabad.

¹⁷ ‘Taleem-ul-Quran Diploma Brochure’ (‘Brochure for Enrolling in Al-Huda Diploma Classes’) (Islamabad: Al-Huda Publications, 2002).

¹⁸ Surah 3 (Al-Imran), Ayat 164, The Meaning of Holy Quran (trans. Yusuf Ali) (Maryland: Amana Corporation, 1992), p.170.

¹⁹ ‘Al-Huda Prospectus’ (Islamabad: Al-Huda Publications, 2002).

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² See www.alhudapk.com/reading-material/.

²³ Benedict Anderson, ‘Exodus’, in Critical Inquiry, Vol.20, no.2 (1994), pp.314–27.

²⁴ Jacques Rousseau, Letter to D'Alembert and Writings for the Theater (New York: Cornell University Press, 1968).

²⁵ Nighat S. Khan, Women in Pakistan: A New Era (Lahore: ASR Publications, 1988).

²⁶ Riffat Hussan is a Pakistani academic working at the University of Louisville who draws from a discourse of human rights and theology when analysing the Quran. Her argument is that basic rights such as the right to live, to work, to marry, the right to freedom, to justice are all there in the Quran and that these laws are not gender specific as interpreted by the clergy by twisting the lexicon. For her the Quran puts paramount importance on the use of reason and constantly urges Muslims to ‘think’ or to ‘reflect’ and not to accept anything—including the Quran itself—without independent intellectual scrutiny. There are thus major differences between her approach and Hashmi's.

²⁷ Newsline (April 2001) [http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03260.html, accessed 7 May 2008].

²⁹ Ibid., p.145.

²⁸ Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.144.