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ABSTRACT
Pakistani migrant families in Denmark are embedded in a transnational social field, one that stretches between the rural villages in Punjab that they left behind in the 1960s and 1970s, and their new home in greater Copenhagen. However, the upcoming generation, born and raised in Denmark, often has an ambivalent relationship with the homeland of their parents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Sufi tariqa(order, path) called Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Saifi, this article explores how the ritual of ‘zikr Allah’ (the commemoration of God) provides an opportunity for the Copenhagen Saifis to cultivate new connections with Pakistan, beyond the kinship networks and the family village of origin. The ritual is significant for their aspiration to become pious Muslims. In this process, Pakistan comes to be ascribed with new meanings. Whereas the parents’ generation associated Pakistan with family and kin, property, houses, and power connected to the village of origin, these pious Saifis begin to associate Pakistan with spirituality, purity, and love for their shaykh in particular and the Sufi tariqa in general.
Acknowledgements
The article is based on my participation in the research project on ‘Sufism and Transnational Spirituality’ (SATS, 2010–2014) at Aarhus University. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the panel ‘Rituals of Migration’ at the 17th Nordic Migration Conference in Copenhagen, 13–15 August 2014, and at the seminar ‘Multi-sited Sufism: Transmission, Translation and Transcendence’, Istanbul, 20–23 October, 2014. I thank the participants at both events for many valuable comments and suggestions on how to improve the argument.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 In recent years, there have been several studies of the Naqshbandiyya. Some of these have focused on the global expansion of the Naqshbandi–Haqqani (Damrel Citation2006; Nielsen, Draper, and Yemelianova Citation2006; Stjernholm Citation2011) or the Naqshbandi–Mujaddidi (Jonker Citation2006), the re-emergence of the Naqshbandiyya in post-Soviet Uzbekistan (Louw Citation2007), or simply the history and orthodoxy of the tariqa in general (Weismann Citation2007). Pnina Werbner has written an inspiring monograph on the Naqshbandi shaykh Zindapir in Pakistan and his followers in Britain (Citation2003). Arthur Buehler has presented a comprehensive study of the cosmology of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi (1998). To my knowledge, the only ethnographic study of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Saifi was presented by Lizzio (Citation2003, Citation2006, Citation2014), who back in the early 1990s did extensive fieldwork at the lodge of Shaykh Saif ur-Rahman. The present article, then, is the first study of the Saifiyya outside Pakistan (see also Rytter Citation2015, Citation2016a, Citation2016b, Citation2017), and the first to discuss the significance of religious mobility among devoted Saifis.
2 The Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Saifi is a brotherhood consisting of men at all ages. Women can also be murids and have zikr, but these gatherings will be conducted under the guidance of the wife of a Saifi shaykh. I have never heard of women and men participating in the same zikr gathering in Saifi tariqa – that would be seen as highly inappropriate and against the sunna and example of the Prophet Muhammad.
3 Many Saifis from Denmark also independently visit notables of the order when they travel to Pakistan on family visits or holidays.
4 A similar process of inventing origin is ‘ashrafisation,’ whereby families in diaspora adopt the lifestyle and the ‘ashraf’ (noble) castes related to the family of the Prophet Muhammad. By so doing they aspire to be recognised as having a higher status and more prestigious background than they really do (Shaw Citation2001, 126–127).