Piri Muridi Relationship

Download or read book Piri-muridi Relationship written by Desiderio Pinto and published by Manohar Publishers and Distributors. This book was released on 1995 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between a spiritual master and his disciple (piri-muridi) becomes important when one witnesses day after day the large numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims flocking to spiritual masters (pirs) stationed at the various dargahs of India. "This work discovers that piri-muridi aims at making the disciple see God in all things while very often allowing him to enjoy wordily success. This is achieved through a lenghty socialization process that spans a period of time ranging from twelve years to a lifetime. This socialization process is very painful, and some disciples (murids) run away. Most, however, remain bound to their pir, by their vow of allegiance to him, the pir's friendliness, sympathy, material, magical and psychological assistance, and when that is not enough, fear of his magical power. During this period the murid learns to fall in love with the pir whom he strives to see as the representative of God, by observing, serving, and seeing the pir's hand in everything that befalls him, and frequently recalling and concentrating on a mental image of the pir while believing that his actions are prompted by the pir. Having thus attained union with the pir, he one day suddenly realizes that the pir is just a curtain or veil that hides something else -- that which he has truly loved all the time in the image of the pir is God himself. The book is a mine of empirical information collected in the Nizamuddin dargah, showing how a set of beliefs contained in constantly narrated stories and experiences are used to forge, structure, maintain and further the relationship between the pir and his murid. It will be of interest to scholars of Islam, Indian history and sociology, Sufi thought and the place of religion in the modern world.

Download or read book Pilgrims of Love written by Pnina Werbner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . will be of interest not only to those concerned with Pakistan and the new Muslim presence in Europe, but also to those interested in an anthropological study of religion." —Barbara Metcalf, University of California, Davis Pnina Werbner traces the development of a Sufi Naqshbandi order founded by a living saint, Zindapir, whose cult originated in Pakistan and has extended globally to Britain, Europe, the Middle East, and southern Africa. Drawing on 12 years of fieldwork in Pakistan and Great Britain, she elucidates the complex organization of Sufi orders as regional and transnational cults, and examines how such cults are manifested through ritual action and embodied in sacred mythology and global diasporas. A focus of the study is the key event in the order's annual ritual cycle, a celebration in which tens of thousands of people gather at the saint's lodge in Pakistan and in the streets of Britain. Werbner challenges accepted anthropological and sociological truths about Islam and modernity, and reflects on her own role as ethnographic observer. Pilgrims of Love is a major contribution to our understanding of disaporic Islamic practices, highlighting the vitality of Sufi orders in the postcolonial world.

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 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 Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies written by Kiri Paramore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies analyses the role of religion in past and present understandings of Asia. Religion, and the history of its study in the modern academy, has exercised massive influence over Asian Studies fields in the past century. Asian Studies has in turn affected, and is increasingly shaping, the study of religion. Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies looks into this symbiotic relationship – both in current practice, and in the modern histories of both Orientalism and Area Studies. Each chapter of the book deals with one regional sub-discipline in Asian Studies, covering Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, South Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Central Eurasian Studies. The chapters are integrated by shared themes that run through the past and present practice of Asian Studies, covering the role of state actors in originating Area Studies, the role of local scholarship in defining and developing it, the interaction between humanities and social science approaches, debates over the dominance of Western and/or modern categories and frameworks, the interaction of past and present and the role of religious actors and religious sensibilities in shaping Asian Studies.

Download or read book Living Knowledge in West African Islam written by Zachary Valentine Wright and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-02-04 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living Knowledge in West African Islam examines the actualization of religious identity in the community of Ibrāhīm Niasse (d.1975, Senegal). With millions of followers throughout Africa and the world, the community arguably represents one of the twentieth century’s most successful Islamic revivals. Niasse’s followers, members of the Tijāniyya Sufi order, gave particular attention to the widespread transmission of the experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God. They also worked to articulate a global Islamic identity in the crucible of African decolonization. The central argument of this book is that West African Sufism is legible only with an appreciation of centuries of Islamic knowledge specialization in the region. Sufi masters and disciples reenacted and deepened preexisting teacher-student relationships surrounding the learning of core Islamic disciplines, such as the Qurʾān and jurisprudence. Learning Islam meant the transformative inscription of sacred knowledge in the student’s very being, a disposition acquired in the master’s exemplary physical presence. Sufism did not undermine traditional Islamic orthodoxy: the continued transmission of Sufi knowledge has in fact preserved and revived traditional Islamic learning in West Africa.

Download or read book Culture, Creation, and Procreation written by Monika Böck and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As reproduction is seen as central to kinship and the biological link as the primary bond between parents and their offspring, Western perceptions of kin relations are primarily determined by ideas about "consanguinity," "genealogical relations," and "genetic connections." Advocates of cultural constructivism have taken issue with a concept that puts so much stress on heredity as being severely biased by western ideas of kinship. Ethnosociologists in particular developed alternative systems using indigenous categories. This symbolic approach has, however, been rejected by some scholars as plagued by the problems of the analytical separation of ideology from practice, of largely overlooking relations of domination, and of ignoring the questions of shared knowledge and choice. This volume offers a corrective by discussing the constitution of kinship among different communities in South Asia and addressing the relationship between ideology and practice, cultural models, and individiual strategies.